Love You Like Christmas

High powered Manhattan marketing exec (Bonnie Somerville, tv vet and star of the MSG Approved A Holiday Engagement) gets serendipitously stuck in tiny town and meets the obligatory single dad. The name of the town? Christmas Valley. Single dad's occupation? Christmas tree farmer. What landed her there? A combination of car trouble and a reindeer strategically placed on the road, perfectly positioned so as to cause a crash major enough to damage the car, but minor enough to keep our heroine from getting injured and keeping the com in rom-com intact. If you're from a big city and you happen to traveling in the vicinity of any town named after Christmas, Santa Claus, or anything remotely holiday related in the month of December, check the GPS and take a fucking detour, because evidently these places are like Yuletide Bermuda Triangles, just ready to lure unsuspecting city folk in, where the small town conceit is ready to brainwash them, destroying any chance of escape. If they do get out, it's only long enough to see how awful the city life they knew really is. The town knows you'll be back. THEY'LL ALWAYS BE BACK, MWAH HA HA HAAAAAA!!! So we know what's going to happen, and it doesn't help that lead male Brennan Elliott, who's been in a number of these thing, is a pretty creepy motherfucker (just look at the picture there), and his daughter, who may be a pretty sweet kid, is evidently so in need of a maternal figure that she obsessively stalks Somerville and talks about her non stop. Whether she's on her way to becoming a emotionally present benefactor herself or a serial killer is up to our imaginations, but for right now, she's ready and available to pitch in as the stranded Somerville uses her marketing savvy to sell daddy's Christmas trees and save the farm, which is naturally on the brink of foreclosure. Wouldn't be a small town business in a Hallmark movie if it didn't need saving. The progressively perceived evil of Somerville's city life is excruciating, and this would be a total washout if the Christmas tree subplot didn't kick in during the film's second act. Nausea factor's pretty high, not so much for the romantic schmaltz, but more for the Republican small town conceit.  But the tree marketing subplot boosts the Christmas factor, and that combined with Somerville's presence, makes the whole thing worthwhile in the end. There's a also a Christmas themed diner, owned by a woman named Holly. Where would we be without Christmas pun names? MSG Approved.