I love ION TV’s Holiday romantic comedies. Despite my cold, cynical, Grinch-like heart, I love Christmas; girly, quirky romantic comedies and films that combine both into one. I’ve always loved ION’s family friendly programming and each year I gather around the TV to catch its romantic comedies. This year, I was lucky enough to preview ION’s December 2012 romantic comedies offering cheesy, quirky, vicarious fun with a dash of hope.

I have to hand it to ION for picking films, Golden Christmas 3 and Anything But Christmas, that highlight the realistic over the idealistic. A perfect, chiseled white knight is fun; but, that isn’t what happens in actuality. Despite the Cinderella fairytales on TV, relationships aren’t meant to be easy. This year, I felt ION focused less on making ‘holiday romantic comedies’ but on romantic comedies that happened to occur on the holidays. I think that’s a good focus. Forcing the holiday theme where it doesn’t work isn’t necessary. I’d rather have a strong, relatable script.

My favorites, A Star for Christmas, Anything but Christmas, and A Golden Christmas 3, featured what you’d expect — good-looking, almost-shirtless men with adorable, down-on-their-luck heroines. However, even more than that they featured realistic relationships. I typically hate rom-coms that feature 24-hour romances that end in magical proposals. Luckily, SC, AC and GC3 didn’t do that. Maybe this year’s flicks weren’t as high on production values as previous years; but, I’d rather see the network invest in films with strong casts and strong scripts than high production values with poor casts and weak scripts. I particularly respect ION for casting established actors who might’ve fallen off the recent pop culture radar like Christopher Lloyd (Back to the Future) and Catherine Hicks (Seventh Heaven).

Below find my mini-reviews of new and old favorites.

Reviewing New Favorites

A Star for Christmas was my favorite ION holiday flick this season. It’s exactly what you’d expect of a holiday romantic comedy – it’s cuddly, light-hearted, deliberately cheesey, and features a tongue-in-cheek sense of humor. A Star for Christmas follows ordinary cupcake bakery owner Cassie (Briana Evigan) — the type of girl who allows everyone to take advantage of her. She shares her dog with her douchey ex-boyfriend. She lets her out-of-work younger brother live in her house for free. Her best friend/employee leaves her high and dry during her busy season. PLUS, despite believing in her business, she refuses to market it, take extra orders or charge what her products are worth. She charges 7.95 for a dozen cupcakes (CHEAP!), doesn’t charge her customers for bonus cupcakes, and allows them to sample entire cupcakes without paying (REALLY?). Enter Alex Cross (Corey Sevier), a mega superstar, who pretends he’s ordinary guy AJ to help her with the business.

Considering I basically wore my hair in a ponytail with messy bangs for a month, I totally identified with the heroine. Plus, I love baking, bakeries, and cupcakeries. I spent a couple weeks volunteering at Zoe’s Cupcake Café in NJ, until my schedule became insane, so the cupcake plot definitely drew me. I enjoyed Corey Sevier as the male lead. While he did a better job playing AJ, the relatable handyman guy next door, than as Alex Cross, the Will Smith-esque superstar, he had great chemistry with Briana. Brooke Burns’ character surprised me. I expected the stereotypical bitchy ex-girlfriend, but instead they made her an assertive, business-oriented character. Despite their surface differences, both of Alex’s love interests (past and present) shared similarities through their desire to help others.

Lest you believe the show is too saccharine sweet, it featured a couple tongue-in-cheek moments, where the writer(s) mocked standard rom-com tropes. There’s an awesome stand-off between Cassie’s two potential love interests that turns comically homoerotic. If you aren’t into holiday romantic comedies, this isn’t for you. Yes, the music sounds incredibly canned. Yes, the puppy is adorable, but probably isn’t sanitary for a cupcakery kitchen. But if you love the holidays and girly films, this is the one that you want to watch.

Anything But Christmas is my second favorite for this year, premiering Sunday, December 9, 7/6c. Widow Grace (Elaine Hendrix) raised her 10-year-old son alone while volunteering in the community, serving as her extended family’s backbone, and nursing her departed husband’s memory. She’s essentially superwoman. In contrast, her boyfriend John (Sergio Di Zio), an unemployed writer, is the ordinary guy next door who her family members hate.

This film does a great job of handling familial fractures and the pressures of pretending perfection during the allegedly ideal holiday. While Anything But Christmas realistically circles the difficulty of one couple connecting, despite multiple roadblocks, familial love (between two people and their community) was the true plot. While watching the film, I felt sorry for the Grace character. Her family members overtly relied on her and expected her to serve as a symbol of the strong independent woman or the strong widowed wife or the strong widowed wife of an army hero. While John is the average guy — selfish, secretive and cowardly — he’s what she needs. He fills in the little cracks of her life and doesn’t allow her to push herself until her engine runs dry. He forces her to look at reality while others allow her to play in unreality. Although her inner circle loves her, they encourage her desire to maintain an impossible ideal for herself without noticing the internal ruptures she experiences trying to perform the facade.

Each actor played their part incredibly well. Christopher Lloyd chewed up the screen as the emotionless, hollowed out father. Sean Michael Kyer, the adorable actor you see everywhere, played the precocious child here. Sergio Di Zio’s emotional vulnerability wooed me while Elaine Hendrix did an excellent job with her character. Through this film we learn love, family and heroism are all about sacrifice and doing anything for your loved ones, including Christmas.

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