Jennifer Walker (Laura Vandervoort) is head of marketing at a big South Boston Mall. She is in line for a big corporate gig at the parent company that owns the mall she works at as well as many others in the Northeast. However, due to flagging sales as a result of competition from other malls and online shopping, she is given an ultimatum from her boss: Find a way to bring attendance back up for the Christmas shopping season or her mall will be shut down and hundreds of employees will lose their jobs.
So, with less than a month to go to turn things around, she gets the inspiration to really spice things up. Why not have a Sexy Santa Competition to bring lots of young women shoppers to the mall instead of staying at home? A PG-13 level Chippendales-like competition ensues in which a bunch of hunky guys dance around shirtless in front of thongs of women who will decide who will become the next Mall Santa.
Jennifer can be quite the Scrooge, coldly firing the traditional old school Santa - who had been a staple at the mall for years - in order to bring in Sexy Santa. In one early scene she cuts in line at the outside coffee stand without any regard for those that had been waiting longer in the cold. One of those waiting is a young man called David Moretti (Nick Zano) who calls her out for cutting when he and all the others had been standing and shivering for so long. The insults fly and Jennifer walks off in a huff. But lo and behold, guess who turns out to be one of the contestants for the Sexy Santa competition!
As can be expected, there is much early tension and animosity between the two leads, given vastly different backgrounds. Jennifer has always been Corporate while David is just a family guy, an aspiring EMT, helping run his father's family pizzeria.
But just as predictable, she slowly warms up to him and it seems like they will build up a budding romance. However, she does already have a boyfriend, just another "suit" that works at the same big conglomerate she does. Complicating matters even further is the fact that the Moretti's Pizza is about to be shut down by the very same conglomerate that Jennifer works for, in order to build luxury condos.
Will David be able to save his dad's restaurant that has been in business for over 75 years? Will Jennifer be able to save South Boston mall, a place she has worked for over 20 years and who fiercely protects her co-workers? And just how will she break the news to David that it's her own company that has used nefarious means to help get Moretti's to shut down.
Originally airing on ABC Family, this movie was rated TV-14 and quite a bit more "sexed up" than the usual Hallmark Channel Christmas fare, The women generally wear more revealing outfits than in Hallmark movies and there are lots of guys dancing around shirtless (and not to be outdone, "sexy Reindeer" women dancers). You see adult women sitting on Sexy Santa's lap, and there are a few language references such as "ass", etc. There are a couple of gross out scenes during the dance competition and corny quotes all around.
The music, especially early in the film, was grating and annoying, and there are too many supporting characters and archetypical corporate caricatures. The potentially intriguing subplot of a small businesses trying to take on big corporate conglomerates seems too pat, like they had to use that as filler for a thin story-line. The main two leads are likeable enough, but somehow their budding romance does not seem convincing.
