At the moment, I should be working, but it’s the day after the 2024 election and I’m pretty sure… no one is working this morning. See, I’m a freelancer here at Decider and one of my beats is reviewing Hallmark movies. Today, I’m supposed to be watching a screener of an upcoming film called ’Tis The Season To Be Irish which, let’s face it, we can only hope is as good as its title. But reviewing Hallmark movies was something I was very skeptical to do when I received my first assignment a couple years ago because if you’ve ever read anything I’ve ever written for our site, you might know I’m a cynic. A sarcastic eye-roller with no time for sentimentality or schmaltz. Half of my Hallmark reviews should just have a TL:DR at the top reading: “Completely unrealistic and utterly predictable!”
Hallmark movies have a reputation ripe for parody, they’re made-for-TV romances churned out in record time that are almost always about a scrappy protagonist falling for her unlikely romantic partner while she’s either 1) on a soul-searching trip to Europe, 2) on a work trip in the mountains or 3) trying to get by as a struggling single mom who happens to live in a house with all stainless appliances and granite countertops. The premises are so insane, so repetitive, and yet, in that repetition, and in those set-decorated apartments with cutesy holiday pillows, there’s some real comfort and escapism that we might all require today.
A few weeks ago, I watched a Hallmark movie called Falling Together which stars Ashley Williams as an overly optimistic woman who has recently moved to Pittsburgh and who makes it her mission to not just bring all her neighbors in her new apartment building together to resolve their differences, but who finds her purpose volunteering at an Alzheimer’s charity walk. Everything about this movie read to me as being contrived. Williams’ character was impossibly kind-hearted, friendly in a pushy way that I would literally run screaming from IRL. The man she eventually falls in love with, Mark, played by Hallmark mainstay Paul Campbell, is a “grump” except he’s not really, he’s just a regular guy who enjoys being alone. In the end, Ashley brings her warring neighbors together by getting them to talk to each other, and she meets Mark in the middle, allowing him some breathing room while making space for breathing room of her own. It is so starry-eyed and optimistic I wanted to throw up. And I was so grateful it existed.
At the time, I wrote of the film, “If the real world that we all live in is a bubble that’s full of negativity and conflict, this film exists to pop it… Falling Together is a lot of things: earnest and sincere, broad and a little bit corny, optimistic and often unrealistic. It’s selling an idealized version of the world where people aspire to connect and be positive, even in the face of something like Alzheimer’s Disease, which can be upsetting and turn your world upside down. It’s certainly not edgy or high-concept, but it’s a feel-good affair that’s a reminder that some people do aspire to put good vibes into the world.”
A movie like Falling Together is not meant to be high art, for me and for many people, it is a band-aid for some of what ails us emotionally. It’s escapism, as are all of Hallmark’s films. (Let me be clear, I loved Falling Together for it’s good-vibes-only sentiment, but there are other Hallmark movies I would recommend which also offer the same warmth and comfort with 90% less schmaltz and deserve wider audiences, including An American In Austen, Round and Round, and The Cases of Mystery Lane.)
I’ve come to realize that in watching so many Hallmark movies for work, despite my cold, cold heart, I’ve become a fan because they’re the perfect antidote to the nightmares of the real world. Astonishingly apolitical (with the exception of the appearances of the occasional gay character, something that would never happen in a Great American Family film), Hallmark movies represent an idealized world where there really is peace on earth and good will toward men. (Guys, honestly, I am the world’s most negative person, I am shocked by my own pen here.) While religion exists within the confines of the network’s Countdown To Christmas films (which do include other religions as well), it’s not used to evangelize. These movies and their idealistic set decorations – small towns with beloved neighborhood meeting halls where everyone congregates for the big Christmas ball or grand openings or whatever – are a glimpse at an America that has never and will never exist. But would that it did.
One of the biggest differences between me and my husband is that he loves watching “feel-bad” movies and I really don’t. (This term was recently elaborated on in an article in The Ringer that named films like Darren Aronofsky’s Mother! and Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Killing of a Sacred Deer as two films that typify the category). Even before they put a name to the genre, this has always been my least favorite kind of movie. (It makes no sense why I can tolerate a grim true-crime documentary but not scripted anxiety and unease; all I can surmise is that I like my blood and guts to be real, but require my escapism to be exclusively filled with witty repartee.) But in the same way that I’m grateful for a film like Falling Together to be able to exist to put its good vibes in the world, you know what, Robert Eggers and co.? You do you. But as I watch more and more Hallmark, I realize that what I crave from a movie is a sense of control. Predictability isn’t a bad thing. Happy endings? Test audiences love them for a reason. While the quality level of Hallmark films varies greatly, they’re all born out of the same formula: nice people aspiring to find happiness and purpose in a charming place, all fights resolved by the next scene, and then they kiss. If that’s not the American dream, I don’t know what is.
If escapism is necessary today, even if you think its not for you, I highly recommend Hallmark as your medicine of choice. At worst, it’s a low-stakes distraction; at best, maybe it’ll serve as a reminder that someone out there still has enough hope to draft a version of a world that aspires to be good.
Liz Kocan is a pop culture writer living in Massachusetts. Her biggest claim to fame is the time she won on the game show Chain Reaction.