'Twas the Date Before Christmas

I am so happy to see sweet Amy Groening finally get a lead. I've been saying she deserves one for quite a while, and I've been vindicated: she really knocked it out of the park.

The story was fun too: a woman wants to preserve the Christmas traditions she has enjoyed with her very eccentric family, so she invents a boyfriend, finding someone on a dating app to pass along.

She brings him to the family Olympics, which is a series of zany Christmas themed competitions.

There's plenty of fun, and a lot of heartwarming situations as the family bonds with her new "boyfriend" only to discover he's actually a stranger.

This is the first of the Hallmarks for me this year, and they're off to a nice start.

I kept trying to figure out why I love this so much, when it IS a bit over the top. It's the great combo of fine character actors supporting two charming leads who have sweet, natural, vibrant chemistry from the start. There are many laugh out loud moments of light-hearted fun, which frankly, I could use more of right now. Family Christmas events have a fun twist on the usual tropes. Even if the conclusion to the conflict is a little pat and rushed, it makes us feel happy. What more can we ask out of an uplifting family movie? Love these two leads together and hope to see more of them in future Hallmark outings.

Dating isn't working out for Jessie (Amy Groening). In order to keep the Chamberlain Christmas traditions going, Jessie tells her mother she will be bringing a date - only she doesn't have one. She decides to place a post on a dating app requesting someone to accompany her to a Christmas party.

Bryan (Robert Buckley) is the CEO of a development company. His friends persuade him to find a date on a dating app, and he happens to reply to Jessie's post. Upon meeting, they make it clear it is not a date, and that he merely escorts her to her family's Christmas party.

The Chamberlain family traditionally plays various games - or Christmas Olympics as they refer to it, which involves performing various (fun) tasks. Things get complicated for Bryan when he learns Jessie's best friend, Shelly, is a tenant he must evict before the New Year.

Yes, yes, being a Hallmark movie it is predictable from beginning to end, but this is exactly what you'd expect from Hallmark and noting more than to awaken the Christmas spirit. It is nevertheless a fairly entertaining movie, and Robert Buckley is so handsome!

Hallmark kicked off its "Countdown to Christmas" with this holiday romance. Jessie (Amy Groening) "meets" Bryan (Robert Buckley) on a dating application and asks him to accompany her home for Christmas. He accepts, and the family is led to believe Bryan is her boyfriend, but they are merely on an extended blind date.

It doesn't take an Einstein to deduce where the story is going, but there is the usual complication, which involves a real estate deal. But most of the story is heartwarming. Jessie's family accepts Bryan, and he participates in their "family Christmas Olympics". The games provide a format for the "date" which feels real and looks like fun.

This was a good way to start Hallmark's season-long holiday fest.

A very strong start to Hallmark's Countdown to Christmas 2024.

The fairly implausible plot line hardly seems to matter when you see Robert Buckley (of "One Tree Hill" and "Chesapeake Shores" fame) and Amy Groening on screen together.

They are both strong actors, and their chemistry is absolutely perfect - it carries the movie brilliantly. They elevate it from being a fairly run-of-the-mill movie to one you want to watch again.

It's great to see Groening in a lead role, and Buckley has been killing it as a Hallmark leading man for years now.

The story involves a family holding a 'Christmas Olympics', which gives us plenty of light moments, and the heavier ones are handed deftly.

I wouldn't be averse to a sequel.