Nicky’s parents are super pumped about Christmas. Like, obsessed. Like, levels of enthusiasm approaching sickness. Nicky refers to it as OCD – obsessive Christmas disorder, but Nicky better watch her mouth as Target recently caught heat for selling a sweater that said the same. Insensitive to those who suffer from the actual disorder, they say, and nobody is as good at fixating on things as those afflicted with OCD, so in they end they triumphed over their oppressors; Target apologized and removed the offensive items from their shelves.

Anyway, Christmas has basically ruined Nicky’s whole childhood, so to her, it is serious, year round business. She rebels by taking up the tuba (please do not ask me the logic behind this), and improbably, she meets a fellow music nerd at band camp. Ahem. Tanner is super cute and they manage to keep up their long-distance relationship all through the fall. But come winter, Tanner wonders if he and his father might come out to California for a visit. Tanner’s dad has a heartbreak triggered by the holidays, so they keep things super low-key. Up until now, Nicky has managed to keep her family’s affliction to herself, but a visit is pretty much game over.

Logic being Nicky’s strong suit, she decides the only thing to be done is to use the empty house where she’s cat-sitting, hire actors to play her parents, and create a fake Christmas with which to trick her boyfriend. The auditions alone are enough to convinece you of just how bad an idea this is, but Nicky is young and optimistic, which is the nice way of saying stupid, and they go full steam ahead with a plan that backfires harder than Santa’s sleigh after the reindeer annual chili cookoff.

The trio of young actors – Juliette Angelo, Kirrilee Berger, Javier Bolanos – are actually pretty watchable. My holiday movie standards are super low after overdosing on Hallmark trash, so I’m giving I’ll Be Next Door for Christmas a solid “not horrible” rating. I cannot go so far as to call it good, but it is occasionally funny, sometimes even on purpose, and I have to give it bonus points just for not being a Hallmark piece of coal.

After the death of her grandma, Sydney and daughter Rayanne spend Christmas in the house they inherited from her.  Sydney is newly divorced and recently bereaved, so her Christmas spirit is understandably a little tarnished. A local book store brings a little cheer her way in the form of Mac, the town’s 4th grade teacher and resident Santa, with whom the store’s owner, Bea, keeps trying to set up a very reluctant Sydney.

I don’t know about you, but I manage to vacation without becoming completely entangled in local politics. Sydney’s in town for less than 2 weeks but for some reason she finagles a job – “a little fun for the holidays,” she calls it, as if she’s never had a job before, as if the rest of us aren’t desperately trying to secure as many days OFF at the holidays as possible.

Anyway, little Rayanne makes a special Christmas plea to Santa to make her mom feel better. Underneath the beard, it’s really Mac, who moves her wish to the top of his list.

Will Sydney leave the big city to embrace small town life in Hopewell, which includes Mac, or will she stay where the big career opportunities are? That’s right: it’s a question not worth asking, and even the script doesn’t pretend it’s very serious. We know from the very first snowflake that of course Sydney and Rayanne are staying in their grandmother’s house. They’re going to make a family with sad widower Mac. And they’re going to take over running Bea’s book store. The only surprise in the whole movie is when a Christmas tree falls over, but they somehow turn that into not just a Christmas emergency, but an event so dire it threatens Christmas itself. Yes, that’s what passes for conflict in Hallmark holiday movies: a tipped over Christmas tree. And that’s fine. As far as I can tell, these films aren’t meant to be good. Between their unerring formula and the homogeneity of their cast, Hallmark movies are the equivalent of that channel that just plays the crackling fire round the clock. It’s background noise.

Heidi moved to New York to be an artist but ended up excelling in a position as art gallery curator, her paints mostly forgotten. Her sister needs a favour close to the holidays – she needs an overnight babysitter for her two kids, so Heidi finagles some time off work to return to small town Pleasant Valley and spend some time with her niece and nephew.

While there, Heidi isn’t just a babysitter, but the defacto Christmas mom too, fulfilling all the holiday duties her sister is signed up for. She has to bake cookies, take the kids to pageant rehearsal, and volunteer for the Snowball dance. And guess what! The Snowball dance is being organized by her former high school sweetheart Chris, who is now her nephew’s teacher and hockey coach. While not the obvious choice for Snowball volunteer, the truth is, Chris and Heidi are both Snowball royalty – they were Snowball king and queen back when they were young and in love.

Although she’s badly needed back at work, of course Heidi’s stay with the kids gets extended. And while she’s there, she gets out paints and canvas that she’s apparently had stashed there for years (?) and gets busy IN HER SISTER’S ALL BEIGE LIVING ROOM. I mean, there isn’t even an ugly-patterned couch to help hide the inevitable stains. Her apron suggests that only a small fraction of paint actually makes it to the canvas, but she’s going to risk the wall to wall carpeting in someone else’s house? Really, Heidi? I’m such a messy painter that I once accidentally dripped some pain on my dog Herbie, then a frisky puppy, when I was refurbishing a dresser. When I later made an appointment to take him to his first vet visit, they asked me lots of questions over the phone – how many weeks old, what breed, what colour – to which I responded, white, black, and teal, which technically, pre-bath, he was. I explained the joke and how it came to be, but when we turned up to the vet days later, teal had made it into his official file, and remains there to this day.

Anyway, there’s very little romance in this romantic Christmas movie. There’s very little to recommend it, period. There’s not even a cute, off-colour dog. But if you’re looking for cute, Hallmark does have quite a deep well, so visit us here!