A Very Merry Mix-Up

The other day I got sucked into a Christmas movie on the Hallmark Channel, called A Very Merry Mix-Up. Don’t judge me, sappy sentimental Christmas movies can be really entertaining!

I missed the first ten minutes or so, but I inferred that Alice, our redheaded protagonist, flew in to spend Christmas with her new fiance’s family, and got picked up from the airport by the fiance’s brother. She has never met her fiance’s family before, but they are really sweet and welcome her with open arms to their home while they wait for the fiance to arrive a few days later. She proves herself to be adorable and perfect, as all Hallmark Channel movie protags are, and fiance’s brother quickly falls in love with her. Uh-oh conflict!

So the fiance eventually comes home and Alice is all “Uh, you’re not my fiance.” And the fiance’s brother is all like, “But that’s my brother.” And the not-fiance is all “Who the heck are you?” Alice went home with the wrong family from the airport! Oops! So the real fiance comes and picks her up and takes her to his cold and jail-ish mansion with his typical-rich-people mother and father. Everything is in sharp contrast to the other family’s - cold and impersonal compared to the warm and cozy of the first family. The fiance isn’t really a two-dimensional bad guy, he’s just a driven-business-type who doesn’t understand human emotions. Alice owns an antique shop that she inherited from her father after he died; the fiance manages a deal for a strip mall to be built right where her shop, and they’ll pay her millions for the land. He thinks she will be ecstatic because now she’s rich, yay. But she doesn’t want to be rich, she just wants to have her cute little shop that her father left her. This is the breaking point in the relationship, I guess, and she quickly realizes that her true love is the first guy, who she loves even though she only met him 2 days ago. But it totally works, and they live happily ever after, and I don’t actually really feel like I wasted 2 hours of my life.

It reminded me a bit of one of my favorite Sandra Bullock movies, While You Were Sleeping. There’s a merry mix-up in that one too, where Sandy’s character accidentally tells her crush’s family that they’re engaged, after he is in a coma following an accident (that she rescued him from!), and then falls in love with his brother while she spends Christmas with his family.

If I had to choose between the two movies, no contest it’s WYWS. But sappy Christmas movies only come around once a year, so... I’ve gotta go check out their line-up and see what other cheesy awesomeness I should check out.