MY CHRISTMAS INN (2018)

At her San Francisco advertising agency, Jen is in the running for a big promotion; her only real competition is a brittle, unlikeable co-worker. After Jen impresses her boss with another great ad campaign, she takes some time off to head to Chestnut Hill, a small town in Alaska, to see about selling some property her great-aunt left her. It turns out to be a lovely little inn that was always nicely decorated for Christmas. And, of course, her great-aunt was also instrumental in holding the traditional Christmas festival. And, of course, some of the locals are hoping that she’ll decorate the inn and participate in the town festivities. She gets some help from her aunt’s lawyer, Brian, who is, of course, handsome and, though a little snarky at first, quite charming when she gets to know him. Sparks fly, but she soon gets a nibble from a big corporation about buying the inn, and then is called back to town to attend the company’s holiday party and get her promotion. The big city is calling her and the small town has its hold on Brian--can they find a way forward or was this just a Christmas almost-fling?

This Lifetime movie is a good example of how the lay of the land of the Christmas TV romance has changed. The plot is the same rehashing of genre elements (businesswoman under pressure, small-town guy who works with his hands--in addition to being the town lawyer, Brian also builds sleighs!) but the central couple is interracial and it’s not problematic for anyone. Also, perhaps because this is a Lifetime movie, the two leads are a little off-center from the norm. Tia Mowry (with whom I was unfamiliar but who became a teen star in the TV show Sister, Sister) carries a little more weight and age than her Hallmark sisters; Rob Mayes as Brian is a little scruffier and a little less hunky than his Hallmark brethren. But both are quite appealing and do generate enough chemistry for their budding relationship to feel real--stronger writing to develop the characters would have been nice. You know they are destined to wind up together, but I liked the fact that in the end, both are willing to give something up to be with each other (Spoiler: Brian flies to San Francisco to tell her he’ll give up Chestnut Hill to be with her, unaware that she has already turned down her promotion to go back and run the inn.) It was a pleasant surprise to see Jackée Harry and Tim Reid as Jen’s parents, though they only have two short scenes. There is the now obligatory romantic subplot with two supporting characters who unfortunately have no chemistry at all, and I was a little disappointed that the Christmas Inn itself is basically ignored for most of the movie, but overall I enjoyed this as a kicking-off point for my 2020 excursion into Christmas movies. [Lifetime]