Review

Check Inn to Christmas (2019): A Family Feud, But Make It Festive

Check Inn to Christmas is what happens when you take Romeo and Juliet, swap the swords for garlands, and set the whole thing in a town that must single-handedly keep the Christmas decoration industry in business. It’s got rivalry, romance, and more twinkling lights than your local mall during a Black Friday sale.

The story revolves around Julia (Rachel Boston), a big-city lawyer who comes back to her small hometown for Christmas and immediately gets sucked into her family’s ongoing feud with their rival inn-owning neighbors, the Masons. Yes, you read that right—this is a movie where two families have turned running adorable bed-and-breakfasts into an all-out turf war. Because nothing says holiday spirit like passive-aggressive business competition.

Enter Ryan Mason (Wes Brown), the impossibly handsome and inexplicably single son of the rival family. He and Julia meet-cute while literally fighting over a Christmas tree, which is the kind of festive foreplay Hallmark dreams are made of. Despite their families’ mutual loathing, the two soon find themselves teaming up to plan the town’s annual Christmas festival. Naturally, this leads to cookie baking, tree decorating, and enough romantic tension to light up the entire town’s holiday display.

The feud between the Coopers and the Masons is as petty as it is hilarious. They argue over everything, from who has the better Christmas lights to whose cider recipe reigns supreme. It’s like West Side Story but with more gingerbread and fewer switchblades. By the end, you half expect someone to burst into a musical number about who deserves the best Yelp reviews.

Julia and Ryan’s romance is sweet, if a little predictable. Their chemistry is so textbook Hallmark that you can practically hear the director whispering, “Okay, now stare into each other’s eyes like you’re the last two ornaments on the tree.” And while their love story unfolds with all the subtlety of a holiday parade, it’s hard not to root for them—especially when their biggest obstacle is convincing their families to stop acting like children.

The setting is peak small-town Christmas magic. Every street corner looks like it’s straight out of a snow globe, and every single person in town seems to have a PhD in holiday cheer. There’s a level of coordinated decorating here that would make Pinterest users weep with envy.

Of course, the movie checks off every holiday trope imaginable: snowball fights, heartfelt speeches, and a last-minute festival mishap that requires Julia and Ryan to save the day. There’s even a scene where they go ice skating and laugh about how bad they are, which is apparently mandatory in the Hallmark Cinematic Universe.

Is Check Inn to Christmas groundbreaking cinema? Not even close. But it’s exactly what you want from a Hallmark holiday movie: heartwarming, predictable, and unapologetically over-the-top. Watching it feels like wrapping yourself in a cozy blanket made of mistletoe and tinsel.

So, grab some cocoa, settle in, and prepare for a movie that proves true love can triumph—even when it’s stuck in the middle of a bed-and-breakfast rivalry. Just don’t be surprised if you suddenly feel the urge to book a stay at a small-town inn and start a family feud of your own. 🎄🏨✨