MY VIEW: Holiday movies are too predictable

Columnist Robin Franklin

Columnist Robin Franklin

It’s that time of the year again when all your mother does is sit in the living room and watch Lifetime and Hallmark tell the same story of Christmas romance in every movie.

  My dad and I finally had the will to sit down and watch a Lifetime Christmas movie with my mom over the Thanksgiving holiday. We watched a movie called One Royal Holiday.  Let me just say that I was not impressed. I have seen bits and pieces of these movies everytime Christmas comes around, and I haven’t once seen an unexpected ending.

  I’ll bet I can guess everything that will happen in any Lifetime or Hallmark Christmas film before even watching it. In fact, I will challenge you to watch one of these movies and see if my predictions are correct.

  The movie will start off with snow covering every surface as the camera pans across a town with Christmas music playing in the background. Or the movie starts the same way but in a place with no snow but eventually they go to the snow.

  We then meet the main character who is a woman on a mission to get a task done that will “change her life”. Everything is going according to plan until the love interest comes in and messes everything up.

  The woman will then race off in anger because of this man and what he did to her plans, and she hopes she will never see him again. The next day she will be in a local spot shopping or just with a friend and will trip over anything and everything only to fall and be saved by the man. 

  As they feud for the next few days and run into each other everywhere, they are suddenly forced to work together. They can be forced to work together by their circumstances or even by a wise mysterious person that has magical powers. 

  When the two finally start to see eye to eye, they begin to form a romance that neither can admit to. Romantic situations occur like the woman putting the star on the tree and falling on top of the man or the two about to kiss each other and are interrupted.

  Then just as they are about to admit their feelings, someone or something happens that pushes them apart. They have to argue even more in order to resolve the problem and like each other again. 

  In the end, the two do something spectacular for the community or a business and fall in love. They somehow end up standing under a mistletoe and kiss with the whole town watching. You can guess that they live happily ever after. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t want the whole town watching me kiss someone.

  These movies may all be the same, but there’s no doubt that their plot makes you want to keep watching. This builds unrealistic goals for people and their love lives. Why would anyone believe this stuff could actually happen to them? 

  Even though these movies make me want to throw something at the television, they still remind me of Christmas, and oddly, I wouldn’t have it any other way.