Well, that was a first. A Hallmark movie that ends with Al Borland from Home Improvement extorting $1.3 Million from an obviously confused, emotionally unstable woman who had recently and unwillingly inherited a Christmas tree farm. In the Hallmark universe, Al (Mason in the movie) is supposed to realize he is a greedy scrooge for wiping out the life savings of multiple rural poor working class people (these people miraculously have $450K cash stashed away in coffee cans in unlocked cupboards that my three year old could easily find). Anyway, Evil Al does NOT find the meaning of Christmas and instead takes the box containing the $450K of cash. He is promised the rest of the $1.3M the next day. The poor woman who inherited the tree farm now has to pay back $1.3M on a property she owned basically for free a week earlier.
See, her nasty boyfriend had her sign a three page contract for sale from Al without reading it, over lunch. And apparently this is totally legal and "final." Not even the weird 'I think he is the love interest' local real estate lawyer could find a way out of this.
So, pretty boring movie full of every cheesy cliche in the book until Jules signs the contract without reading it, or having an appraisal done to know the true value, or even having legal representation. Then, she goes from being portrayed as this classy, successful, smart, motivated NYC business woman to being a complete and total idiot. It's like she is two characters, pre-contract and post-contract. The first character would never, under any circumstances, sign an unread contract for sale over lunch. And the fact that she allows herself to get extorted by Al in the end to pay him a cut just to have the tree farm back also goes totally against her character that is setup in the first half hour.
The rest of the movie is filled with bad acting, weird characters that have income but no jobs, cans of cheese, plot holes, errors in geography (mountains by Chicago, really?), fixing up a broken down Christmas town in two weeks with two cans of paint, and on and on. We never get to see the actual "town" and there is no Mom, Dad, Sister, or best friend to experience the mess for the audience and ask Jules what on Hallmark earth is she thinking? The love interest has zero chemistry and is forced beyond all measure. But they have to put it in there because this is a Hallmark movie after all, right?
I guess Uncle Frank's contribution to the $450K, a coffee can stuffed with $100 bills, can be considered back pay for rent, as he admitted to illegally living in the guest house on the property early in the movie.
Know that there is a silver lining in the ending, maybe even a Christmas miracle. Al does not get off scott free for being a scrooge. The second he walks into a bank with $450K cash to deposit he will be arrested. He has no receipt, no contract for sale, nothing to prove to the IRS and FBI where he got that money, so yes my friends, the true ending of this movie is that Al goes to jail. Merry Christmas!
