A Christmas Open House (2022)
Need to preface by saying it’s a HGTV flick, essentially the same style of a Hallmark Channel feature, so expectations shouldn’t rival The Preacher’s Wife or Miracle on 34rd Street. “A Christmas Open House” centers around a newly re-married elder mother who’s moving into her husband’s house and looking to sell hers, unbeknownst to her daughter—ironic consider she’s literally a fucking professional home stager who still lives in the same state. What ensues is said daughter (Melissa) teaming up with her once-upon-a-time high school crush, David, coincidentally is a real estate agent, albeit quite possibly a terrible one and it’s their mission to get the house revamped and for some poorly if it all explained reason, sold within nine days or so by Christmas.
WHAT’S TO LIKE: I enjoyed the lead actress, Katie Stevens, who looked familiar to me and after researching found out she was once an American Idol finalist (Season 9). She has a good look, decent acting expressions and some sexy 1970’s Wonder Woman Lynda Carter vibes about her.
Obviously this flick completely drips with cheese but still hits some of the notes I seek in a holiday movie. Most importantly, Christmas is a central theme as opposed to an afterthought/prop, which you see and feel throughout. It has the quaint small town community feel (this movie is set is tiny Rutledge, Georgia) it intends to with a great quote from Melissa’s mother, Janice (played horribly by Bobbie Eakes) closer to the end, that has her say “Home isn’t a building. Home is family. It’s community. Home is the people who love you. It’s a lot more than walls and a roof.” That’s well said, too bad she’s absolutely fucking useless in the process of trying to get her own house sold but more on that in a minute. Anyway, it’s plenty Christmasy in a small town --- and of course when the chips are down Rutledge rallies together to help out. It at least gives the good ole’ college try to leave us with all the feels at its climatic point.
WHAT’S NOT TO LIKE: While I’m good David not being some huge sex symbol we usually see in these roles, I felt absolutely zero chemistry between these two. I mean come on, Melissa’s entirely too fucking hot for this goof. Like, bitch what are you thinking? Vainness aside, I’m bothered by the plot from its very origins—the first scenes at the wedding where Melissa only finds out her mom’s selling the house second-hand from someone else. Like, how stupid must you be to think mom’s getting married and not jettisoning the house? Then again, being an idiot must run in the family because why wouldn’t the mother, who may be high throughout this entire movie, not tell her daughter about the house---considering again--- she’s literally a fucking professional home stager (disclaimer: I’m not even really sure that even means).
There’s just a million and one other stupid little things. David comes to the house (Melissa’s staying there) and they come up with some quickly sound (and put on paper) renovation/remodeling ideas to increase the value. I could understand him given it thought and being prepared, seeing he knew about it not to mention his job---but somehow this woman has a thousand ideas herself despite not even knowing about it roughly 10 hours prior. Also, for someone with as much alleged experience as David, his methods were annoying. He came to the house with a camera to take pics but clearly mailed that in.—like focus that fucking camera and lock in a few quality photographs. He also did plenty of physical labor in multiple scenes yet never had a drip of sweat or a blemish on his clothing. I sweat carrying a load of laundry around—GTFOH.
Also, Melissa rented furniture and other valuables (did her mom not have any furniture herself?) but allegedly because of a credit card digit mix-up all the stuff got repossessed just one day before Christmas eve. I mean, come on man---- if there was a wrong digit the initial transaction wouldn’t have went through—let alone the effort to repo everything so quickly. Even by HGTV/Hallmark standards that’s just fucking ridiculous. Of course, that was done to have the town step up and provide their own shit, because apparently the entire town has nothing better to do on Christmas eve than lug furniture and artwork around to someone’s house.
What else--- I was hoping Melissa’s best friend (Gloria) would get run over by a car. No one’s that fucking nice. Also, I know they attempted to sell us on Melissa being pressured by her boss to get back to Atlanta but the whole plot moved along way too quickly. It felt like a cheesy Christmas version of the TV series “24” --- I was waiting for a Keifer Sutherland cameo.
Lastly, the predictable ending hook up between Melissa and David was pretty lame. I mean, I wasn’t thinking they would cut away to seeing David smash in the bedroom as the flick ended but I was expecting more than a kiss that barely gets past brother/sister territory.
Grade/Recommendation: I can’t in good conscious actually recommend you spend 1 hour and 29 minutes watching this, but I’ve seen worse. The Christmas scenery and small town feels are pretty solid and like I said, Katie Stevens isn’t bad in this movie at all—good enough that I wouldn’t mind seeing her in more serious shit in the future. Her aside tho, blah on this—there’s definitely plenty of better ridiculously cheesy yet still romantically charming Christmas movies than this. Grade: D+
(Patrick Moran turns his inability to articulate thoughts and use fancy words on paper into easy-to-read reviews for the audience. Eat shit, New York Times and Variety Fair movie reviewers of the world.)
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