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“The Mistletoe Promise” is Hallmark’s second entry this year into the Countdown to Christmas movie promotion. With a typical name and typical selections of actors for the leads, you would expect this movie to follow the pack, but you would be wrong. “The Mistletoe Promise” breaks the mold by being a movie about adults, for adults. The Christmas magic is not sprinkled on, but comes out of the goodness of people. 

The Story-

A divorced owner of a travel agency, Elise, has a hard time with Christmas because it is during that season in which her jerk ex-husband and co-owner of the agency tries to bully her in to selling the business to him. Even though she built it before she even met him. Nick has just been tapped to compete for partner in his law firm, but the firm is very family-friendly, and a girlfriend or wife seems to be a “must”.  When he encounters Elise in a food-court, they share their disdain for Christmas and offer to help each other make it through the season.  This “promise” morphs into a contract in which they will pretend to be dating to help keep her ex-husband at bay, and help him make partner.

My Thoughts-

Like I said before, this movie is about adults and adult situations. Therefore, it feels more real than Hallmark’s usual fare.  Santa isn’t coming along to make silly things happen to Elise’s mean ex-husband. Ok, I know she started as a model, but can I just say that Jaime King is beyond gorgeous? And girl can really act. I felt every bit of Elise’s pain and rejection, her insecurities (even though she is a goddess) and her desire to overcome.  Perfection.  Luke MacFarlane is hot, very believable as the hardworking lawyer who has been hurt and has pushed past the pain with work.  See what I mean about the adult stuff? Yes, people actually DO work in real life and don’t just sit around making Christmas cookies with their moms and visiting old inns. I’m not disparaging those movies; they are a great escape and part of the reason I began my quest to watch all the Hallmark movies, but it is refreshing to watch a movie about real people finding Christmas spirit in themselves and just trying to be good people. 

Christmas Satisfaction-

The premise of them both hating the Christmas season is there, as well as a snowman-building contest and some Christmas parties.  Oh, and carolers. Let’s talk about the carolers for a second: who would go up to someone and start singing, and when they look super uncomfortable, continue singing and get closer? If you do this, you would be the worst caroler in the world. I felt secondary discomfort for the main characters who were forced to endure this caroling torture.  But, the Christmas spirit is very much present in this movie, and is perhaps even more palpable because it suggests that we, no matter how busy we are, what background we come from, if we have kids or not, can share goodness with the world. 

The Bottom Line-

Way to go, Hallmark, on this thoughtful, well-acted Christmas movie! It is based on a book by Richard Paul Evans, which probably helped the story, but the execution was very good and it is another top-notch entry into their line-up of Christmas movies. 5 stars!

Two movies down! 17 to go… How are you keeping up with the challenge?