Holiday Cheese 2018 Marathon Part I: Good Cheese

Cheesy movies have a low production value, usually subpar acting and the storylines have a ton of holes and therefore require viewers to suspend some of their realistic expectations. I like cheesy, b-level romance and this is my 2nd cheesy holiday romance movie marathon. The bar is set low, but the cheese level is high. On my scale, Good Cheese falls onto the So Good It’s Bad side of the scale and is obviously fun for me. Bad Cheese is not fun. To read about 2018 bad cheese, click here. 

Good Cheese

Dashing Through the Snow- This Hallmark movie was about a professional crafter who misses her flight and decides to share a rental car with a handsome stranger heading in the same direction. There’s a Homeland Security twist to this story. Good production and acting, but the writing could have used some help. (DVD checked out from the library)

Desperately Seeking Santa- Starring Laura Vandervoort (Character actor and cheesy romance star) as an executive seeking to increase holiday sales at the mall she manages and earn herself a promotion. She contrives to hire a sexy Santa as a marketing campaign, but then she falls for him and finds a cause to stand up for. Good production and writing, but on-screen chemistry was at a minimal. I watched this with Amazon Prime.

A Christmas Prince: The Royal Wedding- This Netflix production was spared no expense. It was really well done, top of the line cheese, complete with blooper-lined credits. We return to the story of Amber and King Richard of Aldovia who are getting ready to get married. Royal protocol keeps getting in the way of wedding bliss and to boot, there’s something fishy going on with Aldovia’s economy. Can Amber and Richard make thing s right? Of course! This is s cheesy romance. A happy ending is guaranteed! (Netflix)

Holiday Calendar- This movie was holiday Afrobubblegum: A movie about people of color that is fun and made little to no mention of race or class issues. A photographer stuck in a nowhere job is inspired to go for her dreams by the return of her best friend and the gift of a magical Advent calendar.  A Netflix production that was well done with a charming story that required little suspended belief. The diverse cast did a great job as well. (Netflix)

Dear Santa- This might have been the best cheesy holiday movie I’ve ever seen. A spoiled rich girl finds a dear Santa letter written by a little girl asking for love for her father. The rich girl takes it upon herself to provide. Along the way she finds herself genuinely giving of herself instead of by false pretense. It just seemed like there was relatively little need to suspend reality while watching this. As far as acting goes, everyone did a good job, even the little girl. The production was as good as a network TV movie. This might be my favorite. (Netflix)

Christmas at Holly Lodge- This was a really great holiday cheesy romance from the innovators of cheesy romance at the Hallmark Channel. And it stars Jordan Bridges, son of Beau. A winter lodge owner is in arrears when a real estate developer comes to investigate the property. He falls in love with the property and the owner she finds out his original intentions and plays silly games instead of just confronting him. a classical American romance movie. (DVD checked out from the library)

Switched for Christmas- Another Hallmark hit starring Candace Cameron-Bure as middle-aged adult twin sisters (she plays two roles... remember Full House?) who have fallen out of touch with each other, so they decide to switch lives to see how the other is living. Of course their relationship is rekindled and so is romance for the both of them. This was deliciously easy to swallow cheese! A sweet movie and with Hallmark on the production there are no complaints. (DVD checked out from the library)

A Holiday Engagement- This one also stars Jordan Bridges. A recently fired and dumped reporter hires an actor to play her fiancée to attend her family’s Thanksgiving dinner. The farce continues when she announces the wedding will be a week before Christmas! This was one of those storylines that made me had to suspend my logic, but it was cute and the writing, acting and production weren’t bad. (Netflix)

Princess Switch- So much royalty! So many switch-ups! This was a cute sweet colorful-people having, prince-charming, cake baking cheesy holiday romance. A Chicago-based baker is invited to participate in the Belgravia (fictional country) baking competition. When in Belgravia, she finds that her identical doppelgänger is a duchess betrothed to the prince of Belgravia. The decide to switch lives for a couple of days of course they fall in love with the men in the switched lives. (Netflix)

A Princess for Christmas- Starring Sam Heughan from the awesome Outlander series, this movie wins the prize for cheesiest-but-goodest. An out of work antique expert and aunt to two orphans, gets the opportunity to take her niece and nephew back to their father’s home country where they are royalty. She falls in love with their uncle, the prince, melts the icy heart of their grandfather, the duke, and befriends the staff. It started and I almost gave up because of the bad cheese, but I’m glad I stuck it out because those lumps smoothed out in about 30 mins. My only complaint is that the music sounded too synthesized. (Amazon... and I paid for it! Darn you, Heughan!)

I also watched and enjoyed Southern Christmas aka Heartland Christmas  and Christmas Town.

Movie: The Sisters Brothers (2018)****

Charlie and Eli (Joaquin Phoenix andJohn C. Reily, respectively) are two brothers and hired goons whostart this story on thin ice after a botched job they did for TheCommodore, a powerful man in the Oregon territory. Their next assignment is to work withscout, John Morris (Jake Gyllenhaal), to find Hermann Kermit Warm(Riz Ahmed). A story of the search and and whathappens after they all find each other unfolds and reveals adifferent kind of western flick. 

The audience gets to experience men exploring their relationships and desires. I think all four of the starring actors bring their a-game to their characters, and we get a sense of depth, vulnerability and commonality. The introduction or first 15 minutes of this film is a fast-paced and intensifying set-up, but then it slows down to allow this man-empowerment story to unfold.

I'm going to discuss a couple of scenes. If you are squeamish about spiders or spoilers, stop reading here.

Discussing exploring emotions often happens right before bed, so there are several bedroll scenes showing Sisters brothers sleeping out in the open. In one of them a spider crawls into poor Eli's mouth. He does not wake up. He does not pass go. He collects a fever, swelling and eventually barfs up blood and baby spiders. John C. Reilly brings about a sense of brooding vulnerability as Eli Sisters, who only desires to see the schoolteacher he left behind somewhere, go home and be treated fairly. I'm assuming the spider was a vehicle to establish Eli's vulnerability, but also Charlie's loyalty to him despite their constant bickering. That's great and all, but the spider bit was gross.

Although there was interesting relationship development between the two pairs of men, the most touching of scene was between Eli and Warm who, considering the circumstances of them coming together and the brevity of their relationship, were able to sit and have a profound and enlightening exchange.

There was a random point where I was jarred out of the story: All of a sudden, Joaquin Phoenix' character is telling a story and he appears to be in a darkened room with a natural-light spotlight. It is quite weird.

Also, production values were notably good. The soundtrack, which I spent more time noticing the second time I watched this movie, was dynamic and made each scene.

This movie ended in bittersweet contentment. It was good and I'd be happy to watch this again and again. I give it four stars**** for the great acting, the compelling story and well done art production. It definitely falls on the Masterpiece end of the scale.

TV: Yellowstone (2018) GC

Recipe: take the production level of a good Hallmark movie and use it to make a drama television series set on a Montana ranch. Then sprinkle in some f-bombs and sex scenes to give it a harder edge. Here you are, on a rustic pine platter: Yellowstone!

Yellowstone is about a family that has been the caretakers of a huge swath of Montana land for several generations and their patriarch who is trying his darndest to hold onto the power he has in the state so he can pass it on to his four children and possibly also his long-time ward turned right-hand man. Criminal behavior abounds as their grip on Montana starts to slip. The four children all go through their own private miseries and you end up wondering what the heck is John Dutton fighting for?

The acting in the first few episodes was pretty cheesy. Australian actor, Kelly Reilly, who played Beth, kept dropping her Montana accent and just overplayed the role. Kevin Costner was there. Wes Bentley was cheesy. Kelsey Asbille brought her top-notch game to the sets. She was outstanding in this cheesy crowd.

The writing was cheesy to basic. There were some flashback scenes to help explain Beth's erratic behavior, but they were oddly placed in the narrative. In the episode, A Monster Is Among Us, there seems to be (or at least I hope there was) some juxtaposition about blood in bathrooms. Gross. Oh yeah, Kevin Costner was there.

My mom told me about this show while we hiked amongst the redwoods. Like a storyteller, she recalled the storyline in A Monster Is Among Us because the terrain reminded her of the episode. Her version was much more colorful and interesting.

Something about TV shows and movies at this level of cheesy keeps me coming back for more. So I finished Yellowstone and I found it entertaining. I will give season 2 a go.

This show is cheesy, so I'm giving it a rating of Good Cheese.

Movie: Royal Matchmaker (2018) GC

Royal Matchmaker is a thoroughly cute Hallmark movie about a professional matchmaker who takes on a prince as her latest client. Of course, they fall in love.
Stars: Bethany Joy Lenz and Will Kemp
Obstacles: Tradition and a woman more befitting of a prince
Quality: All the levels are set at good: Plot, writing, art direction and acting.

I would definitely re-watch this and recommend to any fan of cheesy romance, so it gets a rating of Good Cheese.

I checked the DVD out from my local library.

Movie: Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018)***

Can You Every Forgive Me? is an enjoyable movie with Melissa McCarthy playing a very believable and funny-by-happenstance woman who finds herself forging letters by famous authors.

All the levels are set at good: Good acting, good production, good writing, etc. Melissa McCarthy and her co-star, Richard E. Grant were both nominated for best actress and supporting actor respectively at the Oscars, Golden Globes and SAG Awards. After finally watching CYEFM?, I am surprised they were nominated because there wasn’t anything great or inspiring about this film. My suspicion is that voting committees were impressed by McCarthy’s non-comedy performance, which was good, but not award worthy.  

I would watch this again and would recommend it, but I don’t think it offers anything spectacular to the cinematic world so I’m giving it three stars***.

Mini rant: Vice, Green Book, I, Tonya, Get Out, Lady Bird, Birdman, Her, American Hustle were all nominated for Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy. Can You Ever Forgive Me?  gets nominated for Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Drama. What the hell is that about? 

I checked the DVD out from my local library.