The Mistletoe Promise

Who’s ready for some lawyer jokes?

In A Nutshell

Elise runs a travel company with her ex-husband Dan.  If that sounds incredibly awkward, it’s because it is.  Dan left Elise for a car show model several years ago but continues to stick around work .  He makes his car show model girlfriend the star of the company’s Christmas ad campaign and puts ads all over Elise’s office.  Dan is a super classy guy.  Elise hates Christmas because Dan left her at Christmas, and because he spends the end of every fiscal year trying to get her to sell him her half of the company she founded. Elise is played by Jaime King, who you will recognize from around (Hart of Dixie was the last thing she did, maybe?)

Nick (the male lead is named Nick in about 40 percent of these movies) is a family lawyer.  Specifically, he likes to work on divorces so that he can help people at a difficult time in their lives.  This sounds suspect to me, but we will go with it, because Nick must prove that he is a Good Guy in order to be a worthy male love interest.  Nick finds out that he’s up for partner, but so is this other guy named Bradford.  This firm only likes to have people who are married with families be partners.  Clearly Nick does not work in BigLaw, because everyone knows that lawyers with families want to do things like see their children and spend time with their wives, which takes away from billing hours.  Anyway, Nick has a paralegal friend whose name I never caught, and she reminds Nick that the firm only makes one person partner per region every year, and Bradford’s pregnant wife puts him ahead in the running.  Nick pulls a classic Jan Brady and tells his boss he has a serious girlfriend when in fact he does not.  Fortunately, he did not tell his boss that his girlfriend’s name was Georgina Glass.

Nick and Elise meet in a food court during lunch when the most aggressive Christmas carolers who have ever lived accost them by singing loudly in their faces.  They strike up a conversation, and somehow after talking for about two minutes Nick decides to propose that they enter into a fake relationship to improve their respective work situations.  This is objectively insane, but he acts like it is a totally normal thing to propose.  Elise throws some shade, but then decides to go along with it.  Nick proceeds to DRAFT AN ACTUAL CONTRACT OUTLINING THEIR FAKE RELATIONSHIP AGREEMENT.  I am a lawyer and have many lawyer friends, but I do not know anyone who has drafted a multi-page document to govern a fake relationship.  One time in college I wrote out a contract on a napkin that required a friend to hire a Ben Franklin impersonator for my future bachelorette party, but that was only a paragraph long, and I wasn’t authorized to practice law at the time.  Nerd lawyers out there, feel free to weigh in somewhere in the comments sections if I am way off base and everyone else is writing contracts to govern their day-to-day social interactions.  I just feel like Nick probably should not make partner if this is how he is choosing to spend his time, but I digress.  Nick and Elise agree to call it a “mistletoe promise” rather than a contract so that it sounds way less weird, even though it is actually very weird.

Elise and Nick go about their fake relationship and impress their work friends by attending a number of holiday themed-events.  I did not catch the name of Elise’s work friend, but she did have one of my favorite lines when she found out that Nick and Elise met in the food court: “Elise. No.  We don’t date retail after 30.”  Nick and Elise start to feel bad that they are lying to people, but not bad enough to not do it.

Are There Obstacles To Their Love/Christmas Spirit??

Dan is a pretty despicable human being. He hacks into Elise’s emails towards the end of the movie and tells everyone at work about the “mistletoe promise” just to humiliate her. This is even after some ridiculous subplot that I failed to pay attention to where Nick and Elise help Dan’s car model girlfriend with some nonsense local weather segment called the Reindeer Report.  Somehow this comes back to be something important for Elise’s business.  “Everyone is talking about the Reindeer Report!” said Work Friend.  I zoned out a lot during this movie, obviously.  The point is that Dan is emotionally abusive and gross.

Bradford and his perky pregnant third wife are supposed to be an obstacle, but Bradford seems like an OK guy, albeit annoying.  No one is supposed to know that he is on his third wife, but I really don’t know why any of this matters at all.  Shouldn’t people be making partner based on how good they are at their jobs? Why is being a family man a criteria for this at all?

But Do They Find The Meaning of Christmas???

For two people who profess to dislike Christmas, they do a lot of Christmas stuff together.  They go see “It’s A Wonderful Life” and enter the lamest snowman contest ever and keep buying really weird-looking Christmas bells as an inside joke.  Nick talks about how his father left their family at Christmas and how his fiance left him just before Christmas and how he was fired from his first firm at Christmas after discovering that the person he worked for was breaking the law. Actually, Nick should probably be filing a whistleblower suit against his first firm or a discrimination suit against his current firm instead of writing creepy fake girlfriend contracts.  You can take some very basic steps to improve your life here, buddy.

But Do They Fall In Love At The End???

…I think so? Elise and Nick have to go to New York for his firm’s big annual meeting.  Nick tries to kiss her, but Elise shot him down with a line that I wrote down as “Love is a risk, business is something that you do.”  What does this even mean? Did I zone out a lot more than I initially thought? Somehow getting rejected by Elise gives Nick the courage to go to lunch with the managing partner and confess that he and Elise entered into a fake relationship so that he could have a chance at partnership.  He launches into a speech about how Elise is divorced and she is still a good person, and he is single but he is still a good person.  The message of this movie seems to be that it is ok not to be married, which was not at all where I expected them to go with this on Hallmark.  Elise feels like she needs to leave the lunch for some reason, but the managing partner decides to make Nick partner anyway.  Sorry,  Bradford.

The movie ends with Nick going to find Elise and proposing that “they extend their contract in perpetuity.”  You did not nail that one, Nick. Contract puns are not romantic.  Whatever.  Elise seems into it, and they kiss.

The chemistry between the Elise and Nick was convincing enough.  I have already forgotten what Nick looks like though, which can’t be good.

Is It Worth The Effort It Will Take Me To Fast Forward Through All The Command Strip Commercials Featuring MC Hammer In Order To Watch This?

Reading this recap through, it sounds like I disliked this movie more than I actually did.  It’s fine.  There are some good lines (my favorite: Elise responding to Nick apologetically asking if she can wear a dress to his work event with “Yes. I am a woman.  I have some” and then hanging up on him).  I have a really high bar for the “fake relationship for the holidays” sub-genre of Christmas movies because of my somewhat irrational love of “Hitched for the Holidays.” This movie had a lot to live up to and just didn’t get there for me, but you might still like it.