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One Christmas Eve (Review)

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One Christmas Eve

One Christmas Eve Hallmark
2014
Written by Holly Goldberg Sloan
Directed by Jay Russell
One Christmas Eve Hallmark
Ever have one of those crazy nights where all sorts of weird stuff happens, and then you pick up a bunch of new best friends and a dog? Sure, we all have many times, and One Christmas Eve celebrates that phenomenon with Christmas flair! One Christmas Eve is a comedy movie which I didn’t know Hallmark even did, but I guess so because here it is! One Christmas Eve is an uneven holiday film that jumps around tonally and has some major missteps, but also does a few things surprisingly well that worked out enough to win me over in the end.

Nell Blackmore (Anne Heche) is freaking out trying to ensure the first Christmas after her divorce is a magical one for her two children. Opera-obsessed bad singer Emma (Alissa Skovbye) and video gamer Alden (Griffin Kane) are less than worried that Christmas won’t be special, because kids will be kids. Cesar Cortez (Carlos Gómez) is a worker looking to get him and be miserable during Christmas break, only to find someone dumped a puppy in front of his store. With no one around as it’s late at night on Christmas Eve, he looks for a happy family to dump the dog on the doorstep of to pass the buck. He picks the Blackmores, but his attempt to flee after buzzing the doorbell is foiled when he slips on a sled and injures his leg. Nell suddenly has to deal with someone injured on her property while a mystery dog entrances her children.

Thus begins the troubles for the night, as they go to the hospital. Nell parks the van in the loading zone, thinking it will just be a minute, but ends up taking forever (as someone who has been to the ER several times, you should expect to sacrifice many hours waiting around). She also first meets Dr. Chen (Brian Tee), who will take care of the family during each of their visits tonight. Alden takes the dog for a walk and ends up falling down a hole in a building under construction. Emma wanders out to go find him, and their van gets towed thanks to Reggie (Kevin Daniels) the security guard. Thus as soon as Cesar is free to go to the hospital, they’re back, with Alden having a broken wrist and Emma having cold exposure. That was rather poorly executed, her coat gets caught on a fence so she just leaves it, and suddenly is hospitalized even though it doesn’t seem that cold, and she’s fine a short bit later.
One Christmas Eve Hallmark
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One Christmas Eve shows the good in a bad day on Hallmark Channel!

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One Christmas Eve Hallmark

The kid got monstrous mind powers for Christmas!


[adrotate banner=”7″]Besides the massive amount of Christmas movies in their Countdown to Christmas celebration, Hallmark Channel has found a way to squeeze in some extra Christmas movies! One Christmas Eve caught my eye not because it is a Christmas-themed Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day with a dog thrown in, but because the love interest is an Asian guy! I can count the amount of films with an Asian guy and white lady without having to take off my socks, so kudos to Hallmark Channel for this unexpected surprise!

In fact, the film features a very multi-ethnic cast, as newly divorced mom Nell has a series of adventures that nets her a bunch of extra people as a surrogate family just in time for the holidays. And also a Beagle dog, because we can’t have a Christmas movie on Hallmark without either an angel or a dog.

Nell’s a newly‐single mom who wants this Christmas to be extra‐special for her two kids (played by Once Upon a Time’s Ali Skovbye and Contagion’s Griffin Kane). It turns out to be special – but not the way Nell had in mind! This Christmas Eve, everything that can go wrong does go wrong. The mayhem starts when Cesar (The Glade’s Carlos Gomez) attempts to leave an abandoned beagle on Nell’s front porch. Cesar trips and falls. Nell has to take him to the hospital, where Kevin Daniels (Sirens) is a security guard and Brian Tee (The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift) a dreamy doc.

In no particular order, their car is towed, Nell’s son and the beagle disappear down a hole in a construction zone, a nasty nurse harasses them all. Later – to add insult to injury – they’re car‐jacked. And they’re all in a police station when it goes up in flames.

“Everything goes wrong, really wrong,” says Anne Heche, interviewed on the set of One Christmas Eve. “[But] Nell discovers a great deal of strength within herself, strength she didn’t know she possessed. And the family bond is cemented, and the family itself really grows, thanks in a funny way to all the mayhem.”

As there are so many divorces in this country, there is a ready-made audience, and this looks like it could be a fun time.

One Christmas Eve is directed by Jay Russell (My Dog Skip) and written by Holly Goldberg Sloan (Heidi 4 Paws and The Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course!) It stars Anne Heche as Nell, Kevin Daniels as Reggie, Carlos Gomez as Cesar, Brian Tee as Dr. Chen, Ali Skovbye as Emma, and Griffin Kane as Alden.

One Christmas Eve premieres Sunday, November 30th on Hallmark Channel!

Photo via Hallmark Channel Press/Erik Heinila