We watched this D.C.-based Lifetime Christmas movie so you don't have to
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Mimi here, to tell you about a D.C.-based Lifetime Christmas movie that might fry your retinas.
Why it matters: I'm no culture snob — it's not like I'm hanging at home streaming Godard films — but there are good-bad Christmas movies (the new Lindsay Lohan one on Netflix, for instance), and then there are bad-bad Christmas movies.
- "Match Made in Mistletoe" might be the latter.
For the record: Good-good Christmas movies include "The Family Stone" and "Love Actually." I will not hear otherwise.
The premise: "Match Made in Mistletoe" follows a decorator who grew up on a Christmas farm somewhere around D.C. and is hired for a ball at the Embassy of Belmaria. (Apparently, the Genovian Embassy was booked.)
- The Belmarian ambassador hates Christmas decor (even though he grew up … on a reindeer farm). He's a widower, and his late wife loved Christmas decor. Meaning he is now strongly anti-ornament and garland.
- Our female protagonist, meanwhile, loves Christmas decor. You see where this is going!
The review: Holy nutcrackers, where to begin?
To start, it appears that absolutely no one behind this movie did D.C. research or, like, even glanced at Google Maps. (We are informed, however, that the vaguely Scandinavian country of Belmaria is south of Denmark. Although everyone from there has an American accent.)
- The Washington Monument seems to be in the Belmarian Embassy's backyard — which is impossible unless the embassy is a bubble tea cart on the Mall.
- The setting looks more Duluth than D.C. — it's snowed under, which hasn't happened here at Christmas since 2009. (C'mon, don't Lifetime producers read Capital Weather Gang??)
- The decorator's family also runs a Christmas tree farm 20 minutes outside D.C., which … what? Where is this farm, Ballston?
And, perhaps most unbelievably, said decorator lives in a sprawling, well-decorated farmhouse in D.C. proper.
- Ma'am, have you seen our real estate prices?
Between the lines: Perhaps I'm being a Grinch and I need to, in the words of our Lifetime movie friends, remember that "Christmas isn't about opening presents. It's about opening hearts."
- But you have to spend your hard-earned $2.99 to rent this movie on Amazon Prime — and there are plenty of bad-bad Christmas movies out there to stream for free. Save your money for a trip to Belmaria, instead.
The bottom line: This is the movie version of that person who says they live in D.C. but really lives in Gaithersburg.