Verdict: Most Likely to Appeal to Your Straight Relatives

Big Picture: My Overall Thoughts

How are you so calm? Things are literally on fire!

Mike Mitchell with my favorite line

The queer representation in The Christmas House steers away from stereotypes and feels like real people I know. The gay couple is sidelined by two straight storylines, one of which feels much less compelling or fleshed out.

The time Brandon and Jake Mitchell spend on screen is perfect. I just wish they’d had a more equal role in the story, with a fairer share of screen time. This is a great start for Hallmark’s first queer rep. I hope to see a main gay couple in next year’s lineup.

The Story

In this movie, we follow three couples: actor Mike Mitchell (Robert Buckley) and his high school crush, Andi Cruz (Ana Ayora); Brandon Mitchell (Jonathan Bennett) and his husband, Jake (Brad Harder); and Phyllis and Bill Mitchell, Mike and Brandon’s parents (Sharon Lawrence and Treat Williams, respectively). Mike, Brandon, and Jake all come home for Christmas to do one last “Christmas House,” a Mitchell family tradition from two decades ago, in which the entire house is rearranged and decorated to be the jolly Christmas version of a haunted house.

Each couple has their own struggles. Mike is the star of TV show “Handsome Justice,” which is in danger of being cancelled; his love interest is trying to launch a real estate business against a very tough competing agent. Brandon and Jake are waiting to find out if their adoption plans will work out. Phyllis and Bill are having marital problems.

Straights #1: Mike and Andi

Mike and Andi are the classic Hallmark couple. They had a magic show together as kids, but drifted apart after high school. Now Andi is a single mom, and Mike is a celebrity. Andi’s kid Noah is standard cute Hallmark offspring, existing mostly to bring Andi and Mike together and have some Norman-Rockwell-style family scenes.

This couple isn’t completely a Hallmark stereotype. For one thing, Andi is Hispanic; the movie includes a scene of everyone at her mom’s house making tamales. Also, in the much-joked-about storyline of “big city girl learns the value of home and Christmas from small town hottie,” Mike is actually our big city guy who has to choose between his big city job or the cute girl and small-town roots.

A scene in which Mike follows Andi around while she shows the house to potential buyers really irritated me. He was incredibly juvenile and immature, getting upset at his parents’ life choices and undermining the budding career of the woman he’s interested in — after already trying to help her in a way she expressly did not want, without her permission. They do discuss this later, at least, but still… what a child.

Overall, Mike and Andi’s story is cute. I rooted for them. As a storyteller, I especially loved how the flashbacks to their high school days were depicted. But as someone who is “meh” about Hallmark movies, I did find them a little cookie-cutter. Their ending was obvious, predictable, and undeniably happy, as the Hallmark Christmas machine intended.

Straights #2: Phyllis and Bill

Phyllis and Bill were… well, if I’m honest, Phyllis and Bill were boring and predictable. Their conflict isn’t established initially, so it feels shoved in partway through the movie. Their kiss at the end feels unearned. The issue between them is never clearly defined, and so doesn’t have a clearly established solution. They start with frustration and end happily, apparently.

Their story felt like a half-baked, forced tale of vague conflict to give them screen time and stakes before the happy ending. This movie would have worked just as well without the marital spat. (Their plan for the house is relevant, but plenty of couples move when the kids are grown; separation and angst isn’t necessary to make that work narratively.)

Gays!! (Brandon and Jake)

The gay couple, aka the entire reason I watched this movie. Brandon and Jake are a super cute, sweet married couple who fit right in with the Mitchell family. They’ve clearly been together a while. Jake and Brandon’s mom get along swimmingly. The two men sit together, cuddle, stand nearby, and generally show a great deal of comfort being themselves, together, around the family. Love that.

Also, please consider this, lifted directly from my original viewing notes: GAY KISS GAY KISS THE GAYS GET A KISS.

While the characters are developed perfectly, I’m not completely happy with how the movie handles their story. There aren’t enough scenes or buildup for the adoption storyline to feel satisfying. The two men are basically dropped for a chunk of the movie. We know they’re home for Christmas. We know they have an emotional secret. And then we find out yay, they’re having a baby. Where’s the on-screen conversation with an adoption agency, or bio mom, or something? Where’s their flashbacks to the emotional struggle that brought them here?

Brandon and Jake are definitely the B-plot — or, actually, C-plot; the boring, vague parents take the B-role. The epilogue does show the men with their new kid, but in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it two seconds before cutting to longer shots of the parents’ and Mike’s happy endings.

Jake, the gay spouse, is well written and depicted, but he has the role of a supporting character. He has very few lines compared to everyone else in the family, including Andi and Noah.

The adoption announcement scene was wonderful, very exciting and heartwarming. It could have been perfect if Brandon and Jake had a happy, excited, celebratory kiss, but alas, no. I also noticed that the straight couples both got two happy-ending on-screen kisses, while the gays had only one kiss the entire movie, at the halfway point. No happy ending kiss for them. By the end of the movie, they’re just in the background. Apparently this movie had a one-gay-kiss budget and spent it in the first act.

Conclusion

Should you watch this movie? If you like Hallmark movies: absolutely, yes. If you’re not a Hallmark fan: it’s still a solid Christmas movie. Watching does show support for queer stories (the numbers matter); I’d give it a try.

If you hate Christmas? I guess you can skip it. Grinch.

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