Window Wonderland (2013)

Title: Window Wonderland
Year of Release: 2013
Available On: The Hallmark Channel on Roku, November 2017
Rating: 2.5 out of 5 Jingle Bells

With the Christmas season fast approaching, department store window decorator Sloan Van Doren [Chyler Leigh a.k.a. LEXIE GRAY for those of us who watched Greys] is hoping to take over the recently-vacated head window designer spot but finds she has to prove herself by going up against rival Jake Dooley (Paul Campbell). As the two compete they find they may have more in common than they think.

Sloan is snotty and a suck-up. Jake is upfront and kind of a doofus. Obviously, Jake is from a small town and grew up poor, which means he’s nice to all the service providers that Sloan ignores and takes for granted – or pretends to ignore, anyway. Lexie er, Sloan works at the same place as her mom (mom is a bathroom attendant) and keeps it a secret from everyone! Who does that? Well, doofus Jake wins her over little by little, but who will “win” the job they both seem to covet? Sloan’s boyfriend, meanwhile, is very rich but very horrible. He’s smarmy and doesn’t appreciate Sloan’s dreams. He’ll be out of the picture shortly, I wager.

Now it’s time to get nit-picky:

• Jake is really presumptuous from the start, which I dislike in all men but particularly in wannabe artist white men. I freaking hate it when men say to women, “You’d look better without makeup.”
• No magic, no Christmas Spirit. It’s Christmassy only in the sense that everyone is wearing cold-weather clothes.
• For a movie all about the window displays, the displays in this movie are pretty lackluster. If this is supposed to be Macy’s in NYC, they really should’ve shelled out a few more dollhairs for a better set designer. I’m no designer, even I can see that a cardboard cut-out of Lady Liberty isn’t going to impress the passerby.
• Capitalism is stupid.
• Jake is living in the store? Once when I managed a coffee shop, one of my employees would sleep in the store regularly (he had a home) and that wouldn’t have been so bad except he was also stealing large sums of money and sleeping with his direct manager. That’s not related per se, but it’s part of why I don’t like this detail of Jake’s story.
• I hate it when the elevator doors in movies stay open for too long.
• Fitch (Matty Finochio), though stupid, is one of few amusing characters.
• There’s no working phone in that whole department store?!

This one is a real big meh. Meh meh meh meh. I feel like I can’t rate it poorly, because it’s benign overall, but I can’t rate it well because I don’t want to reward meh.