By Abby Paras '24
Hallmark Movies. You either love them or you hate them, and if you love them, chances are that it’s a love-hate relationship. Sure, they’re usually predictable and quite corny, and often don’t showcase the best LGBTQ+ representation or include people of color, but there’s also something comforting about watching privileged people suffer through first-world problems set against the backdrop of Christmas. At least, that’s my justification for watching them. I consider myself a connoisseur of Hallmark Christmas movies. When I’m at home, I’ve constantly got the channel turned on the TV. When I’m at school, you can bet that I’m scouring Hulu, Prime, and Netflix for the best possible substitutes. If the poster doesn’t feature a basic white, heterosexual couple in red and green leaning against each other, then I don’t want to watch.
Part of it is the comfort that comes with watching them. I never have to stress about what’s happening plot-wise, I never have to think too hard about the outcome, and I can always count on some cute Christmas decor inspiration. In fact, I believe I’ve narrowed the Hallmark formula down to three basic plots: the small town, the mistaken identity, and the Christmas wish.
The Small Town
Photo courtesy of IMDb
You’ve seen it before: a big city girl who’s only focused on work and money goes to a small town and meets a guy who shows her the true meaning of Christmas. Sometimes he’s her ex-boyfriend or childhood friend, and sometimes he’s a guy who helps to show her the ropes. Either way, she’s most definitely going to dump her big-city boyfriend who wants to work over Christmas for her new hometown boyfriend.
There are a few nuances to this particular plot line. Sometimes our main character is returning to her hometown after a long period away (A Christmas Inheritance), sometimes she’s just visiting but needs someone to show her the Christmas spirit (Christmas Movie Magic), and sometimes it’s the man who’s coming to the small town who needs to know how to celebrate Christmas (The Spruces and the Pines).
Either way, you’ll never find two people coming to a small town together. No, one of them always has to have some insider perspective of the town so they can slowly but surely fall in love over the course of a tight 90-minute affair. The popularity of this plot likely stems from the easy contrasts that can be drawn between the two leads. It’s such an easy point of conflict to mine from, and the message of the importance of Christmas spirit will always prevail. People will have a clear couple to root for and a an easy takeaway from each film.
The Mistaken Identity
Photo courtesy of IMDb
This one often overlaps with the royalty plots, but not always. Someone has to be hiding their identity for some reason or another, and the balance between genders is actually pretty even on this. No matter what, someone will inevitably find out during the third act, storm away, and await a grand gesture on Christmas morning so they can reunite. After all, the spirit of Christmas doesn’t take kindly to fighting with others.
Sometimes she’s an undercover cop who falls for the criminal she’s investigating and pretending to date (A Christmas Catch). Maybe they kissed in an elevator and he doesn’t know who she is, but she finds out he’s her boss’s boyfriend (A Christmas Kiss). She could be accidentally dating two brothers at the same time and end up at their family cabin for the holidays (Mistletoe Mix-Up). Many, many times, he’s a prince and wants to get away from royal life (A Prince For Christmas, Christmas with a Prince, A Princess For Christmas, the list goes on and on…). Even if she knows he’s a prince from the beginning, he’s still hiding something about his past, whether it be an old girlfriend who still wants the crown, or a scheming family member. Sometimes she’s pretending to be someone else, and he’s just a regular old prince (A Christmas Prince, A Christmas Princess Switch, and their respective sequels and threequels).
The dramatic irony of knowing that at some point in the third act, things are going to explode and the main character will realize just how big their web of lies has spread is simply too compelling. This plot works well for so many reasons. No matter how obvious it is that someone is lying, the characters simply will not find out until the end of the movie, when enough damage has been done to be dramatic about it, but not enough to prevent our leads from finding it in their hearts to forgive each other and make up.
The Christmas Wish
Photo courtesy of IMDb
This is probably the least common of the three plots, but it’s still frequent enough to warrant a mention. The wish can be granted via many higher powers, such as the Christmas star, Christmas spirit, or Santa Claus himself. These are the more fantastical Hallmark movies because they involve some sort of magic. There are exactly two directions this plot could go: either our lead starts off excited about her wish coming true, and then comes to regret it, or the exact opposite. Never does our lead make a mistaken wish and continue to be upset about it. By the end of the 90 minutes, there’s always a character transformation.
Maybe she made a wish to Santa that she would be more confident but it quickly backfires when she gets in over her head (A Wish for Christmas). Maybe she accidentally wished that she’d stayed with her high school sweetheart and woke up the next day married to him in the suburbs (Family for Christmas). She could have wished for love while appraising an old inn and fallen in love with the ghost that haunts the place (The Spirit of Christmas). Or maybe she wished on a falling star that her neighbor would finally fall in love with her, only to have it affect the wrong neighbor (A Christmas Crush).
These types of stories always have a good, clear sense of character arc. No matter where our character starts, they will always be a different person by the end. It’s an easy-to-follow story from the start, just like a Hallmark movie should be. Strangely enough, I’ve never seen a movie where a man makes the wish, but there’s almost always a mysterious old person to cryptically drop hints about magic and wishes throughout the movie.
I have watched every single movie mentioned in this article. And I remember the plots of all of them. However, if you don’t have that kind of time, pick one of each category, and then you’ll basically have watched every single one. Now, they may not technically all be Hallmark movies, since some are produced by Netflix, but they all follow the same plot and have the same general Christmas atmosphere. Hallmark movies may not be great cinema, but they provide exactly the kind of mindless entertainment I need during finals season and beyond.