I met the author… a guy who wrote the script for one of the pictured movies. He was doing stand-up comedy on a cruise ship. He said yes, they are all terrible, but there’s a certain audience for them and they’re quite profitable.
He said I want you to think of me when you’re forced to watch one of these. I want you to know who is responsible, and that I’m very sorry.
None of them are interesting in practice, but the idea of two versions of a movie being filmed at once sounds like it could be cool. And if successful, would be almost twice as profitable as one.
They are definitely lower budget than ‘normal’ movies. But even as a low budget it still requires all the same production staff, camera, sound, editor, crew park staff, food services, wranglers, casting etc. The cheap part is unknown actors and not a lot of travel. Source: my wife has done background work on many movies and TV shows. As background they get paid to sit until call time. so scene maybe half hour, but all the background people waiting get a full hourly pay and all the food you want while waiting. You will notice on hallmark they zoom in tight so background is barely visible, this helps not having a large set of background people. in one movie at the mall they had my wife shopping and walking back and forth. it works for the scene but if you watched it closely you would notice the same lady in every scene carrying different boxes or bags.
It is kinda weird they haven’t made the Teletubbies decision to stop making new episodes once they have enough to loop. Once they have, what, three hundred? Then they can fill twelve hours per day from Halloween until Christmas. Shift those by a few movies every year and people will catch a whole different set based on when they watch TV.
My mother and sister fucking looooove these movies, despite how low effort cookie cutter they are. My favorite game while they’re watching is “count the POC.” The last one we saw together, I got to 1.
The Hallmark movies are mostly filmed in one of the whitest basic beige towns in British Columbia. It would be difficult to find someone. They do have an east Asian population but it’s small.
I love to just have them on, in the background. These movies are self-aware. The Netflix equivalent has its own universe with internal references to each other, which includes fake countries, maps, etc. I’m no joke invested in the Netflix Christmas-verse or whatever the fuck.
Hallmark is a little less fun to watch, but still quality rubbish. Everyone knows it’s over the top. The actors, producers, and writers are all in on it. I’m not saying that makes them good. They are still bad. But when you watch them knowing the content is almost intentionally cringe, it’s a bit better. With a slight shift in perspective and perhaps a bit of squinting, you can see the Christmas overtures as nothing more than satire. Last year, one movie just threw in a vague reference to Santa. No beard. No glasses. Just a guy who wore a red coat and occasionally would get 1-3 seconds on camera breaking the fourth wall. He had like one line. No gifts. No reindeer. Never interacting with the Christmas Couple. Just essentially an old dude in red. To me, that’s the height of humor. It’s like they’re just wafting a single sprig of holly over the film in the editing room. I crack up every time.
they would never dare disrupt the cash cow with gays or queers, or atheists or 'non christians', or a realistic portrayal of a poor or homeless person, or too many brown persons.
Wealthy socialite Human Woman had it all, ceo of the top you feel bad magazine, house on top of building and even a tiny enslaved bark beast, the only thing Human Woman was missing was a chemical reaction.
Human Woman receives a electrical waveform, Human Woman’s Human Grandmother mush box has stopped, Human Woman emigrated in moving iron box to original location, meeting Human Man also from original location, chemical reaction happens and Human Woman And Human man become human Couple
You might enjoy “A Christmas Movie Christmas”, where the protagonists wake up and find themselves as the protagonists in a Christmas movie reality. It’s a comedy where you basically laugh at the troops while they call themselves out on it.
Suzy Citygirl has to plan the perfect Christmas pageant or Bernard Bigbiz will fire her from her job at the Joyless Inc. Little does she know when she gets sent to Tinytown, Vermont on business she’ll meet Matty McSmall town. He owns the struggling local tinsel factory and needs to sell enough tinsel by Christmas or else his grandma won’t be allowed to have the surgery she needs to remove the tumor from her holiday spirt gland. Matty is also single dad that was widowed by a freak tinsel lathing accident and the little girl loves Sally Citygirl from the beginning and secretly helps her dad see past his pain.
With minutes to spare in the Christmas pageant/tumor deadline Suzy convinces Mr. Bigbiz to buy enough tinsel to save the Christmas pageant AND remove grandma’s tumor! But after throwing the perfect pageant she realizes Mr. Bigbiz is a terrible boss, and moves to Tinytown permanently. She falls in love with Matty, and gets a job at his tinsel factory. With her big business skills the struggling tinsel factory grows three sizes that day.
Mr. Bigbiz is ruined. He realizes the error of his ways and comes to Vermont to apologize. Now he too works at the tinsel factory, and loves life now. But don’t forget, throughout the movie the cast interacts with lovable bearded old man who may or may not be Santa, because wtf, why not?
It’s the Thing, loosely disguised as one of the main characters from the previous movie but the plot works like groundhog day. Every misstep it makes ends in it dying to a flamethrower as it’s forced to comply with Hallmarks demands.
Ive got hundreds of these damn movies on my Plex server specifically because my wife LOVES this crap.
I’m convinced we have a Family-Guy-Manatee-Ball-Pit situation going on here. There’s less balls to choose from, but damn if I haven’t seen “save family business with a last minute impromptu charity event spurred on by the handsome dude from her past who posseses some talent” 100 fucking times.
They aren’t usually direct plot copies, they just have identical pieces that get moved around so they can factory farm these bitches out.
He also forgot the silly, but loveable sidekick best friend of the romantic interest who is irrelevant for the whole movie, but helps to save the day in the end (and sometimes gets it on with the very serious sidekick best friend of the main character).
Fun game: see how much of the set is used in other movies. Most of the Hallmark movies are made on the same set in Atlanta so some will share little things like the same staircase or same exterior of a house. Hallmark reuses more than just the plots!
There’s an episode of South Park where they go to the writing offices of Family Guy for whatever reason, and instead of actual writers, they have an aquarium tank full of manatees and plastic balls with words on them.
The manatees would bring the balls to the top of the tank, few at a time, and the staff would use the words on the balls as prompts for their new jokes/episodes.
They look a lot like the identikit romance books my mum would read. Even she didn’t know which one’s she’d read before. Be like three quarters of the way in and then go “oh, I’ve read this”.
Pretty sure ChatGPT could create those things by now, such is the limitless array of imagination on offer within.
I know some people like him but Dean Koontz might as well be filling out Mad Libs for all the originality in his stories. They're enjoyable enough for brain-mush but barely even qualify as "books."
Not trying to be racist but it’s almost always a man and a woman who are both White - and probably a Black side character if they are feeling generous.
Hollywood’s (meaning movie and TV producers in general) default is white and straight.
The hetero norm is changing slowly, but the white norm is still very much a thing. Typically for a movie to feature a predominantly POC cast, it’s directed by a POC and listed as a POC movie, rather than just… well, a movie.
I love these movies, I think part of it is that holiday movies are some of the only light-hearted movies around that aren’t for kids. I don’t care that they suck in real terms or are all the same (something about xmas brings enhances my tolerance for terrible music and movies), I do wish they Hallmark knew about POC and LGBTQIA.
My husband absolutely adored these because they were wholesome with no gratuitous sex or violence. He was a conservative Christian and these were some of the few shows he could really enjoy unreservedly. (I doubt he would have been pleased to see a gay story, though. He’s not around to ask, unfortunately.)
I find them predictable and banal. But to each his own. He would watch a Hallmark movie in one room and I’d be in the other room watching Criminal Minds or something LOL
I live in a small town in Vermont, my girlfriend grew up here but moved away to New York City and has recently returned. She hates Christmas and I love it. Ive been trying to get her into the Christmas spirit. We were picking a Christmas tree when i realized we’re literally following the plot of these stupid movies and i now i keep mentioning how i need her big city business skills to help save my Christmas themed bakery
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