New Years Eve 2020 is a weird one as pretty much everyone in the UK is now under ‘Tier 4’ restrictions, meaning we’re not allowed to have parties or have visitors at all (though by the sound coming from our neighbours’ houses tonight, I’m pretty sure a lot of folk were making up their own rules). It’s an odd, depressing way to face Hogmanay, but we remind ourselves that we have a three year old to look after, so we wouldn’t be doing much partying anyway. I make the most of a gorgeous snowy afternoon by bunking off work for a while to help Amelia build her first snowman and go sledging, which gives us all an undeniable lift.
This sets the scene well for Christmas Under Wraps, starring Candace Cameron Bure, possibly the strongest candidate for Hallmark’s Queen of Christmas. The actress, producer, author, and talk show panellist has made at least a staggering twenty-nine of them. I decide it would be rude not to see what all the fuss is about.
In 2014’s …Under Wraps, she's Lauren, an ambitious doctor who reluctantly takes a job in a remote Alaskan town. There, she starts a romance with the local handyman and begins to suspect that the town is hiding a big secret. SPOILER! – the whole thing is a front for Santa and his elves. It’s daft, it's audacious, it…doesn’t quite work. But it’s good fun.
Filmed on location in Utah, it’s a gorgeous, snowy setting and this feels like more of an adventure than the others I’ve seen. It features some spectacular scenes with Lauren flown across the beautiful frosty landscape in a tiny plane, hammering home that she's a real fish out of water, the Big City girl plonked into a quaint remote town and forced to rethink her whole attitude to life – pure Hallmark, essentially.
Cameron Bure proves a really agreeable, engaging actor and her charms effortlessly carry this tall tale. Brian Doyle Murray shows up a gravelly-voiced, jolly Santa, while David O’Donnell is an interesting, goofy romantic lead as Andy, Santa’s handyman son.
Lauren soon has a mystery to solve. What is the local shipping warehouse hiding behind its closed doors? Why are her patients coming in with ‘toy-making’ injuries? Why is she being called out to help an injured reindeer called Rudy? If it sounds daft, that’s because it is, but it’s tongue-in-cheek and makes this a lot more fun than your standard movie romance tale.
Lauren soon must choose between the big job offer in The City and small town life as the girlfriend of Santa’s son. The film makes the choice seem like a no-brainer, but I’m troubled that a gifted surgeon would abandon the chance to save loads of lives in favour of a cushy, stress-free life in the middle of nowhere. Though she does get to literally Save Christmas, so fair enough, I guess?
Happy New Year!
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