A Critical Appreciation of the Lifetime Christmas Movie

I need to talk about Lifetime Christmas movies.

I need to talk about them right now, while the feeling is fresh and the Prosecco is cold and the leading man from A Royal Christmas Engagement is still looking at me from the pause screen with those eyes — those impossibly earnest, $200-a-day eyes — and I am not ready to press play because I know what happens next and I cannot bear it and I also cannot wait.

The Form

The Lifetime Christmas movie is, I want to be very clear about this, an art form. It operates within constraints so specific and so rigorously observed that to deviate from them would be like writing a sonnet with fifteen lines. You don't do it. The form is the form.

The constraints:

• A woman returns to her hometown. She has a career in the city. The career is successful but spiritually empty. The hometown has a bakery, a tree farm, or both.
• A man is already there. He builds things with his hands. Or he is a prince. Sometimes — and this is where the form reaches its highest expression — he is a prince who builds things with his hands.
• There is a complication. She has a boyfriend in the city. The boyfriend wears suits and is on his phone. He will not be a factor by the third act.
• Snow falls. It always falls. It falls on cue. It falls during the kiss. The snow is a character.
• The resolution occurs at a Christmas event. A tree lighting, a parade, a gala. She realizes what matters. He was right there the whole time. The bakery was a metaphor.

This is not a formula. This is architecture.

The Performances

I want to address, specifically, the leading men of the Lifetime Christmas movie. They are a breed apart. They have the jawline of a Greek statue and the emotional range of a Greek statue. They are perfect for this role. They are perfect for every role in this genre. I hope they never leave.

The leading women are, without exception, accomplished actors delivering performances that a less observant critic might call "wooden" but which I recognize as restrained. There is a difference. These women are holding back. They are containing multitudes. When the veterinarian in A Puppy for Christmas looks at the rescue dog and then looks at the firefighter and you can see the exact moment she realizes they're both strays — that is acting. That is craft.

The Production Design

The production design is modest but the ambition is Versailles.

Every small town in a Lifetime Christmas movie looks the same. This is not a criticism. Every cathedral looks the same too. You don't go to a cathedral and complain that it has stained glass windows and pews. The small town — with its Main Street garland, its suspiciously well-funded community center, its bakery that appears to have no commercial competition — is a sacred space. It is where the movie lives. It is where the healing happens.

The Christmas tree is always enormous. The hot chocolate is always present. The first snowfall is always on time. Production designers working on Lifetime Christmas movies understand something that their counterparts in prestige television do not: consistency is not a limitation. Consistency is a promise.

This Season's Highlights

I have watched eleven of the twenty-three December releases so far. I will watch the remaining twelve. I will not be taking questions at this time.

A Royal Christmas Engagement — A kindergarten teacher discovers her pen pal is the crown prince of a small European country. The country appears to consist entirely of a castle and a Christmas market. She teaches his niece to make paper snowflakes. He teaches her that love requires a passport. I wept.

Snowbound with My Ex — Due to a blizzard — a convenient, narratively essential blizzard — a woman is trapped in a cabin with the man who broke her heart in college. He has become a lumberjack. Of course he has. The flannel is doing heavy lifting. The dialogue is not. The chemistry is electric.

The Christmas Cookie Competition — A baker enters a holiday baking contest judged by a famous food critic who is, naturally, handsome, emotionally unavailable, and allergic to joy. She changes him with snickerdoodles. This is not a metaphor. She literally gives him a snickerdoodle and he smiles for the first time in the film. I gasped.

In Conclusion

I do not use the word "guilty" before "pleasures." I find the construction baffling. Guilt implies wrongdoing. There is nothing wrong here. There is a woman, and a man, and a small town, and snow, and the radical proposition that love is simple if you let it be.

The production budgets are modest. The emotional stakes are infinite. The leading man's jawline could cut glass.

I'll be reviewing the remaining twelve films individually. Clear my schedule.

Cheryl Champagne, Guilty Pleasures Correspondent. The Prosecco is not optional.