Hallmark For All Seasons

“Snowkissed” aired January 30, 2021, on Hallmark Channel and starred the adorable Jen Lilley and Chris McNally. Jeff Beesley, who made the jump to Hallmark in 2019 with The Christmas Club and Holiday Date (two of my faves that year), directed. Kimberly Beyer-Johnson, who last contributed the script for A Christmas Carousel, wrote this one, too. This movie, just like last week’s A Winter Getaway, was filmed in Banff and Winnepeg, Canada.

Music: The upbeat opening credits song and at the end of the movie was You and Me by James TW.

In a nutshell

I wouldn’t say I hated this movie – that’s a strong term.  But I disliked most of it and had so many moments where I almost turned it off because it frustrated me.

Plot of “Snowkissed”

A travel-averse journalist chases her dream assignment where she unwillingly finds herself mentoring a handsome B&B owner who wants to be a tour guide.

Now, before we get too far into this synopsis, let’s just look that over one more time, and I’ll tell you why I did not have very high hopes for the movie when it began.  First, a woman who HATES to travel and is a WRITER, is going to help a guy that wants to be a TOUR GUIDE despite the fact he only has experience as a B&B OWNER?  None of those things together makes sense.  But I went into the movie hoping for a good explanation.

Actors & Chemistry

I love Jen Lilley.  I like Chris McNally a lot.  But these two had almost zero romantic chemistry together.  They seemed more like brother and sister who LOVE to get on each other’s nerves every chance they get (much like my own teen children these days).  I like Jen Lilley when she plays nervous characters (2018’s “Mingle All The Way” comes to mind), but in this movie her character drove me CRAZY.

Chris McNally was fine – and I didn’t object to his character at all. I just didn’t think he was a good fit with Lilley.

The supporting actors, Amy Groening and Rodrigo Beilfuss, were fine, but I felt no chemistry between them either.  The only relationship I believe was the friendship between Kate and Jayne.  Although if I was Jayne I’d think long and hard about WHY I was friends with Kate.  Because Kate was truly the worst.

Tropes

Almost NO tropes. Opening big city drone shot. a promotion is on the line if Kate writes a good profile on a prominent author. Then we didn’t get our next trope until Noah made Kate some cups of hot cocoa (held in two hands) about 40 minutes into the movie.  And finally, we got some CGI snow at the end.

Did I Hear/See That Right?

I had a LOT of issues with this movie.

As mentioend already, for the first 50 minutes of the movie I completely disliked Jen Lilley’s character, Kate.  There’s neurotic, and then there is needlessly intransigent and harsh to the point of unlikeability.  That was Kate through the first half of the movie.  If I heard her complain one more time.  If I heard her boast about NYC one more time.  Had I been Jayne I’d have pulled her aside and told her to knock it off.

It’s weird that Kate is so afraid of leaving Manhattan (a word we heard more times in this movie than the entire time I lived in NYC).  Don’t get me wrong, NYC is a great city (locals don’t call it Manhattan, unless they want to differentiate between Manhattan and Brooklyn or Queens, BTW), but there’s no need to avoid going ANYwhere else in your life.  And I would think that being a life-long NYCer she’d be COMPLETELY FINE with going to other places.  Because if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere, amirite?

Once we got into the movie, the plot made more sense.  Kate and Jayne had time to kill before their interview with the author (their whole reason for going to Banff), and so Simon, Noah’s B&B partner, talked Kate into helping them write a brochure and work on their tour “patter” for their fledging B&B/local tours idea.

Jayne did not need that ginormous lens on her camera for 75% of the shots she was taking.  This is especially true of the selfie she took.  I guarantee the only thing in that shot was her nostril.

At the Banff public market, the winery rep has a random single glass sitting out, and he hands it to Noah, who takes a sip with no hesitation.  Um….I not drinking a glass of wine that has been sitting on a table for who knows how long.  And then he goes BACK to the table to ask for a glass of cab sav and the winery rep happens to have another glass just sitting out on the table.  Can Hallmark really not allow a couple seconds of screen time for someone to pour a couple glasses of wine?

The Jayne/Simon storyline was weird and unnecessary.  While I like the idea of secondary characters having their own stories (last year’s Love on Iceland did a good job with that), I found it strange that Jayne was so determined to pursue Simon and he NEVER gave an inkling that he was interested.  And then even after she told him she liked him, he gave no inkling that he felt the same.  As such, I did not believe at all that he would suddenly turnaround and give her flowers in the middle of winter – even if his character suddenly said he was romantic and interested.  It felt earned in NO WAY WHATSOEVER.

Add on to that: after 4-5 days of constant bickering (and not in a cute will-they-won’t-they way), all of a sudden we are meant to believe that Kate has developed feelings for Noah to the point where Jayne is encouraging her to pursue him?  AND then not only that, but after 4-5 days of bickering (and not in a cute will-they-won’t-they way), we are to believe that Noah thinks that everything he’s wanted is standing in front of him (the line he said to her before he kissed her at the top of the mountain)? C’mon.  Get real. No way.  When he said that line, I literally paused my Tivo and said, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no,” and almost turned off the movie.

Kate wore 4-5 different heavy winter coats during the movie and yet arrived with one small weekend bag (which was clearly empty when Jen Lilley handed it off to Rodrigo Beilfuss, who played Simon).  Okay.

Feelgoods

Even with all the things I didn’t like in this movie, I liked a few others.

I like a good burger, and those burgers looked AMAZING.

I said it last week, and I’ll say it again.  Banff looks BEAUTIFUL and I want to go to there.  The gondola experience looks amazing.

I did like some of the comedy – Jayne being freaked out that Simon offered her a mint, Noah drinking the full cup of piping hot coffee. But there wasn’t enough of it to redeem the movie.

Re-watchability

“Snowkissed” is 100% not a rewatchable for me.

The Ranking

It’s no surprise that “Snowkissed” is at the bottom of the list for now. And given how low the score is, it may never get out of that last spot.

1. Taking a Shot at Love (air date: Jan 2) – 641 pts – weighted score: 108.9 (76.4%)
2. A Winter Getaway (air date: Jan 23) – 620 pts – weighted score: 104.4 (73.3%)
3. Two For The Win (air date: Jan 16) – 603 pts – weighted score: 101.8 (71.4%)
4. A New Year’s Resolution (air date: Jan 9) – 516 pts – weighted score: 90.5 (63.5%)
5. Snowkissed (air date: Jan 31) – 402 pts – weighted score: 76.0 (53.3%)

To see where this movie lands in my overall rankings of Hallmark movies, visit my Hallmark Movie Rankings page!

What did you think of “Snowkissed”?  Comment below and let me know!