Hallmark’s Countdown to Christmas closes out its first weekend with Under the Christmas Sky, a holiday romance between an astronaut with a blind spot and a planetarium exhibit curator who hates to mix fun with facts. But is Under the Christmas Sky out of this world, or does this holiday movie never achieve liftoff? Either way, Under the Christmas Sky goes all in on women in STEM and we love to see it.
The Gist: Jessica Parker Kennedy (The Flash) plays Kat, a scientist at Kansas City’s NSP center — that’s the National Space Program. Unfortunately for Kat, her career in outer space is going to stay grounded for the foreseeable future due to an eye injury that’s left her with a permanent blindspot. Her dreams of traveling to the space station have been dashed — and right at Christmas time, too.
Fortunately for Kat, she won’t have to spend the holiday season moping around her parents’ house. The local planetarium reached out to NSP looking for an expert on the sun to help with an upcoming exhibit — and Kat is the expert on the sun. I believe the new museum director refers to Kat as a “local superstar astronaut.” Come on — if you have one of those in town, you gotta hire ’em. The catch is that the exhibit opens on December 16th. How can the planetarium compete with Christmas and draw in a crowd? On top of that, the planetarium’s resident exhibit curator David (A Fabled Holiday’s Ryan Paevey) doesn’t want help. Considering that this is a Hallmark movie, though, David’s probably going to get a lot of help and a serious relationship out of this whole ordeal.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: This is the second year in a row that Hallmark has hinged a holiday movie plot upon eyesight issues, following 2022’s The Most Colorful Time of the Year.
Performance Worth Watching: Andrew Bushell (All I Didn’t Want for Christmas) is so charismatic as Kat’s younger brother Andy that I almost want to categorize him as the movie’s leading man. He has an effortless cool about him and really brings a lot of energy to the movie — way more than Ryan Paevey’s David, who’s more gruff than we’re used to seeing him play.
Memorable Dialogue: “I can’t sign off on you going to the space station.” Never in a million years did I think I’d hear a line about a space station on Hallmark. 2023 is truly breaking new ground.
A Holiday Tradition: Kat’s family has a few traditions, like her mom buying a new ornament to celebrate a new achievement in her kids’ lives (or phase, unless Andy is legitimately committed to curling as a sport). This year’s ornament is a sun to commemorate Kat’s work on a probe that entered the sun’s atmosphere.
Does the Title Make Any Sense?: It does in a literal sense, as the movie is concerned with stars and is set under the sky at Christmas time. A Christmas Star is the obvious one if only there weren’t already two other movies with that name. Honestly, A Very STEM Christmas would have worked just fine!
Our Take: Y’know, good on Hallmark for centering an entire holiday movie around women in science. Under the Christmas Sky features no fewer than four women working in fields related to the study and/or exploration of outer space. And because generational mentorships are cool, David has a daughter Lila (played by Emma Richardson) who loves hanging out at her dad’s office and is beyond stoked to meet Kat. I’m just saying, it’s rare that you see a Hallmark leading lady get a job like astronaut and it’s a nice reminder that Barbie isn’t the only archetypal female character who can truly do it all.
And while the cast is generally delightful (a quick midnight scene between Kat and her dad is one of the many touches that make this TV family feel real), the central romance ends up feeling a little more like an afterthought than it should. Having a couple go from gently adversarial to warm and friendly is a tried and true romance formula, but we never really discover and address what’s keeping Kat and David apart. We understand more of Kat’s character; the planetarium inspired her to go into astrophysics when she was a kid, so she’s giving back. But why is David so opposed to creativity? Why are his exhibits — which are nominally for kids — just the facts and no fun? There’s more to explore between these two, but there’s a lot of other stuff going on.
There’s also the problem of building an entire story around two people coming together to make something truly spectacular. The movie sets up expectations for this exhibit that are either going to be a let down because we don’t see enough of it, or because what we do see is underwhelming. No spoilers, but Kat’s big idea that she believes will tie the whole sun/Christmas exhibit together is some top-shelf Hallmark madness that made me turn from #TeamKat to #TeamDavid real quick. It’s nice getting a reminder of just how wacky a Hallmark holiday movie can be.
Our Call: SKIP IT, at least for now. The cast has the right stuff and the movie is set where no Hallmark movie has gone before, but the romance could have used a little more rocket fuel.