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The new holiday movie premieres Saturday, Nov. 29, at 9 PM on cable's The Hallmark Channel. (8 PM Central). Check your local TV guide for other dates and times.
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Hallmark's 2008 holiday romance for cable fans
of TheColumnists.com
One of the appealing things to me about the made-for-TV movies on cable's The Hallmark Channel is the chance it gives us to see old TV favorites that you don't see anywhere else these days, usually acting with newcomers from network TV shows, trying to work a little versatility into their resumes.
For example, just last week we saw Jacqueline Bissett in "An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving." This week it's Candace Cameron-Bure, who spent most of her youth playing Donna "D. J." Tanner on ABC's "Full House," which ran for eight seasons on ABC between 1987-95. She's co-starring with veteran comic actor Tom Arnold, who also is seldom seen lately.
Tom and Candace play father and daughter in "Moonlight & Mistletoe," which may be the first of the many Christmas-oriented movie specials of the fall. (I haven't been keeping count--but it's the first I've seen.) It premieres Saturday night at 9 (8 central) on The Hallmark Channel.
Candace is an especially familiar face to me because I often watched her and the rest of the "Full House" ensemble tape their weekly episodes in front of a live audience back in the 1980s when I was stationed in Los Angeles, covering television for a newspaper chain. She was only about 10 when the show began and, of course, the Olsen twins, who shared the role of Michele Tanner, were still toddlers.
TV sitcom kids often have a tough time continuing their careers when they reach maturity because so many cute kids often grow into just regular-looking adults and still want to deliver their lines like smarmy little wiseguys and smartasses. I'm happy to report that Candace, who's now 22, has matured into a very handsome young woman and clearly acts like one.
In the movie, Candace plays "Holly," the grown-up daughter of "Nick" (Tom Arnold), who operates a year-round Christmas attraction called "Santaville," which is located in Chester, Vermont, the real community where the movie was filmed. Because she had to live Christmas all year throughout her youth, Holly has turned into a holiday Grinch. She now works at an intensive office job in the big city and is such a workaholic that she doesn't even want to take time off at Christmas.
But she has to when she learns that her dad has been injured in a sleigh accident just at crunch time--the profitable holiday season. When she turns up back in her old home town, she also discovers that her dad's Santaville operation is in serious debt and will have to go out of business if he can't raise $50,000 by Christmas Eve.
Holly wasn't even planning to stay at Santaville at Christmas, but now she can't see any way out of it. The rest of the movie involves the emotional overhaul of this troubled young woman as she slowly, but surely begins to get with the Christmas spirit.
What helps her the most is her slow realization that her dad's best local ally, a wood craftsman named Peter, is really the same boy she had a crush on in her youth. Can Peter shake the dust off Holly and get her going again on the right path? Well, if we asked Barack Obama, he'd probably say, 'Yes, he can!"
Meanwhile, Nick, a widower, has been courting a local waitress named Ginny, so we have two levels of romance brewing in "Moonlight & Mistletoe." And the actors who play the romantic partners are new faces from recent network prime time programs. Peter is played by Christopher Wiehl from the recents sci-fi series "Jericho" and Ginny is played by Barbara Niven from the cast of "Eli Stone."
Though much of this movie is predictable holiday movie stuff, it's still pretty likeable. Veteran Director Karen Arthur, whose specialty used to be the heavy dramatic TV movies they don't much make anymore, does a good job with this lighter fare and Tom Arnold and Candace Cameron-Bure are both superb in a "feel good" movie that actually works.
For those who don't know, Candace Cameron is married to well-known professional hockey player Valeri Bure, which accounts for her new name. (They were introduced by Dave Coulier, one of her adult co-stars in "Full House.") She's the mother of three children and, since she was 20 and became a "Born Again" Christian, has devoted much of her time to religious activities.
She's obviously capable of playing a wide variety of mainstream roles now, so if this movie does well, maybe we'll be seeing a lot more of her in the future.
©2008 by Ron Miller. The photo of Tom Arnold is courtesy of The Hallmark Channel and the photo of Candace Cameron-Bure is courtesy of her personal website for fans. This column first posted Nov. 24, 2008.
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