Movie Review: Sugarplummed (2024)
Synopsis: With her daughter looking at a faraway college, Emily, a lawyer and married mother of two, is desperate to have a perfect Christmas with her family even though their clashing schedules make it seem impossible. When she comes across a Christmas star in a box of ornaments, Emily wishes for a Christmas like the one on the popular holiday movie series, Sugarplum. To her surprise, the wish brings Sugarplum herself into the real world. While Sugarplum's enthusiasm, magic and book of holiday rules seems to quickly turn the holiday around for Emily, including getting her entered in a national home decoration competition, she and Sugarplum soon learn the magic doesn't work quite the same in the real world, putting a happy Christmas in even more jeopardy.
Who's in it? The movie stars Maggie Lawson, Janel Parrish, Kyra Leroux, Brendon Zub and Avan Stewart.
Review: I had some doubts about this film when I first came across an advertisement for it on the Hallmark Channel. However, I'm familiar with Maggie Lawson from the show Psych and with Janel Parrish from Pretty Little Liars so based on that, I decided to give it a try.
As it turns out, this is currently my favorite movie from this holiday season.
The basic premise of the movie, a parent trying too hard to create the perfect Christmas, isn't anything new. In fact, I watched another movie this weekend (Deck the Halls) that had basically the same plot, minus the movie character brought to life. However, there were a lot of things going for this movie that did set it apart a bit.
First of all, the pairing of Lawson and Parrish was just great. All great comedies have a solid straight guy (or in this case, woman) who keeps things a bit more serious. Lawson's Emily fit that description perfectly, allowing Sugarplum's (Parrish) quirkiness to shine. At the same time, Lawson knew when to show her own comedic skills as well, especially early on in the movie, when she thought she was going insane.
The way Sugarplum's Christmas magic started to backfire was also intriguing because it added a bit less predictability to the plot. A sudden snowstorm inside a school, for example, led to an arrest and suspension while other failed activities, like baking Christmas cookies with gin rather than ginger, led to even more unexpected consequences. This meant there were a lot of loose ends that needed to be tied up at the end, leaving the ending itself a mystery (though, to be fair, the movie did cheat a bit by not resolving a couple of the problems).
The other thing I liked about this movie was the overall message it was trying to share about not judging your Christmas by the perfect ones you see in movies and instead use the imperfections to make new memories and just focus on spending time with family. Again, it's similar to messages shared in other Christmas films as well but I think it took on a bit more meaning in a movie made by a company that specializes in "perfect" Christmases.
Final Opinion: It's an entertaining and funny movie that I enjoyed watching a lot more than expected. I'm not sure a sequel would be all that good, but I wouldn't mind seeing Lawson and Parrish paired in another film.
My Grade: A
Movie Review: A Wish for Christmas (2016)
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