Molly (Jen Lilley) is looking for investors for her tech start-up, an app called Mingle All the Way. It's not a dating app, but an app for making platonic, companion matches when a plus-one is needed for social or business purposes. Her somewhat brittle mother (Lindsay Wagner) makes it clear that she thinks Molly will not be a success and should come back to the family accounting business (though her father is much more sympathetic). Molly's assistant Tyler suggests that a good PR move would be for Molly herself to use the app and report on her success via a blog to impress their potential investor. Meanwhile, Jeff (Brant Daugherty), an up-and-coming ad man, is hoping for a promotion, but not having a girlfriend is taking a toll on his opportunities to socialize at holiday parties with his boss, and when he hears about the Mingle app, he thinks he might try it. Molly and Jeff meet "not-cute" when they spar over an angel ornament at a decoration store. They have a second awkward meeting when she literally bumps into him on the street, causing him to spill his box of homemade Christmas stockings. But guess who gets matched up on the Mingle app? They decide to make the best of it (with Molly hiding the fact that she is the app's creator), and in the run-up to Christmas, they start to fall for each other. She gives him back the self-confidence that he lost when he broke up with a long-time girlfriend, and he gives her back her love of Christmas, which she lost when her mom decided years ago to spend the holidays skiing in Aspen rather than having old-fashioned family get-togethers. But just when Jeff is ready to tell Molly that he's fallen in love with her, his old girlfriend shows up. And just when that situation is cleared up, Jeff finds out that Molly is the Mingle creator, and he thinks he's been being used this whole time just to sell the app. As per the Hallmark Christmas template, in the last eight minutes of the movie, the two manage to clear things up (on Christmas Day, no less) and share a kiss.
I watched this movie, another one in the Hallmark Christmas in July lineup, for one reason: Brant Daugherty (at left). I discovered him in A Christmas Movie Christmas, an UpTV movie which I caught on Amazon earlier this year and will be reviewing soon. He falls squarely into the blandly handsome leading man mold of TV romance films, but he shows fun flashes of whimsy that are not usually called for in these films, so he stands out in the crowd. He's a bit more tamped down here (UpTV being, apparently, more whimsical than Hallmark), but he's still fun to watch. Lilley is fine as the damsel who needs a man to save her from herself--I hate to put it that bluntly, but let’s face it, that’s pretty much par for the course at Hallmark--though, to be fair, she helps him solve his problems as well. Wagner is perfect as the Grinchy mom (I had quite a crush on her in her Bionic Woman days) who gets her own redemptive moment thanks to Jeff. There's a subplot romance between Molly's friend (Sandy Sidhu) and Molly's assistant (Casey Manderson), but not much time is devoted to that (I could have sworn that the assistant was going to out himself as gay, but it may take a few more seasons for Hallmark to get to that point). There's also a sister and niece for Jeff, to show us what a great family guy Jeff can be, and an actor with the unlikely name Preston Vanderslice gets a couple of good scenes as Jeff's slimy colleague who is out to make Jeff look bad in their boss's eyes. The angel ornament that our couple argue over makes a fitting return near the end. Pretty much standard stuff, with Daugherty supplying just enough of a spark to make this worth catching.
A final note: I predicted the other day that Hallmark might take a bit of a breather this year with film productions stalled by the Covid-19 pandemic, but yesterday I saw a press release from Hallmark announcing a slate of roughly 40 new Christmas movies coming up this fall. I'm guessing that the Canadian film business has recovered more quickly than Hollywood's--that's what happens when your country has a competent leader. A quick scan of the titles and casts doesn't promise that these films will be very different from the past, with perhaps a slight increase in Black cast members, but nothing special in the way of characters (gay or disabled people) or stories (maybe a high-powered businesswoman who doesn't have to leave her job at the end to find happiness). But I can always hope for a Christmas miracle. [Hallmark]
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