The one thing you can count on with Lifetime movies is that they will feel like Lifetime movies. This one is no different as they team up with Walgreens ("Don't worry we can get everything we need at Walgreens.") to retell "You've got Mail," only it is kind of Christmasy. David Sutcliffe, who plays nearly an identical character on "Gilmore Girls," here plays Tom Lane a sexy suave career columnist who is far above the quaint community he lives in. His current reason for being is to bring culture to middle America, by golly, so his own TV show is in the works to do just that. Then, thanks to the magic of contrivance, he gets involved in a blood feud with a rival newspaper columnist. Liz (Dina Meyer) works at a paper that is sadly going out of business, but she is convinced that her and her gumption can save it. So she begins writing a pro-Christmas column for her paper (edgy, I know) and circulation skyrockets. Tom feels as though he has to respond because the survival of her newspaper spells the end of his TV show (I didn't buy it either). They fight, they squabble, they fall in love. We learn that corporations can never stand in the way of true love. In the end the CEO says down with profits and gives the beleaguered paper a reprieve. It is all very fantasyland-ish, and that is fine. Only when Liz implores you to get away from the TV and the video games and spend some quality time with your family I (and forgive the cliché) threw up a little. . .in my mouth.
The film wasn't good, but it wasn't half bad either. The Scrooge in me enjoyed Tom's anti-Christmas columns. Sorry, but it is not evil to point out that Christmas is a commercial holiday. It is just that there isn't an unpredictable bone in its body. Of course he's a playa and she's on her way to becoming a spinster and of course only they can save themselves from these terrible fates. Being a Lifetime movie it was none to kind to the idea of bachelorhood. Somehow these pro-marriage types seem to think that invoking the image of you growing old by yourself is their ultimate trump card, as though the world will actually still be here in 40 years. I did like that the film took the side of newspapers, something that I read every day. I'm just saying that the whole production was so blah that having it on your side really isn't a net gain. All the great Christmas movies out there ("Christmas Vacation," "Elf," "Bad Santa") realize that there is something a little perverse about our obsession over this one holiday. "His and Her Christmas" made no such realization. It serves up an idealized view of the holiday and our world in general. One where the vigorous defense of Christmas is enough to sell papers, and where the religious aspect of it is whitewashed out of the picture, and where the commercial side of it is only there so that employers can actually keep their employees (that's right kids, no Christmas equals no jobs). Fine. The film was entertaining at times, but mostly just tedious. One big, tedious Walgreens commercial. **3/4
The film wasn't good, but it wasn't half bad either. The Scrooge in me enjoyed Tom's anti-Christmas columns. Sorry, but it is not evil to point out that Christmas is a commercial holiday. It is just that there isn't an unpredictable bone in its body. Of course he's a playa and she's on her way to becoming a spinster and of course only they can save themselves from these terrible fates. Being a Lifetime movie it was none to kind to the idea of bachelorhood. Somehow these pro-marriage types seem to think that invoking the image of you growing old by yourself is their ultimate trump card, as though the world will actually still be here in 40 years. I did like that the film took the side of newspapers, something that I read every day. I'm just saying that the whole production was so blah that having it on your side really isn't a net gain. All the great Christmas movies out there ("Christmas Vacation," "Elf," "Bad Santa") realize that there is something a little perverse about our obsession over this one holiday. "His and Her Christmas" made no such realization. It serves up an idealized view of the holiday and our world in general. One where the vigorous defense of Christmas is enough to sell papers, and where the religious aspect of it is whitewashed out of the picture, and where the commercial side of it is only there so that employers can actually keep their employees (that's right kids, no Christmas equals no jobs). Fine. The film was entertaining at times, but mostly just tedious. One big, tedious Walgreens commercial. **3/4