Carlton is a director and choreographer who has come to Palo Alto at Christmas to stage The Nutcracker. Secondarily, he is also throwing a big party celebrating his engagement to his business manager Kayla, who grew up in Palo Alto. But two seconds into their first scene together, we know this relationship won't last. Carlton is driven and obnoxious, and the only reason for the party is for the press it will get him. Kayla loved him once, but now realizes that his career will always be his first priority. Meanwhile, her hometown friend Jana is planning the party and working with her friend Dustin, a caterer and baker. The meet-cute is elaborately presented: Dustin needs a nutcracker as a model for the nutcracker cookies he is making and sees one in the window of a knick-knacks shop; Kayla, looking for a nutcracker herself, sees the same one. Dustin gets it first, and as he carts it home, Kayla is being chased down by the shop owner, a fan of Carlton's. In escaping, she winds up in an elevator with Dustin and to get rid of the woman, she gives Dustin a passionate kiss. The ruse works, Dustin is amused, and Kayla looks a little dazed. One thing leads to another and soon, egged on by their friends (Jana and Dustin's cousin Kim), Dustin and Kayla are falling in love. However, the jealous Carlton begs for another chance and Kayla says OK. Right away, we see Carlton flirting with one of his dancers but it takes another forty minutes or so of movie time for Kayla to finally come to her senses, break things off with the wrong man, and start kissing, for real, the right man.
I don't quite understand the hate for this movie on IMDb. It generally has most of the pluses and minuses of the average Christmas TV-movie. It may not quite have the glossy Hallmark sheen--it originally aired on Ion TV--but that alone is not necessarily a minus. I admit to one big prejudice in favor of this film: Brant Daugherty (Dustin) is handsome and charming and can do no wrong in my eyes. He's an expert at what I call 'whimsical masculinity,' the ability to balance, well, being whimsical and masculine, a good talent for Christmas romances. He has nice chemistry with his leading lady Karissa Lee Staples (Kayla) who is quite good in her own right. Ion Overman (Jana) and Brittany Underwood (Kim) are fine in support, and I liked the fact that Dustin has two female buddies instead of the traditional male buddy or parental figure. There are some weak points. I agree with the critics who point out that the movie basically wraps up at the halfway mark when Kayla breaks it off with Carlton (David O'Donnell, who hams it up a bit too much as the bad boyfriend), and then it’s a case of 'wash, rinse, repeat' as we go through the same story again with little variation, except for the addition of a scene at a dog shelter in which cute puppies climb all over our cute leads. (Dustin winds up with one of the puppies, mostly in support of a cute joke in which Kim, frustrated that Dustin isn’t doing enough to fight for Kayla, tells him that she’s going to get him some cats because he’s on his way to being the male version of a crazy cat lady.) Carlton’s production of the Nutcracker looks awfully low-rent from the little glimpses we see of rehearsal. Doris Roberts, the year before she passed away, has a tiny throwaway cameo as an irritating old lady who keeps trying to catch Dustin in the elevator under some mistletoe--I guess it was daring to make the sweet loveable Roberts unlikeable. Don’t trust the negative viewer comments on IMDb; I’d recommend it, especially if you’ve never seen Brant Daugherty--pictured above left with Staples and alone at right.[Amazon Prime]
No comments:
Post a Comment