Hallmark continues to hit viewers with nostalgic stars we know and love by getting The Office‘s Angela Kinsey to lead Confessions of a Christmas Letter. This romantic dramedy manages to reunite Kinsey with her former The Office co-star, Brian Baumgartner, AKA Kevin Malone, as she plays another Angela Martin-like Type A, competitive woman who’s determined to go to extremes to get what she wants. In addition to Kinsey, Alec Santos and Lillian Doucet-Roche act as romantic leads who just might find their happy ending with one another, despite seeming like total opposites on paper.
The Gist: Settie Rose (Angela Kinsey) is the eccentric matriarch of a Christmas-loving family living in Holly Hills, Connecticut. More than anything, Settie wants to finally get her Christmas letter on the local post office’s “Wall of Fame” in Holly Hills’ annual holiday content. Unfortunately, her neighbor, an uppity and overly-competitive woman named Sue (Colleen Wheeler) always beats her not only in the contest but seemingly in every aspect of life since the Roses moved to Holly Hills 20 years ago.
Desperate to finally defeat Sue once and for all, Settie hires a novelist she admires named Juan Sanchez (Alec Santos) to fly from Puerto Rico and spend two weeks over the holidays writing a Christmas letter that will blow the whole town away. Juan, however, is experiencing writer’s block, and his uncle Carlos (Javier Lacroix) and grandfather (Jorge Montesi) have said yes to this opportunity on his behalf in hopes that this will help him find inspiration.
Initially reluctant, Juan finally agrees to give this opportunity a chance, only to end up in a shared ride with Settie’s free-spirited, flaky aspiring actress daughter, Lily (Lillian Doucet-Roche) on the way to the Rose residence. Nosy neighbor Sue comes over to find Juan and incorrectly assumes that he’s Lily’s fiancé, which the Roses all roll with in order to protect the truth about why he’s really there.
Juan ends up getting roped into intense Christmas shenanigans with Settie and her family, including onesies, a wreath-trimming competition, and daily family meals that double as strategy meetings. But just when wants to back out, the promise of defeating Sue, as well as a budding connection with Lily, helps Juan dig his heels in to help Settie stop fictionalizing her family’s accomplishments and instead write a truthful Christmas letter worth the prize of pride, perhaps even overcoming his own writer’s block in the process.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: One of the characters makes a connection to Misery, which definitely makes sense. It’s a silly Christmas rom-com version of Misery without all the violence and horrors. Well, maybe actually with some horrors. They made Juan eat burnt cinnamon buns and wear another man’s onesie, for crying out loud!
The Proposal is also name-dropped, which also tracks, considering the pretend engagement turns into a real romantic connection. The whole emphasis on a braggy Christmas letter is also reminiscent of last year’s Netflix Original holiday rom-com Best. Christmas. Ever!.
Performance Worth Watching: Jake Foy and Fred Ewanuick are entertaining and pretty natural as the Rose family’s son and patriarch, Jack and Paddy, respectively. I appreciated how their cheeky quips and measured manners brought some much-appreciated reality and room to breathe (or laugh) in a film filled with otherwise frenetic, over-the-top, or disagreeable characters.
Memorable Dialogue: “Let’s see, in the span of two days I’ve been forced into a fake engagement, nearly suffocated by a onesie, publicly humiliated on the dancefloor, and then thrust into the stream of your mother’s desperation.” Considering all that, it’s miraculous Juan stuck around. I guess the promise of crushing that wench Sue is just that tempting!
A Holiday Tradition: For the past 20 years, Holly Hills has celebrated a tradition of encouraging its inhabitants to write Christmas letters, which they then submit to the local post office in hopes of being chosen to be on that year’s Wall of Fame. The point seems to be inspiring people to be the “best versions of themselves…” even if that means fictionalizing things a bit.
Does the Title Make Any Sense?: Christmas letters are kind of the focal point of the movie and there are definitely a few confessions that are said, so Confessions of a Christmas Letter makes plenty of sense.
Our Take: Confessions of a Christmas Letter seems to hit the notes of what might make a good Hallmark holiday movie, but this one still rang hollow in the end for me. Even with some moments of entertainment and insight (they do have a point that the holidays can make people put up a facade in order to impress others and feel better about themselves), the movie lacked the easy charm and whimsy you turn to Hallmark and other Christmastime titles to see. They certainly tried to inject said charm, but the harder you push, the more manufactured these things can feel.
For example, Settie had a manic intensity towards the Christmas letter and getting on the Wall of Fame from the very start, but it can be hard to feel invested in her plight when she’s pushing her family (and a total stranger) around for something that seems kind of insignificant at best and a way for rich people to brag about their families and accomplishments at worst. The movie tried to make Sue extra villainous (I mean seriously, not letting people put up holiday decorations?! She’s a freaking dictator!) to perhaps make us side with Settie more, but they both just ended up feeling like people you would not want to hang out with.
The romance between Juan and Lily has its own issues, as in the movie’s efforts to hammer home that the two are total opposites, they end up appearing somewhat unsuited for one another. I fear that some of Juan’s affection towards Lily and the Roses might just be a product of Stockholm Syndrome by the end of his stay there (that is if they even let him leave). Once you’ve forced a guy to do silent disco on your front lawn and terribly tango in public, it seems like his will is pretty much broken.
And lastly, I hate to say it, but I think I could have gone without seeing so many scenes where adults are wearing onesies. I like a onesie as much as the next person (unless that person is a baby, now they really love onesies), but I swear they wore those things every day (and night?). Did they ever even wash them? The onesies might have stuck with me more than anything else in Confessions of a Christmas Letter, to be honest, and that’s probably not what the main takeaway should ultimately be.
Our Call: SKIP IT! Unfortunately, even an army of onesies and a brief mini reunion between The Office accountants Kevin (Brian Baumgartner) and Angela (Angela Kinsey) aren’t enough to make Confessions of a Christmas Letter stand out from the crowd as an original holiday must-watch.
