Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Christmas Keepsake’ on Great American Family, a Half-Baked Holiday Confection

While we’re still working the gnawed-off limbs of Halloween gummy bears out of our molars, the made-for-cable Christmas-movie cottage industry is belching serious fumes from its industrial smokestacks, cranking out stuff like Christmas Keepsake, a Great American Family original movie about Aussie expats experiencing their first-ever American Xmas magic: Unconvincing light ‘n’ fluffy snow, unconvincing empty cups that are supposed to have cocoa in them, unconvincing romantic tension, etc. There’s a whole subplot here about a trifle, as in the layered dessert confection, that begs us to consider the other definition of “trifle” – which isn’t always a terrible thing to label a product from Holiday Movies Amalgamated Inc., since no one’s turning on Great American Family in November for hefty dramatic examinations of grief and loss. But this one might be just too much of a triviality for its own good.

CHRISTMAS KEEPSAKE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: A Beemer SUV with its logo blanked out by “snow” navigates a winding road, then pulls into a driveway. I know we’re not supposed to know it’s a Beemer (surely for incredibly boring and pedantic reasons having to do with lawyers and crap), but I know you’re a Beemer, you Beemer. Out of the Beemer hop Tom (Daniel Lissing) and his 13-year-old daughter Grace (Ellie Stewart). They’ve just moved from their native Australia to Ashbury Grove, an American Anytown that, this time of year, is constantly being lightly snowed upon as sunlight makes the flakes sparkle like glitter. Why’d they move? Mom died, and they needed a fresh start. Grace had never seen snow before now, and she says she’s excited, but the director of this movie forgot to ask her to express that excitement in a manner that exceeds the mere recitation of lines from the script, a problem that befalls all the people who exist in this movie.

So as Tom unpacks inside, Grace heads out to play in the phonysnow, which covers the astroturf of this movie set so artfully. She brushes aside some of the styrofoam and Easter-basket grass and finds an old Christmas-cookie tin with a few artifacts and papers in it, one of which is a handwritten note labeled “how to have the best Christmas ever.” Now, how, exactly, does one have the best Ashbury Grove Christmas ever? One must get cocoa at a place called Luna’s, and check out the nativity scene, and watch the Christmas tree lighting, stuff like that – stuff that would be incredibly helpful to anyone who might be new to Ashbury Grove, especially if they’re from a far-off place overrun by koalas, humongous spiders and that’s-not-a-knife-THIS-is-a-knife type folks. Grace rushes in as her perplexed father stares at an impossible tangle of Christmas lights, and shows him the list. He needs a break from decking the living crap out of the halls, so off to the cocoa spot they go.

And at Luna’s, they come face-to-face with destiny, I think. Well, this movie’s tissue-featherlight version of destiny, anyway. They meet Elizabeth (Jillian Murray), who runs the cafe with her mom, who can smell a hot widower from three counties over, and therefore does everything she can to very gently force Elizabeth and Tom together, and it’s worth noting that everything in this movie is done in a very gentle manner, bordering on utter listlessness. So good luck feeling involved in all this, where Tom and Elizabeth try not to talk about the things that make their hearts ache this time of year as they exchange pleasantries and bond over their mutual appreciation of raspberry scones, which is absolutely a euphemism if you put in a little effort. Meanwhile, Tom spends hours and hours, like all night sometimes even, plotting to stage an Xmas fair in the backyard to surprise Grace, because does Tom have a job? Who knows! Also meanwhile, Grace pursues the mystery of Who Buried the Xmas-Tin Time Capsule – “I’m trying to get a match on this handwriting” – and whether that person is among the 4.37 characters in this movie, I shan’t reveal. But it’s surely on par with the mystery of the Sphinx or the Fermi Paradox.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: All of the Hallmark, etc. TV Xmas movies you’ve seen already, but with all the interesting stuff stripped out.

Performance Worth Watching: Murray is the only cast member who tries to find something resembling an arc for her character, despite the screenplay rendering that a futile endeavor. 

Memorable Dialogue: Pity dear Ellie Stewart for being paid not nearly enough to execute the following line-reading: “Yum! Those look T.A.S.T.Y!” she almost-moans in near-agony, as her dad pulls cookies from the oven.

Sex and Skin: Unfortunately, the line “First the canned cranberry sauce, now this?” only functions euphemistically.

Our Take: First off, Christmas Keepsake’s depiction of sno-ball fites are the least convincing dramatization of the act of throwing since Tuxedo Football in The Room. Even less effort was put into developing the plot, which is so low-stakes, it makes a game of Candy Land look like the Battle of the Bulge. Where’s the conflict? Buried in the Easter grass a foot below the mystery Xmas tin, wedged in the bitter Ashbury Grove permafrost, one presumes. The only thing that hangs ever so precariously in the balance is whether these flimsy, flimsy people have a very nice Xmas, or merely an acceptably nice one. There’s no villain, no threat to the survival of the bakery, not even a what-present-should-I-get-for-my-dad concern. Nada, nothing. Just boredom for miles in all directions as the movie crawls along slothlike, sluggish in a vaguely pleasant way. 

OK, there’s the question as to whether Tom and/or Elizabeth might be too sad about the dead people in their lives to kiss each other, but the inevitability of the smooching is up there with taxes and death. The looming specter of death. The valley of death’s shadow, which looms over Tom and Elizabeth, rendering them very, very blandly heartbroken. Loss, you know? It’s definitely a thing that exists! The Question of the Trifle may offer the greatest dramatic subplot here, since Elizabeth’s mom asks Tom to make one of great specificity, and the only person who knows how to execute such a recipe is Elizabeth, insert maniacal laughter here. Is her mom a secret member of the Matchmaker Mafia from Mrs. Maisel? 

And regretfully, that’s where the specificity ends, because Keepsake consists of skeletal characters working their way through a skeletal plot. The key ingredients of this particular movie trifle are one part vanilla to ten parts water. Just as the plot REALLY gets rolling – we’re talking five, maybe six mph here folks – it stops dead for a tinsel-fetish tree-decorating montage, and never regains its momentum. The dialogue consists primarily of generic, awkwardly staged small-talk yimmer-yammer that’s even more annoying than in real life, occasionally cut with unintentionally hilarious stuff like, “Whaddaya mean, snowmageddon?” or “We’re havin’ ham tonight, we’re havin’ ham tonight!” Funny, sure, but at this point in the annual Xmas-movie barrage, we need more camp or ironic winking or a gimmick, something to pique our interest – a guinea pig for cute reaction shots, a little food porn (we barely get a glimpse of the trifle), a talking guinea pig for cute reaction shots, anything, really. It barely even indulges any clichés. It’s a first draft at best, an empty hall still waiting to be decked.

Our Call: SKIP IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.