A Biltmore Christmas (2023)

Fairly high concept for a Hallmark movie, this is about a screenwriter scripting a remake of a classic Hollywood Christmas movie getting magically transported back to the production of said movie in 1947 and falling in love with its tragically doomed star. If all that sounds a tad over-ambitious for a studio known for cranking out relatively uniform (but surprisingly high-quality) low-budget television movies... well... that is an issue here. While A Biltmore Christmas is decent, it's clear they're biting off a bit more than they can chew. Watching, you can tell everyone involved is putting in real effort, but you can see where they just didn't have the time to set up complex shots, learn more than surface-level impersonations of characters from classic Hollywood films, or nail the look and feel of the era they were emulating.

I don't think any of that is necessarily a dealbreaker, depending on what you want out of this. This is, after all, a TV Christmas movie, and in that respect, it delivers a series of fun moments and amusing characters. On top of that, the first thirty minutes at least actually pack in a few surprises and deviations from the typical formula. And the looming clock on the love interest's life means there's at least a bit of tension here, a feature I've often found lacking in the company's output.

But that tension turns out to be a bit of a double-sided sword when we reach the inevitable conclusion. This is a movie that needed a bittersweet ending, something Hallmark continues to take a firm stance against.

The movie's protagonist is Lucy (played by Bethany Joy Lenz), a screenwriter and fan of the classic 1940s film "His Merry Wife!", now tasked with scripting its remake. The movie has a happy ending, which Lucy believes needs to be updated into something more bittersweet, a sentiment not shared by her boss, who sends her to the Biltmore House, the location of both the original and planned remake.

And... I'm going to pause here, because it's worth reflecting on the somewhat disjointed effect of having a fictional Hollywood studio remaking a fictional 1940s film starring fictional people, but using a very real location that's been widely used for actual films. If all that's starting to sound like some kind of complex marketing plan, a quick visit to the Biltmore website where they're using the movie to promote their own holiday-related ventures should confirm your suspicions. Is any of this a problem? Eh, probably not, so long as you go in understanding you're kind of watching an advertisement.

At any rate, once Lucy reaches the Biltmore, she's given a tour by the manager, played by Jonathan Frakes, who, shockingly, won't be the only Trek alum to take a small role in this - Robert Picardo shows up in the last act as the 1940s studio head. On the tour, she meets Margaret, a mega-fan of the movie who won't really impact the story but might be this movie's MVP. She's played by A.K. Benninghofen, who instills the role with real comedic energy.

Before long, Lucy is introduced to the McGuffin of the film, an hourglass used in the original film that was damaged and repaired during the production. Riker conveniently leaves her alone with the device, which of course transports her back in time.

The movie has some fun with this at first. Because the Biltmore hasn't changed and Lucy's jetlagged, it takes her a minute to piece together that anything's changed. Her time's more or less out before she even figures out she's in the past, and afterward she's unsure if she imagined the whole thing. But she also learned the ending of the movie she knows wasn't what was originally scripted, and she naturally wants to know more.

Once she realizes the hourglass is responsible for her temporal displacement, she heads back a second time. Margaret is present when Lucy re-materializes, so she becomes an accomplice (I briefly hoped she might inadvertently get shunted back in time as well, but no such luck). During Lucy's next trip, however, the hourglass is broken, stranding her until it can be repaired.

Here's where the movie starts adhering more to the Hallmark formula. The doomed star of the film, Jack Huston, becomes interested in Lucy, at first because he believes she's a studio liaison, then romantically.

Sorry, I need another sidenote. Huston is played by Kristoffer Polaha, and I want to take a moment and commend Hallmark for producing a movie in which both its leads have real names with more obvious holiday connections than those of the characters they're playing. This is growth.

The remainder of the movie is a jumble of various plotlines in which Lucy helps the screenwriter reunite with his wife (which in turn results in the movie getting the happy ending she's familiar with), convinces the lead actress not to quit the picture, and tries to evade detection. Oh, and also she falls in love with Jack. Because of course she does. 

By the end, she tries to warn him he's fated to die the following Christmas, but is interrupted, only managing to blurt out the date before being chased off by the studio head. This is after she's told him she's from the future, a claim he probably doesn't believe until witnessing her vanish in front of him.

She arrives home to find history hasn't changed - the movie adheres to pretty rigid rules around time travel, to its credit - and Jack's recorded date of death is still Christmas of 1948. We jump ahead a year to find the new movie shooting with Lucy's script, complete with an updated version of the happy ending. Then Huston shows up in the present to reveal he was able to use the hourglass to time-travel, and also that he faked his death in the past, so he and Lucy can be together.

To be fair, the film spends a great deal of time debating the merits of happy endings and laying out the philosophy behind Hallmark's holiday formula, so it's not like this comes out of nowhere. But at the same time, exploring that dynamic increases the significance of the ending, as do the movie's other themes: sacrifice and the relationship between reality and fantasy. By the end of the movie, I was on board with Lucy having changed into a less cynical person capable of seeing happy endings as aspirational and uplifting, but the fact she ultimately had to sacrifice nothing for her own happy ending to magically land in her lap felt like a cheat.

I'm not saying this needed a tragic ending. I can come up with at least a half-dozen variations that would have ended with her going on to a life full of joy and love, but with some sort of cost to make the payoff meaningful. All things considered, the ending we got was a bit too Hallmarky for the movie that came before it.

That said, the flip side to that criticism is that in a lot of ways A Biltmore Christmas succeeds in not feeling like a generic entry. The first thirty minutes don't feel formulaic at all, and even the more straightforward sections come off a bit more exciting and energetic than I'm used to. And while it's not at all unusual for Hallmark heroines to succeed both professionally and romantically, the subtext around having a man from the 1940s give up his dreams to be with a successful woman carries some weight.

Even if... I can't believe I'm saying this... this might be a rare situation where having her give up her dreams to stay with him in the past would probably have been more narratively satisfying.

Now then, let's talk time travel. A Biltmore Christmas references Back to the Future (it even uses some similar sound cues), though Biltmore actually follows stricter rules. Nothing Lucy does seems to change the past, save in ways that have already been changed. This is arguably the toughest approach to time travel to write narratively, as it's difficult to make predestination satisfying, but - again, excluding that ending - this pulls it off admirably.

I also want to mention the movie's choice of sidestepping any effects around time travel. We know Lucy is vanishing and appearing, because we see a couple characters react accordingly, but the camera never puts the event onscreen. It's a simple choice that no doubt saved them a bit of money, but more than that... I really just appreciate the restraint. Too often these sorts of movies try to interject some CG portals or other silly visuals where they're neither needed nor wanted. A comical reaction (or, in the case of Huston at the end, a dramatic one) is far more effective. This was a good choice.

A more mixed aspect is the movie's portrayal of the 1940s. The cast gave pretty uniformly fun performances that seemed to be largely pulled from characters from movies of the time, but that did mean they were using the sorts of affectations from movies to represent what were supposed to be actors in those movies. This wasn't a big deal - again, what they were doing was still fun - but struck me as a missed opportunity where the material could have been elevated into something smarter.

As far as Christmas is concerned, the holidays are used in mostly obvious ways, though there are a couple aspects worth mentioning. First, while "His Merry Wife!" is a fictional movie, its premise seems to be largely derived from the very real Christmas film, The Bishop's Wife, with a handful of surface-level allusions to the far better-known It's a Wonderful Life.

Perhaps more significantly, this is a Hallmark Christmas movie that's - at least in terms of subtext - about the use of a formula in Hallmark Christmas movies. The company explored this terrain in the 2017 movie, The Christmas Train, as well, though that approached the topic from a more subversive angle. A Biltmore Christmas comes across as a repudiation of critics tired of the constant barrage of happy endings (so people like me, I suppose). I wouldn't mind them turning the tables if the movie had resolved in a way that came across as satisfying, but - again - that just wasn't the case.

I should also note it felt a tad self-serving seeing the modern-day movie executive embracing this philosophy treated as sage and benevolent: I did feel like Hallmark was patting themselves on the back with that minor character. Though, to be fair, they paid that off a bit in the past.

This one's certainly not bad for a TV movie, but it falls short of its potential. A Biltmore Christmas feels like growth for Hallmark, but at the same time it reminds you they've still got plenty of room for improvement.