It’s Christmas, Eve! / Christmas at Graceland

Hope you all had a very happy Thanksgiving with your loved ones! Our house got destroyed over the holiday by a monster cold.  I don’t know if my daughter or I had it worse, although I do have the distinct advantage of knowing how to blow my nose and not screaming hysterically every time someone tries to wipe snot off my face.  Yay parenting!

I was exhausted from all of this, which means I’m behind on blogging.  We’ve got so much to talk about, guys!  And we have to address the pre-Thanksgiving movies before we can get to all of the goodness brought to us by CCB and her amazing silk pants last week.  So I thought we would go ahead and do something a little different today by combining two movies into one post  It’s a battle of the singers turned actresses tonight: It’s Christmas, Eve! starring LeAnn Rimes versus Christmas at Graceland starring Kellie Pickler.  Let’s break down the elements and declare a winner in each category.  I really enjoyed one of these movies and did noooooooot enjoy the other, and I’m pretty sure this is going to become apparent immediately.

Job that sucks the most Christmas spirit right out of you

Eve (I feel like I should use her character’s name because it’s in the title of the movie, buuuuut I’m just going to start calling her LeAnn in like 4 paragraphs) is a traveling school superintendent who cobbles together temporary gigs all over the country. She swoops in, fixes budgets, and swoops out. I would have liked more background on how this became her job, because I don’t get the sense that she started out as a teacher. Anyway, Eve has just accepted an assignment to fix the school district in her hometown.  She quickly decides that things are so bad that her only option is to cut the music and art programs at all schools immediately.  Wouldn’t she be working on the budget for the following school year? Do we have to be this drastic? Ah yes, STAKES!

Kellie (yeah, not even trying to use her character’s name) works for Chicago Financial Corp, because I guess Evil Corporation was already taken.  She does…something? M&A? Sales? I don’t understand her job, but she is up for a big promotion.  Her boss has terrible fake hair and makes her stay late even though her babysitter leaves at 5:30.  This gave me INCREDIBLE STRESS as the person responsible for daycare pickup in our family.  I was also gutted by her leaving the office as the janitor cleaned the elevator bank and receiving the photo of her daughter with the snowman she made with her kindly neighbor that she was SUPPOSED to make with her mom.  Cut right to the core of me.

Winner: Christmas at Graceland

Most Blatant Product Placement

Kellie and her daughter travel to Kellie’s hometown of Memphis to try to help Evil Corporation acquire a very cute small town bank where the owner thinks of everyone as family and refuses to lay off anyone (this makes Kellie’s boss with fake hair very angry for some reason, because EVIL CORP DEMANDS LAYOFFS!!!)  Kellie’s college roommate Sally is supposed to be babysitting Kellie’s daughter while they are there, so I couldn’t figure out why Kellie wasn’t just staying with Sally…but it turns out it’s because The Guest House At Graceland is a very real place that probably paid a steep promotional consideration.

I don’t remember any product placement in It’s Christmas, Eve! Probably because that would have required me to watch closely, which I felt incapable of doing after the first 15 minutes.

Winner: Christmas at Graceland

Best Improbable Romantic Partner

We meet Liam in It’s Christmas, Eve! when he is telling truly terrible dad jokes and anticipating everything his daughter might want to pack for the sleepover.  His daughter is probably riiiiight around the age where she is going to start being horribly embarrassed by him very soon.  She would be correct to be embarrassed by him, because he is basically a worse version of Mr. Schuster from Glee.  Aww, remember when Glee was a thing?  Liam is the high school music teacher who seems to be trying way too hard to be The Cool Teacher to his choir students, most of whom silently lurk in the background.

Eve and Liam have a meet cute in a coffee shop after watching a man spill coffee all over a woman.  Guys, it’s meta! They are having a meet cute while witnessing a meet cute! Someone in the Hallmark writer’s room was really proud of that one. Obviously, his job would be the first one cut by Eve’s proposed cuts.  They only realize that she would make him unemployed like 20 minutes into the movie.

Kellie bumps into Clay outside of Graceland while she and her daughter are checking out the Christmas lights with Sally’s family.  Clay and Kellie used to perform music together and date many years ago.  They are still on friendly terms, it seems.  Clay is now a concert promoter, and he is planning the Graceland Christmas concert.  He hopes this will help to rocket him to the big time in New York City.  Sure, seems like that is how these things work.  It completely makes sense that these two would be together, even though he “doesn’t do Christmas anymore, because he has no one to share it with.”

Winner: It’s Christmas, Eve!

Most Amicable Divorce

Both of these movies feature divorced single parents. Single dad Liam in It’s Christmas, Eve! is raising his daughter, who periodically announces that she just got off the phone with her mom.  It seems that Liam and his ex-wife decided to split up when they realized they just wanted different things. She’s now a surgeon in the big city.  His daughter sees her during summer break.

Christmas at Graceland just sweeps away Kellie’s baby daddy with a “her dad’s not in the picture anymore,” followed by never ever discussing this ever again.  You can tell that she is trying to protect her daughter from deadbeats though, because she says things to Clay like “Don’t be Mr. Promises, there are kids involved!”

Winner: It’s Christmas, Eve!

Best Use Of The Leading Lady’s Musical Talents

So this was an odd choice for It’s Christmas, Eve! We learn pretty quickly that LeAnn’s father died when she was a teenager and as a result she never sang again.  It would have made sense to tell us this once, but literally every person she knew wanted to talk about her father’s death and how she used to be such a great singer back 15 years ago (P.S. I am SO BUMMED that I used up my “Don’t make me sing” joke a couple of entries ago, because it would have been incredibly perfect here).  Why have a great singer who is not a great actress star in your movie if you’re not going to have her sing until the end of the movie? She does randomly sight sing some music that Liam wrote for her, but she makes Liam perform the song that her mom finds that was written for her by her dead dad.

Christmas at Graceland has Kellie singing at her desk, right out of the opening credit.  She will pick up any guitar or sit at any piano.  This is what the people want to see, Hallmark.  Just lean into it.

Winner: Christmas at Graceland

Highest Stakes for the Christmas Concert

I was confused by this in It’s Christmas, Eve! because Liam starts talking early in the movie about having his students come practice for the Christmas concert at his house (you know, because he’s the Cool Teacher).  He explains that this concert involves all the schools in the district coming together to perform.  But then halfway through the movie these two bozos were like “I KNOW, LET’S SAVE MUSIC BY HAVING A CHRISTMAS CONCERT! I hope getting all the permission we need is not too much of an obstacle!” Why do you need permits for this? Isn’t it already happening?!?! Why would anyone be opposed to trying this if there are no stakes and the alternative is cutting all art and music programs in all schools?

Christmas at Graceland‘s concert only has personal stakes for Clay, because he just really needs to do a good job at this for some reason.  He convinces Kellie to perform with him in the concert when an act drops out.  She is willing to do this because she’s trying to raise a girl who is fearless and willing to chase her dreams, and Kellie wants to model that behavior.  Again, all the feels for this mom over here.

Winner: It’s Christmas, Eve!

Worst Band Name

Liam reveals that he was in a band called Bingo Jones.

BINGO.

JONES.

NO ONE ELSE SHOULD EVEN TRY

Winner: It’s Christmas, Eve!

Best Blackmail

The town’s mayor refuses to allow a Christmas concert that would literally save the arts in the school district unless her nephew is given a solo in It’s Christmas, Eve! (Spoiler alert: turns out her nephew has a great voice, so all’s well that ends well, I guess?)

The boss with the hair finds out that Kellie has been doing very little work while in Memphis after some noisy jerk back at Evil Corp sees Kellie’s name listed in the program for the Graceland Christmas concert.  He tells her she needs to come home immediately or risk losing her job, even though the next day is Christmas .

Winner: It’s Christmas, Eve! (sure, the stakes are higher for Kellie, but the blackmail was just so much more blatant and ridiculous here)

Most Hallmarky (yup, it’s a word) Leading Lady

Oh LeAnn.  All of her line deliveries reminded me of Cecily Strong doing her impression of the Serial lady.  She just seemed really bored to be there.  It really tanked the entire movie.

I don’t remember much about Kellie Pickler, other than she was on American Idol and was known for being a bit ditzy.  I think she maybe has a talk show on a cable network now? Is she a good actress? I have no idea.  She might just be that perky and Southern in real life too.  But you know what? It doesn’t matter, because she is a DELIGHT.  I hope those Canadian Hallmark writers continue to get confused about what Southern geography would support snow for years to come, because I would watch a movie a year with Kellie Pickler in it.  Put her up there with CCB and Lacey and, for some reason, Alicia Witt.

Winner: Christmas at Graceland

Best Music

Ah, you would expect that I would pick Christmas at Graceland, because Elvis.  However, there was some Elvis at the beginning and a cool montage of Kellie walking around wistfully while “Blue Christmas” played, but otherwise the music wasn’t doing much for me.  I feel like it was a waste of Kellie’s voice to do that “Silent Night/Silver Bells” mashup for their big concert number.  I would have loved to hear her belt out some “O Holy Night” or something.

No, I’m giving this to It’s Christmas, Eve! because LeAnn can still sing. And because that “You and Me and Christmas” song is cute and it’s been stuck in my head for three days. And because they play a snippet of the first grade choir’s performance and they sound like they are singing full on harmonies.  Maybe this school district actually is spending too much on music?

Winner: It’s Christmas, Eve!

Best Chemistry

This really should easily go to Christmas at Graceland, because I’m not sure that LeAnn is capable of chemistry with any human, let alone this joker.  Plus Kellie and Clay make a cute couple.  HOWEVER, It’s Christmas, Eve! ends with LeAnn throwing coffee at her man and giving a terrible line reading to call back to the meet cute at the beginning…but then Liam kiiiiiind of came out of nowhere with a pretty great kiss.  Shocking enough that I stopped what I was doing (cleaning my fridge, if you’re curious, because that’s how much I disliked this movie) and said “WHOA!” out loud to my dog (everyone else was sleeping).  It was like when Nick Miller kisses Jess on New Girl and you’re like “Wait…am I attracted to Nick Miller now even though he is an insufferable man child?” (Yup).

Winner: tie? Nah, it’s still Christmas at Graceland, because you need two people to make chemistry.  Sorry, LeAnn.