Coming Home for Christmas (2013)

Title: Coming Home for Christmas
Year of Release: 2013
Available On: Netflix (as of 11/15)
Rating: Two out of five Jingle Bells

This movie is about two bratty sisters (Carly and Britt McKillip) who I can hardly tell apart. The one we are supposed to like huffs out of her sister’s doomed wedding, is 23-years old and apparently a top editor at an esteemed publishing house, because those jobs just fall out of the sky, and also falls in love with a dude in no small part because he lives in her childhood home. The pink Power Ranger (Amy Jo Johnson) plays the mom; the dad is kind of a silver fox (George Canyon). I think, however, that his gray hair is fake, based on pictures of the actor in other roles. Either that or he’s stopped dying it now. Either way, it’s done well enough for him to qualify for silver fox status. I liked him and I liked his little dog, too!

The two sisters are played by actual sisters and they look so much alike that the first ¼ of the movie I was not sure which was which. Luckily, telling them apart is not necessary to understand the plot!

Now. I am going to say something that, to those who know me, will be shocking. I didn’t like the singing, especially the singing at the end. Now, I love me a musical. I love it when villagers and people in the supermarket inexplicably all break out into the same song and dance! It brings me joy. But when this family and their extended friends sing together, I didn’t feel warm and fuzzy. I think I rolled my eyes. The sisters are brats, the mom is a brat, the husband seems nice but juvenile, and the love interest (Benjamin Hollingsworth) – while a made-for-TV dreamboat – is a woodworker who is inexplicably never dirty. As the wife of someone who works with machinery all day, I just can’t abide that. Give the man some sawdust on his clothes! Would that be too much to ask?

All told, this is not the worst holiday movie I’ve ever seen. If I hadn’t watched An Evergreen Christmas shortly before it, it probably would have gotten a higher score but “stupid singing movie” followed by “stupid singing movie” is not a recipe for high Jingle Bell feelings.

Production is good. Acting is so-so. The songs were better than the ones in Evergreen (I’m sorry, Charleene). But all the characters were big, non-communicative babies who didn’t deserve (or maybe do deserve) one another. There’s nothing worth quoting, the dialogue was forgettable.