I feel the need to start this article off by explaining my complicated feelings towards Lifetime and Hallmark Christmas movies. So, if you don’t already know, Lifetime and Hallmark Christmas releases are an event. They begin some time in November and last to the end of December, sometimes with two or three original premieres every week. They have several titles—most of which have the word “Christmas” in it, and most of which are romantic films. Lifetime has over 80 original holiday films, while Hallmark has 24 this year alone.
For the last two years, I have sampled a few of their movies hoping to get a nice dose of romantic feels. As a lover of romance movies like myself, having such a large selection, all available for two months, is like being at a candy store. There’s so much to choose from! I know Lifetime and Hallmark aren’t exactly emblems of quality. I can put up with some corny romance films as long as they’re entertaining, and with such a large selection, probability dictates that least one of those films should be, right? Right…!?
Wrong!
Lifetime and Hallmark Christmas movies are a genre
Here’s the thing: Lifetime and Hallmark Christmas movies are a genre in and of itself. Genres have tropes and no Lifetime or Hallmark movie exists without them. What you’re likely to see in these films is a storyline that involves a single woman—either because she’s widowed, out of a breakup or too career-driven to date—moving to a small town seeking a promotion, to save a property, or seeking to own one. The small town is always a place where Christmas is very important; residents have lots of traditions and everyone is nice. The protagonist meets some “handsome” guy and through their relationship, she learns the true meaning of love and Christmas. Every single Lifetime or Hallmark movie follows this formula, and Lifetime’s “A Very Vintage Christmas” (2019) is no exception…and I’m over it.
“A Vintage Christmas” was my last straw
This year I watched “A Very Vintage Christmas”. It stars Tia Mowry as Dodie, the co-owner of an antique shop who, while preparing for her shops grand opening, finds a box of romantic trinkets in a wardrobe. Being a romantic, Dodie wants to find out what happened to the lovers and works with a handsome local to find them, while finding her own love story along the way.
This storyline is exactly what you’d expect from a Lifetime Christmas romance flick, however, the fact that I was LITERALLY falling sleep while watching it is the reason why I’ve finally decided to give up on Lifetime (and Hallmark) romantic Christmas movies. Here’s what finally did it for me:
Lack of Diversity and Authenticity
This problem is twofold. Lifetime Christmas movies lack diversity in stories AND in characters. Every one of these movies follows a single generic formula. A young woman ends up having to work with some guy and they end up falling in love during the holidays. That’s the gist of every film. They don’t explore backstory, character motivations, flaws and character arcs. They don’t even attempt to turn these tropes on their heads to generate something new.
Then there’s the lack of ethnic and cultural diversity. Even when a movie features a black protagonist, like “A Vintage Christmas” does, these movies don’t actually capture the nuances that comes with being black or PoC. For instance, there’s no mention of cultural traditions, family dynamics or ethnic cuisines. They fail to consider details like black hair, which is significant to a black woman’s experience. Dodie’s hair remains long and straight the whole time (clearly a weave), no matter the conditions. No head scarf, no hairstyle changes, nothing. It’s this lack of attention to details that makes all of this feel so inauthentic.
Not to mention, none of these movies feel like real life. From the characters simplistic relationships, to the hokey wardrobe, and the manicured settings. It’s like a Fisher Price kitchen set. It looks like a kitchen, but it’s all made of plastic and bright colors, and is nothing more than something to be played with. And I get it: these movies are not meant to be entirely realistic, BUT that doesn’t mean your characters have to be cardboard or that your towns have to be sets. In fact, Lifetimes other movies have managed to be entertaining, no matter how absurd they are.
The crazy scenarios these characters find themselves in is what draws us to these movies, but your characters, their histories and their arcs should be what keep us there. Which brings me to the next reason why I’ve given up on these movies:
Formulaic storylines that fail structurally, and therefore don't make me care about what happens
“A Very Vintage Christmas” has 3 story arcs, all of which fail on a fundamental level and are probably the reason why I was dozing off several times during the movie.
1. "The Vintage shop" storyline:
Dodie co-owns an antique shop with her best friend and her father helped fund. Dodie’s goal is to be able to pay her dad back. Dodie is faced with two setbacks: her store gets flooded and she doesn’t have money to repair it, and, on opening day, they don’t make enough money on sales. However, these setbacks don’t don’t raise stakes and are easily resolved. When part of her store floods, Dodie’s love interest, Ed (Jesse Hutch) offers to fix it for free. When they fail to make sales, Dodie and her friend figure out they can fix it by creating a website and giving the items backstories (something these character all lacked). It all works out and they make enough money to pay back her father.
Like I said, there are two fundamental problems here. The setbacks don’t actually raise stakes because they’re easily resolved AND we don’t necessarily know why this antique shop is important to Dodie because we never got a backstory for her passion. Therefore, I just don’t care what happens. To me, Dodie is just a weirdly obsessed woman who for some reason opened a shop at a town she’s never visited. And no matter what gets in her way, there’s always a solution readily available, so why care about her achieving her goals if she’s not faced with struggles?
2. “Find The Couple” Storyline:
So this is the storyline I believe was crowbarred in to bring Dodie and Ed together. Dodie finds a box full of romantic trinkets inside of a wardrobe and makes it her mission to not only get these items back to the owner, but to find out if their love story had a happy ending. For no real reason, Ed offers to help her find this couple and joins her on a scavenger hunt. Using the items in the box, like addresses on envelopes and a single photograph as clues, they eventually learn that despite being madly in love, the couple didn’t have a happy ending. Dodie eventually finds one half of the couple, and learns the identity of the other. There is a twist, when it is revealed that the other half of the mystery-couple is actually Ed’s mother.
This storyline was already flimsy to begin with because neither Dodie or Ed had any personal stake in resolving this problem, but what makes it fall utterly apart is the major plot-hole as a result of the twist. Like, how did Ed not notice the woman in the photograph was his mother? Are we meant to believe he didn’t know what his mother looked like when she was younger? Come on!
3. The Romantic Storyline
Ugh, the love story. This storyline doesn’t work because of it’s weak internal and external conflicts. The two things keeping these characters from getting together are 1. They have different perspectives on modernity and antiquity and 2. Dodie just doesn’t want a relationship, not matter how much Ed insists she give him a chance.
Here’s the thing, I get what they were trying to do by giving them opposing views. Opposing views does create conflict, except when these views aren’t actually causing external consequences. Dodie’s love for vintage stuff never stops Ed—who loves modern technology— from helping with her antique store or from finding that mystery couple.
In regards to Dodie’s internal conflict, the reason that doesn’t work either, is because we never get a backstory for Dodie’s resistance to love. Why does Dodie not want a relationship? She claims to be looking for Mr. Perfect, but she also admits this is unrealistic. However, the movie decides to stick with that as her motivation to stay away from Ed, but it doesn’t make sense. We don’t actually KNOW what Dodie expects from her Mr. Perfect and therefore, we don’t know why Ed isn’t him.
Regardless of all that, Dodie does accept Ed as her true love, but she never actually discovered her feelings for him and never resolves her internal conflict. Did Dodie finally realize that Mr. Perfect doesn’t exist? Who knows?
The Bottom Line
Ultimately, what my disdain boils down to is that these networks do nothing new with their movies. They recycle the same tropes, rearrange elements and cast a few PoC’s here and there to create the illusion that they have something new and exciting to offer. It’s the same crap, over and over again, every night, for two months, every year.
You might be asking yourself, Shantal, why do you even care about this so much? They’re just Lifetime and Hallmark movies, they’re meant to be basic. I’ll tell you why I care: I love romance movies and I don’t think we should accept mediocrity. Lifetime is geared towards women. They not only identify what women want to watch, they also set a standard around women’s entertainment. They also give women access to more female lead content. I am a strong advocate for evolution and mindful storytelling. Let’s get better at telling romance stories. Let’s find different stories to tell.
So, this is why I’m done watching Lifetime and Hallmark Christmas movies. Now it’s your turn tell me what you think about their films! Do you like them? Or do you also think they’re mediocre? Tell me about it in the comments below!
Hi! Shantal here. I’m a writer and a storyteller. I created Shantal Writes to share my experiences with writing fiction. I also provide new writers with tips, tools, and writing advice. I hope you find something helpful while you’re here!
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Should do you think they should get rid of that formula and create a new one, one that has modern (and younger) views in mind?
Should they just come up with new ideas every year?
How would you tackle the dilemma yourself?
As for me, can’t speak much about romance movies since I’m not a big fanatic of them, but this was worth reading.
I guess in some ways, yes, I would like for them to change up the formula. At least they could take their common tropes and turn them on their heads and do something different with them so it’s not too predictable. Including topics that are current and relevant to the times could also help. Most importantly, I would like them to be more inclusive with their stories. Right now most of their line-up features straight white couples. It would be nice to see more diversity, but that’s just me. I don’t think Lifetime or Hallmark wants to change their formula because their movies are easy to produce and they’ve somehow determined that’s what people enjoy watching. But I think they’re failing to realize that viewers are smarter than they were before. So I can’t imagine this will hold up forever. Anyway, thanks for your comment, Frank! I hope you stick around for more of my articles.