Ashley Newbrough & Kyle Dean Massey are ‘A Merry Christmas Match’

And we’re off! The 2019 holiday movie season begins with A Merry Christmas Match, the first entry in Miracles of Christmas on Hallmark Movies & Mysteries.

It’s not the strongest addition to the pantheon of TV holiday movies, but A Merry Christmas Match does give us a couple of new elements to work with. Of all the stories where an adult child is holding on to something belonging to a dead parent, I think this movie comes closest to directly addressing how fear and grief can hold us back from our dreams.

Corey Calvin (Ashley Newbrough) works in the small-town antique shop her late father owned. She spent her childhood hanging out in the shop after school, helping her dad repair old furniture and helping her mom (Stepfanie Kramer) with her arts and crafts business.

When her best friend, Jillian Winters (played by Lindsey Gort), leaves Harmony for TV stardom in Los Angeles, Corey settles for staying behind in their small mountain town, her big city dreams of becoming a theater director sidelined. Keeping the shop open to honor her dad’s memory matters more to Corey, as does staying on as creative director of Harmony’s annual Christmas Pageant.

Corey is more or less content with her life as it is. She loves the store, spends time with her mom, and her job at the local arts center gives her a creative outlet. But it doesn’t take long for us to see that this is a carefully erected facade, masking Corey’s grief over losing her father. Moments after meeting her mother, Dorothy, we find out that she doesn’t want to keep the antique store. Dorothy makes it clear that the shop was her husband’s dream, not hers. She wants to return to her arts and crafts but she sees how much the shop means to Corey, so she’s trying to make it work.

When Jillian returns home for a visit before Christmas, she invites her new boyfriend, Davey (John DeLuca), who brings along his best friend, real estate heir and Los Angeles hunk Ryder Donnelly (Kyle Dean Massey). Before Corey formally meets the men, Ryder stops by the store to browse and for some reason, she takes a dislike to him. It seems like we’re supposed to believe she doesn’t like him because he’s been named LA’s most eligible holiday bachelor, but her bestie, Jillian, was named most eligible bachelorette, so… 

Despite that odd conflict to start things off, the pair does start to fall for each other and Ryder asks Corey to come to LA for a visit. And here again, we venture into some deep emotional waters. Corey is drawn to Ryder, but the idea of leaving Harmony and her father’s shop and the Christmas pageant is too much for her. She’s afraid of chasing her dreams after suffering such loss, so she lets Ryder go before things get too serious.

Fortunately for our story, Ryder doesn’t give up easily. He sends Corey and her mother gifts: a sand dollar necklace for Dorothy and a reindeer necklace for Corey. The latter is a reference to Corey’s love of reindeer which she revealed to Ryder by telling him how all of Santa’s reindeer must have been female because the males shed their antlers during the winter. It’s a charmingly dorky moment that I think most of us can relate to. 

The necklace is also a prompt for Corey to rethink her decision not to visit LA, so when Jillian does a bit of BFF coercing to get Corey down for a weekend, it doesn’t take much for her to agree.

(I have to confess, when Jillian said Corey needed to come to LA to see her niece, I legit thought a major detail had landed on the cutting room floor. But no, Delilah is Jillian’s dog, not her daughter. Well played, movie. Well played.)

Clever Jillian got Corey to come to LA so she could go to the Donnelly family’s annual Christmas soiree and see Ryder. I appreciated that Corey didn’t put up much of a fuss about that – she is there to see Ryder; no need to play coy. The house is grand and Corey looks stunning, but upon their arrival at the party, Davey informs them that Ryder is in Temeculah for the weekend looking at a vineyard with “a family friend”. He deliberately leaves out that this “buddy” is a hot redhead named Victoria who is practically drooling over Ryder. But fortunately for our happily ever after, Ryder was smart enough to skip the vineyard and attend the soiree instead. 

After reconnecting at the party, then having some childlike fun at a charity gala the next day, it looks like Ryder and Corey are back on track. Ryder’s parents welcome Corey with open arms. His mother, in particular, seems ready to make it as easy as possible for Corey to move to LA, offering to help her get a job in the arts. But wait…this movie is only about halfway over, how are we already at the resolution? Sure enough, another conflict arrives in the form of Victoria. Just as Ryder is about to tell Corey that his “family friend” is a single woman who wants to have his babies, the “friend” shows up and makes it sound like she and Ryder are an item. Corey believes Ryder has been playing her and heads back to Harmony and her old life. 

As Corey licks her wounds in Harmony and Ryder pines in LA,  some soul searching leads her to a big decision. In a major twist, especially for a Hallmark movie, Corey announces at the Christmas pageant that she’s decided to make the move to LA to pursue her dream of becoming a director. If you’ve seen more than five of these movies, then you know how surprising it is for the choice to be the big city over the charming small town.

Of course, Ryder shows up at the Christmas pageant so Corey can profess her love and ask if he’ll still have her. Ryder proposes a compromise: Christmas in Harmony, the rest of the year in LA. And with a kiss, we have our happily ever after.

A Merry Christmas Match is a pleasant but almost forgettable holiday movie. The chemistry between our leads is adequate, the storyline is one we’ve seen before, but the movie does try to dig a little deeper into grief and loss and how it can stunt our growth. I appreciate this attempt to treat what has become a Hallmark trope (death of a parent) as more than a way to save on actor fees. 

Notes

• Yes, that was Lindsey Gort singing. I haven’t found those songs for sale anywhere yet, but surely she’ll release them soon.
• Did you notice that Jillian stars in an all-female superhero show? Nice touch.
• I want Corey’s peppermint costume. All of it, including the hat.

[Photo Credit: Crown Media/The Ninth House/Tina Thorpe]