Christmas on TV: "A Golden Christmas"

This will be the first post in my holiday season blogging trend of the best and worst made-for-TV Christmas movies. I happen to be addicted to these things because (a) they are so predictable, (b) I know they will end happily, and (c) they usually have a VERY CHEESY romance involved. Love it. There's more to come about this topic in general, but I'd like to review one now that I just watched, because it's too good to pass up.

A Golden Christmas is a holiday romance about two adults who knew each other as kids and are brought back together by the dog they played with as children. The main female character is a big-time Grinch almost the entire movie, scheming and plotting and sabotaging ways to keep her male counterpart from buying her parents home that she suddenly wants. Of course, she doesn't realize that he wants it for the same reason she does: it's right next to the woods where they carved their eternal love into a tree as nine-year-olds and buried a time capsule in a tin lunchbox. Seriously, my roommate and I both kept saying that if we didn't know this woman was going to turn out good, we would have stopped watching. We kind of hated her.

But there was one element of the plot that cracked me up. Instead of telling each their real names as children, they pretended to be Han Solo and Princess Leia--and those are the names they carved into the tree! The best line of the movie was when the sister declared them to be "Star Wars–crossed lovers."

Of course, there were the obligatory children from previous marriages (the woman was widowed, the man was divorced) and sentimental speeches from well-intentioned family members (mom and sister on her side, daughter on his side), but I found this movie to be not as predictable as most made-for-TV Christmas fare. At least, I couldn't see exactly how they were going to get together, mostly because I couldn't see why he would want to be with her period.

If you're a die-hard like me, this is a must-see, but otherwise I recommend it only for those who (a) love dogs, (b) love movies with characters you love to hate, or (c) love contrived flashback sequences.

Star power: The supporting cast provides most of it here, with the mom from The Wonder Years, that redheaded chick from Sabrina: The Teenage Witch, and the real-life brother of Griffin from Party of Five.
Use of made-for-TV Christmas conventions: romance doomed for success, family conflict surfacing based on death of a loved one