Before anyone tells me that this is really late, I will tell you I know. BUT what I will also tell you is that world wide internet outages reek havoc. All this doesn’t matter though. What matters is that we need to talk all about A Very Vermont Christmas.
Now the premise of the movie, “A local champion skier and Vermont brew master teams up with an unlikely match to create a seasonal microbrew in order to save her family’s business by Christmas.” TBH though, it’s about so much more than that and this little one liner felt like a lie.
Yet, then again, I don’t think that anything is as simple as it’s one liners. Everyones life is a complicated mess and well, we just need to understand that no matter what we do in life.
If we’re being honest, the thing about Hallmarks Christmas movies is that they address the complexities of peoples live, but show that no matter how complex life is, you have the chance to have this better life. You have hope. It’s a reminder that there are better times ahead, if you just allow yourself to have moments that can do just that.
Joy, played by Katie Leclerc, has returned home to take care of her families pub, after the passing of her father. The pub is having issues and if they don’t find a way to rebound, they may close down. As usual, Leclerc is a charm in this movie and she does play Joy flawlessly. But, I just felt like really getting to know her or at least see some flashbacks of the moments she had with her Dad as a child were missing. We knew that Mogul Joes was important and saving the bar was important, but we failed to get to build a connection with it. Seeing something that made us see the connection to her family would have felt better.
I do feel that the dollar bills were supposed to show the connection to the bar for Joy and her family, as well as the patrons connection. It just felt as though there was a missed opportunity to really make us feel a connection to this family. Was I rooting for the bar to be saved? Absolutely.
Katie Leclerc and Ryan McPartlin’s characters of Joy and Zac are cute. The two just – in my opinion – have limited chemistry. While I did enjoy their meet cute (running into each other) and how it felt different from the normal meet cute that we see, it did not feel like oh hey, these two are meant to be together. As a matter of fact it felt more like meh, he ran into me. Both characters are awkward and I didn’t really believe their attraction to each other. Not so much that I would believe that he would go all out and want to quit his job for her.
What I did like was that Joy and Zac were able to bond over other things versus us just supposed to be believing that they had to be together. They bonded over the trauma that they had gone through in life and the things that made them love their jobs so much. They bonded over their love of beer and while I don’t pretend to understand that – I do get that there was an understanding of each other. That’s the best way to build relationships – a bond that is strong and built on life’s happenings, memories, and experiences.
In the movie Joys ex is very jealous of Zac. Greg, the ex, is sleezy and I say that because he really just goes way too far. There is a contest happening where the winning brewer gets a distribution deal and in his jealousy, he steals Joys recipe and passes her craft beer off as his own. Joy and Zac are trying to make things right, but Greg isn’t admitting that he did it.
Joy goes as far as to think that Zac gave Greg the recipe and they stopped speaking. Joy was so adamant that he betrayed her for his own gain, when he didn’t. He’s hurt. She’s hurt. But Zac, he wants to make it right. And he does everything he can to do just that.
Ultimately – like most things on Hallmark – everything works itself out and forgiveness is given (on Christmas day) to Greg. Zac is willing to put in his resignation if he needs to in order to get Joy her recipe back. While I admire the chivalry, it just doesn’t seem plausible. Then again – I could just know all the wrong men in life and real men are willing to put themselves out on a limb for the women they care about?
Either way, what Hallmark got right here was there love of the holiday, the right amount of cheese sprinkled with the right amount of sass. I love a movie that is based on the human connection and the magic that it can bring to the people that live it.
Overall, A Very Vermont Christmas felt less Christmas and more a winter vacation. It made me sad, kind of withdrawn, and knowing I’d be the person that wouldn’t let anyone on the ski life. It was a good movie, but it didn’t leave me wanting more. It didn’t even make me like beer.
