Review

"A Perfect Christmas" Review: Deck the Halls with Unrealistic Expectations
Subtitle: Because Nothing Says Christmas Like Falling in Love with a Lumberjack You Just Met

You know those Hallmark holiday movies where a busy city professional (probably named Jessica or Holly) ends up in a small, snow-covered town and learns the true meaning of Christmas while baking cookies? Well, A Perfect Christmas isn’t just one of those movies; it’s every single one of those movies stitched together into a glittery, over-the-top holiday Frankenfilm. And I loved every corny, candy-cane-coated second of it.

The plot is simple: a career-driven marketing executive (shocking, I know) returns to her quaint hometown to visit her family for Christmas. What follows is a heartwarming (read: predictably bonkers) sequence of events involving a Christmas tree farm in financial trouble, a handsome single dad who “just doesn’t have time for love,” and a gingerbread house-building contest that might as well double as the town’s Hunger Games.

Sure, you’ve seen it before in every other Hallmark movie. But A Perfect Christmas doubles down on the absurdly festive clichés. There's the obligatory scene where the heroine trips while ice skating into the arms of her future soulmate. There’s the sassy best friend whose sole purpose is to dispense relationship advice while stringing popcorn garlands. And of course, there's the holiday miracle where an entire town bands together to save Christmas, despite having no clear understanding of logistics or zoning laws.

If you enjoy Hallmark holiday movies, you’ll love this one. If you don’t enjoy Hallmark holiday movies, well… you should probably just embrace the inevitable and watch it anyway. Resistance is futile.

By the time the credits rolled, I found myself rooting for the main couple, crying over a montage of children decorating cookies, and Googling “quaint small towns that secretly have hot single dads and zero WiFi.”

Is A Perfect Christmas a groundbreaking cinematic achievement? No. But is it a perfectly cheesy way to spend two hours with a cup of hot cocoa and a questionable amount of peppermint schnapps? Absolutely.

Final verdict: 4 out of 5 gingerbread houses. Lose a star if you’re a Grinch, gain a star if you’ve ever cried during a snowball fight.