Hallmark Channel’s Countdown to Christmas is full of feel-good holiday movies that range from family dramas, clever buddy comedies, and now, crime capers. The Christmas Charade is one of the more action-packed films we’ve seen on the network, and somehow, jamming an opposites-attract romance together with twinkle lights and jewel theft is just what Santa ordered.
THE CHRISTMAS CHARADE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: A blonde woman in sunglasses, head shrouded in a scarf, walks down a hallway of a grand, gothic hotel holding a red box in her hand.
The Gist: The Christmas Charade opens with a scene straight out of a James Bond movie. The mystery blonde enters a room where a man in a white tuxedo has been waiting for her. She hands him the box and he opens it to find a Christmas figurine. Hidden inside the figure is a microchip that he removes, saying, “The naughty list,” to which she responds, “Santa always delivers.” We then cut away to a woman on her couch who is watching this scene play out and we figure out this is a movie within a movie, and she’s mouthing every word to it as if she’s seen it twenty times before. The woman on her couch is a high-strung school librarian named Whitney (Rachel Skarsten). She’ your classic risk-averse, nerdy archetype, the woman who has a laundry list of reasons why the outside world is dangerous and harsh and that’s why she rarely goes out and definitely doesn’t trust most men and certainly doesn’t use dating apps, which are full of liars and murderers. Why is Whitney like this? Blame her parents Cheryl and Jim. They ran a security firm and when we meet them, they’re dry and humorless and you can see where Whitney gets her anxiety from. But when they pressure her to bring a date to her friend Rachel’s upcoming wedding, Whitney does the unthinkable – she emails a guy whose info she got from Rachel and sets up a date.
MEANWHILE, ACROSS TOWN… a grumpy FBI agent named Josh (Corey Sevier) is working on a case to prevent the theft of an invaluable necklace known as the Heart of Christmas. Josh’s supervisor hates that Josh does rogue and goes over his head, to when Josh tells his boss that he’s arranged a covert meeting with a couple he suspects of planning to steal the Heart of Christmas, his boss tells him he’s sending a female agent in with him, one Josh has never met, to pose as his girlfriend and report back on whether Josh is working within his job protocols.
When Josh arrives at the restaurant to meet the suspects, Lou and Patty Bateman (a name I desperately hope is a nod to American Psycho killer Patrick Bateman), his real partner is delayed but Whitney, mistakenly thinking he’s her date, sits down with him. And from there, she becomes tangled in an FBI plot and, after meeting the Batemans, is unable to extract herself because doing so would compromise Josh’s mission. With Josh’s boss’s blessing. Whitney starts to work alongside Josh, helping Patty plan a Christmas ball where the Heart of Christmas is supposedly going to be displayed, essentially as a mole to find out more about the Batemans’ plans. (Cue the “regular person training to be an FBI agent” scene!)
Whitney and Josh work together to catch the thieves in the act at the ball, while pretending to be boyfriend and girlfriend as a way to keep their real work a secret. Whitney’s parents eventually find out she’s “dating” someone and make Whitney and Josh join them for family game night. By the time the ball rolls around, Whitney and Josh have caught feelings for each other but they have a more important job to finish. What happens at the ball though… is an unexpected twist I didn’t see coming.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? If Ocean’s Twelve (you know, the one where the real Julia Roberts plays Tess Ocean playing “movie star Julia Roberts” has to steal a Fabergé egg) was a Hallmark movie and it had a baby with The Great Muppet Caper and the Sandra Bullock movie The Heat, it might slightly resemble The Christmas Charade.
Our Take: Here I thought that the fake movie-within-a-movie that kicked the movie off would be the most exciting part of The Christmas Charade but there are actually several moments of action and adventure throughout that held my attention. Though I’m a pretty dedicated Hallmark movie-watcher, it’s rare to come across one that actually has a criminal plot baked into holiday romance, and by the time the climax of the film rolled around, there were genuine plot twists and reveals I didn’t expect (which I won’t spoil here).
While the romance in the film is a bit underwhelming, Skarsten sparkles as Whitney, and you can’t help but feel like she’s pulling a little more weight as the star of the film because she’s given a lot to do. Beyond working with (and falling in love with) Josh, Whitney has an entire plot involving her parents that adds layers to her character. And she makes the most of all of it; Whitney is likeable and vulnerable, while also really leaning into her new gig as an FBI accomplice. If you’re looking for an adventurous take on a holiday movie, The Christmas Charade delivers.
Parting Shot: Josh shows up to Whitney’s apartment on Christmas; her parents are there, too. As they share a happy family Christmas together, Whitney says, “I was thinking, I should join the FBI,” to which everyone else responds in unison, “WHAT??!!“
Performance Worth Watching: I was worried that Rachel Skarsten was going to be trotted out as the nerdy librarian who’s secretly hot and eventually reveals her hotness to all when she takes off her glasses, and while that kind of happens, that’s not really her character arc. Instead, she lets Whitney own her nerdiness and successfully play it up for comic effect throughout. But her real arc comes when, after having this major adventure and helping to solve a crime, she stands up to her parents, whose obsession with safety stifled her into adulthood, and she realizes that she’s ready to break out the shell she’s been in this whole time.
Memorable Dialogue: “Where are you?” Whitney’s mother asks her when she calls to chat one night, not knowing Whitney’s been moonlighting with the FBI. “Just out for a drive,” Whitney lies, as she’s actually on a mission with Josh to swap the real necklace for a decoy. “At night? In the winter??” Whitney’s mom asks incredulously. It’s funny because I think I’ve actually had this same conversation about driving at night with my mom.
Our Call: The Christmas Charade is a lighthearted on an action-comedy caper. While you never get the sense of genuine peril, thanks to a few unexpected twists and turns, it’s a clever, cute riff on the genre.
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.
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