Substantial holiday flourishes, immediate meeting of the main characters and obvious mutual attraction, and a contrived conflict precipitating the eventual inevitable pairing: This is a Christmas movie, and a Lifetime original movie. We get all the expected themes and notions - unending charm and pleasantness, small towns, professional clashes and personal interest, cute character idiosyncrasies, and so on and so on. There aren't any major surprises here, save perhaps for one: This is, accordingly, Lifetime's first Christmas lesbian romance. Though characterized by the same ham-handed silliness as any other Lifetime production - if the sharp writing and earnest attentiveness we see here is any indication of what we might expect from future sapphic holiday TV romances, I'm totally on board for many, many more. I may be a tad biased, but I adore 'Under the Christmas tree.'
Michael J. Murray's screenplay is a true blessing, steadying the substantial kitsch of the genre with rich, clever dialogue (including no few thinly veiled slips that are all but Freudian), and robust, relatable, likable characters. Though the narrative as a whole is ultimately, expectedly predictable, it feels more balanced than what we get in other TV movies, and the scene writing is a legitimate gem - fun, funny, heartwarming, cheerful, and lovely. I lost count of how many times I squealed with joy! I appreciate Lisa Rose Snow's direction - clearly just as impassioned and heartfelt as all others' contributions, orchestrating fine scenes and guiding her cast into able performances, and capturing all available details. Why, there are some really fetching shots here, too. And, importantly, I genuinely like the acting. Again, of course everything here bears the same slant toward gauche cheese. At that, however, everyone involved leans into the campy good spirit. Elise Bauman and Tattiawna Jones are of course most noteworthy as joint protagonists Alma and Charlie, delightfully beautiful and bewitching with welcome range and nuance. But the supporting cast shouldn't be counted out either, as among others Enrico Colantoni, Wendy Crewson, and Ricki Lake give their parts great personality and warmth.
The filming locations, set design and decoration, and costume design are careful and precise, and there's strong consideration for rounding details like hair, makeup, lighting, and so on. Cinematography and sound design is crisp and clear, and like so much else here, Michael Richard Plowman's score - bent toward the same design - seems to still avoid the utmost heavy-handedness most Christmas film sounddtracks offer. In every meaningful way, I honestly think 'Under the Christmas tree' takes a familiar tack in a more dynamic, capable trajectory.
In fairness, any viewer who can't abide the type of broadly straightforward, blunt, endlessly feel-good feature this represents probably won't see anything here to change their mind. As enjoyable as it is, this picture still fits within a very particular niche genre. Yet the fact remains that especially with 'Under the Christmas tree' being a little bit of a landmark for Lifetime, obvious care went into making this the best it could be within their mold. And the effort paid off: I rather believe this might be the best movie of this style that I've seen. I get a definite sense of more stable equilibrium here between wholehearted sincerity and requisite artificiality than in almost any other TV movie, of any variety, that I've watched, and the result is a wonderful, entertaining good time. Leave it to the lesbians to handily succeed where many years of heteronormative small screen production can't: as far as I'm concerned, 'Under the Christmas tree' is a new high water mark for holiday romances, and well worth checking out if one has the opportunity!
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