I spent Christmas Day in 2020 on my couch, on account of a global pandemic that kept us all at home instead of with our families, and I spent the entire day watching Hallmark movies. I don’t know what inspired me to review or recap them, precisely, but I did, and I’ve made it a yearly tradition ever since. I’m glad I posted them to Medium, since those recaps survived the Great Accidental Website Purge of 2024 (whoops) instead of getting deleted with the rest of my personal website (plus they probably ended up before more eyeballs that way).
Now that the Hallmark+ app has basically every one of their holiday movies ever available to stream, I thought it might be useful to put together a more complete accounting of movies I’ve reviewed so far and whether you should watch them. So here’s the master list (and I will update as future reviews get written).
(This ended up being a longer list than I expected, so let me suggest a cheat code: you can either browse or, if there’s a specific movie you’re interested in, use Find and search for the title.)
Review Key:
***** A classic, definitely watch!
**** Solid, worth checking out
*** Just ok, or mid, as The Kids say
** Skippable
* Should be tossed in the fire with the yule log
One Royal Holiday (***) Aaron Tveit plays a prince who gets snowed in at an inn in New England and falls for the proprietor’s daughter.
A Timeless Christmas (***) A fella from the early 1900s time travels forward and falls in love with a modern lady.
The Christmas House (*****) Way back in 2020, this was billed Hallmark’s first movie with gay characters, one of whom is played by Hallmark’s token gay Jonathan Bennett (you may know him as Aaron Samuels from Mean Girls), who is barely in the movie. The main story, though, is a friends-to-lovers romance between an actor and his childhood friend when he comes home to help his family decorate their house. (I genuinely liked this movie and think it’s a lot of fun.)
The Christmas House 2: Deck Those Halls (****) A not-quite-as-good sequel to The Christmas House that is mostly about the whole family working through some issues while competing in a decorating contest.
Christmas She Wrote (**) Basic Hallmark template copy and paste: Winnie Cooper gets laid off from her City job and goes to her hometown to lick her wounds; her former boss regrets laying her off and turns up to try to woo her (back).
The Christmas Setup (*****) A gay guy with a high-powered job goes home for the holidays, where his mom, played by Fran Drescher, sets him up with a guy he had a crush on in high school. The protagonists are played by real-life husbands. It’s very cute.
Dashing in December (****) A gay corporate dickhead goes home for the holidays, where his mom, played by Andie McDowell, tries to get him interested in her dude ranch. He falls for one of the ranch hands. (My main recollection of this movie is that the leads have scorching hot chemistry but the raciest thing they do on screen is a quick peck on the lips. It’s a real tragedy.)
Next Stop, Christmas! (****) Sliding Doors meets Back to the Future. A woman gets on a magic train and goes back ten years to have a do-over with the guy she dumped. Lea Thompson and Christopher Lloyd have cameos.
A Christmas Treasure (**) Jordin Sparks is convinced The City is the only place she can write novels, but whoops, she falls for the new guy who just moved to her little hometown. Also kind of a Hallmark script cut-and-paste job.
One December Night (****) This one is barely a romance. Bruce Campbell and Peter Gallagher play members of a now defunct Simon & Garfunkel style folk band, but they reunite for one night only and their kids fall in love. Campbell and Gallagher are great.
A Kiss Before Christmas (****) James Denton and Teri Hatcher are a married couple that has fallen on hard times, and he is so despondent about it he wishes they never met, and then he kind of gets his wish, It’s a Wonderful Life style, and sees what his life would have been without her.
The Nine Kittens of Christmas (**) A sequel to to The Nine Lives of Christmas, a 5-star Hallmark holiday movie that pre-dates when I started doing these recaps. The sequel is just ok.
Single All the Way (*****) This is the Netflix movie in which Michael Urie fake dates his best friend. It’s great, definitely watch it.
Time for Them to Come Home for Christmas (**) A woman with amnesia washes up in a strange town and needs help figuring out where she came from.
A Christmas Village Romance (**) A romance writer and a carpenter/history professor try to save a tourist village.
Christmas with a Crown (**) My notes say this is a Lifetime movie, but it’s very Hallmark: woman with an Important Job in the city goes home and works with a man who is secretly a prince to revive her small town’s winter festival.
Holiday Fix-Up (****) Jana Kramer hosts an HGTV-style show and goes to her home town to film an episode, where the only available carpenter is her ex.
A Castle for Christmas (****) Brooke Shields plays a bestselling author who is having some issues, so she goes on vacation to a Scottish castle owned by Cary Elwes. Romance ensues.
A Kismet Christmas (***) I should really stop picking movies about writers because they almost always get the details wrong, but anyway, this one is about magic cookies. A famous writer reconnects with her childhood crush.
A Cosy Christmas Inn (****) Stephanie Tanner is sent to buy an inn in Alaska owned by her ex, whose father may or may not be Santa Claus.
A Jolly Good Christmas (***) An American in London hires a personal shopper to help him find a gift for his girlfriend, but ends up falling for the shopper.
A Magical Christmas Village (**) Hallmark mainstays Julia Sweeney and Luke MacFarlane play a single mom and an engineer who’s new in town. The movie itself is kinda boring, but there is a magic miniature village. (Follow-up: Hallmark listened to me and put Luke MacFarlane in a very charming movie where he plays a gay character! The plot is a take on The Holiday.)
The Royal Nanny (**) In London, an MI-5 agent goes undercover in the royal household to thwart a plan against the royal family, falls for a prince.
Inventing the Christmas Prince (****) Tamera Mowry-Housley plays a single mom whose daughter is convinced her foxy new boss is the Christmas Prince, a character Tamera Mowry-Housley made up. I recall this being charming despite the goofy plot.
Santa Boot Camp (****) An event planner wants to find a great Santa for an event and, for reasons, gets pulled into going through Santa training. Rita Moreno plays the woman running the boot camp.
My Southern Family Christmas (****) A woman tracks down her biological father, played by Bruce Campbell, and spends Christmas in Louisiana. This is more a family story, but she does have a romance with a local librarian.
The Twelve Days of Christmas Eve (***) Kelsey Grammer has a Groundhog Day experience, except at Christmas, and instead of a romance, he has to fix his relationship with his daughter (played by his actual daughter, Spencer Grammer).
A Holiday Spectacular (****) A woman tells her granddaughter the story of how she became a Rockette in the 1950s. There’s a lot of great fashion and dancing.
A Royal Corgi Christmas (**) A dog trainer is hired to train a wayward corgi a prince bought for his mother, the prince falls for the dog trainer.
The Holiday Sitter (****) Jonathan Bennett is called in to last-minute baby-sit his sister’s kids, but he has no idea how to look after kids. Luckily, the hunky next-door neighbor swoops in to help.
A Christmas Treasure (*****) This is a good movie with kind of a dumb premise. Six childhood friends have to go on a treasure hunt and work out their issues. They sort themselves into couple (two straight, one gay, and the gay couple is the most prominent in the movie and also played by IRL husbands).
Hanukkah on Rye (*****) The Shop Around the Corner/You’ve Got Mail but with Jewish delis. Jeremy Jordan plays the hero. This is one of my favorites of all time.
Checkin’ it Twice (***) A guy gets drafted to a minor league hockey team in a small town where he keeps crossing paths with a pretty lady who’s only in town for the holidays and otherwise lives in The City.
Where Are You, Christmas? (****) Pleasantville, but with Christmas instead of sex. Weird premise, solid movie.
Christmas by Design (**) A fashion designer goes through the standard Hallmark holiday romance plot, including lots of stuff that isn’t how anything works.
A Merry Scottish Christmas (****) Lacey Chabert and Scott Wolf have a Party of Five reunion and play siblings who inherit a Scottish castle and have no idea how to handle that. Wolf’s character is already married, but Lacey Chabert falls for a hunky groundskeeper.
A Biltmore Christmas (*****) A magic snow globe allows a woman to jump in time to the past, where she falls for a Golden Age Hollywood actor at the actual Biltmore to film a movie, back to the present, but then she gets stuck in the past. Despite how it sounds, it’s well written for a Hallmark movie. Jonathan Frakes has a small role. (This is another of my favorites.)
Round and Round (*****) Groundhog’s Day but on the seventh night of Hanukkah, and in this case, the heroine does have to work out how to make a relationship work with the guy her bubbe is trying to set her up with. This one is really fun.
A Cowboy Christmas Romance (****) A Realtor goes to her Arizona hometown to negotiate a deal, gets tangled up with with the guy who owns the ranch. Standard Hallmark plot, but with cowboys. This movie is notorious for being the first one of these that has an actual sex scene in it. Basically, two hot actors make out a lot, but there’s some good emotional development, too.
Christmas on Cherry Lane (***) Three couples at three different time periods in the same house. (Seventies, nineties, now.) James Denton returns as the love interest in the ’90s storyline. Jonathan Bennett and Josh from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend are the now couple. It’s cute but clunky.
Hot Frosty (****) The one where Lacey Chabert falls in love with a snowman played by Ted from Schitt’s Creek. It’s fun, but you can’t think about it for longer than 30 seconds or it starts to fall apart.
Holiday Touchdown (****) A long ad for the Kansas City Chiefs with a romance plot that involves a magic hat.
Our Little Secret (****) An all-star cast, but starring Lindsay Lohan, who goes to meet her boyfriend’s parents and there runs into her ex, who is dating her boyfriend’s sister.
A Keller Christmas Vacation (***) Siblings with romantic issues go on a cruise down the Danube at Christmas.
Holiday Touchdown: A Bills Love Story (****) It’s like the Chiefs one, but set in Buffalo! Football fans fall in love at Christmas.
Christmas at the Catnip Cafe (****) Two attractive people inherit a cat cafe and butt heads as they decide what to do with it.
A Merry Little Ex-Mas (****) Alicia Silverstone and Oliver Hudson play a divorcing couple with adult children who want one last family Christmas, except everything goes pear-shaped.
Parodies:
The Bitch Who Stole Christmas (***) RuPaul’s take on this sort of movie; it take a bunch of Hallmark tropes and adds drag queens, basically. A lot of the jokes felt tired to me (lots of recycled Drag Race gags), but the movie heavily features Jaymes Mansfield, who is a fun follow on YouTube if you’re curious about how wigs are styled.
A Clusterfünke Christmas (*****) Rachel Dratch and Ana Gasteyer play innkeepers in this pitch-perfect Hallmark movie parody.