Spotlight on Christmas aka Starring Christmas (2020)

(On TV, December 2020) By now, the formulaic nature of Christmas romantic comedies made in the Hallmark/Lifetime tradition is so well-defined that even my local middlebrow radio station had a segment about it. (There was a local connection — my hometown of Ottawa is a major player in the Christmas movie production market considering that there’s usually more snow here than in any other filmmaking centre.) Take an urban career professional, send her back to her hometown in time for Christmas, have her meet a single hunk (bonus points if they were high school sweethearts), have them spend some time together with our urban professional bringing some of her professionalism for a local cause and the rest of the film writes itself. The amazing thing is that even by 2020, the formula is still followed precisely: Spotlight on Christmas distinguishes itself from the pack by making the heroine a famous Hollywood actress, but otherwise sticks to the formula as if it was deathly afraid of any deviation. Given my interest in all things Hollywood (even funhouse distortion of it) and the current December Christmas spirit, I thought I’d give it a chance and see if I had any fun watching it. It must have been the magic of the holidays, because I did – although I have to admit that I left the film playing while doing something else: This is not meant to be dense filmmaking, and the nature of the formula means that you can take five-minute breaks and still follow what was happening perfectly well. Still, the failure mode of Christmas romantic movies is nowhere near that of other genres: They’re upbeat, charming, not meant to be taken seriously and innocuous, even at their worst. The barrier for success is low and the crews working on those films are practised enough that it’s hard to mess up the recipe. Complaining that Spotlight on Christmas is strikingly unrealistic in its portrayal of an actress’ life is completely missing the point, as is any comment saying that their relationship won’t make it past Easter. It’s meant to be a comforting blanket with as few real-life reminders as possible and by that metric, Spotlight on Christmas is neither better nor worse than other movies made in that genre. It’ll rerun for years and be forgotten within days, that second characteristic feeding into the first one. It is exactly what it is.