HBO Max jump into this year’s Christmas cinema fray holiday harmony, a Rom Dram showcase for newcomer Annelise Cepero, backed by a trusted veteran in Brooke Shields. This tale of an itinerant singer with big music biz hopes promises a little more musical panache than we usually get from formulaic vacation TV movies. Perhaps it stands out from the competition thanks to its prestigious HBO/Warner Bros. branding — well, relative prestige, anyway, compared to the cheap aesthetics of Hallmark and Lifetime, which make up the main glut of streaming/cable holiday fodder floating about spreading across the landscape like a oozing, perpetually hungry, semi-sentient slime mold creature, consuming us as much as we are consuming it. joy for the world!
The essentials: Gail (Cepero) lives in a van, not necessarily down by the river, but it’s thought she parks it by a river at least occasionally as she travels the country in it, singing in pubs and clubs and dreaming big of musical fame. What kind of van is that you might be wondering? An old, rusty Volkswagen bus, of course, because disrupting Econoline just doesn’t fit the cutesy aesthetic of these types of movies, nor does it look anywhere near what it looks like on Insta. Anyway, we first meet Gail in Miami, where she hits a Pat Benatar cover on request for a small audience. She submits a performance video to a prominent non-fictional radio and podcast media company whose name has been scripted at least a dozen times in hopes of getting her an opening act for the media giant’s upcoming Christmas concert in brings in Los Angeles. Maybe after the movie you feel compelled to listen to this company’s audio content? The group would appreciate that very much!
Just when you’re wondering if the expectation of winning the competition will make up the plot, that expectation is turned on its head when Gail actually wins the thing, setting in motion an entirely different cliché: The Traveling Across the Country Under Deadline Road Comedy. She hops into her van, which she named Jewel, possibly because the real singer, Jewel, was known to be homeless and, like Gail, lived off her vehicle. The pressure is on: Not only does she have to go to LA, but she also has to write her own song, a challenge for a career cover song singer. She makes her way across the country, scraping together last-minute gigs that barely pay, living hand-to-mouth, broadcasting her journey to her many social media followers, and we half-expect her to Meets Frances McDormand for expert class on how to defecate in a bucket. THAT would be one hell of an Instagram story!
The journey is going well until she nearly murders an alpaca lying in the middle of the road – and brings down poor old Jewel. But the way these things are going, fate is in motion: the dumb alpaca is owned by Van (Shields), who happens to own an auto repair shop, and happens to be the mother of a handsome mechanic, Jeremy (Jeremy Sumpter), who happens to know where Gail fast can make some karaoke money, and also happens to know that the local middle school needs a music teacher, things that happen to help Gail quite a bit because Gail just can’t afford the car repairs. Now please tell me, what’s the name of the town Gail finds herself in staring at a handsome mechanic who says shit like “Ain’t no sense of imagination here”? Harmony Springs of course. Not Harmony Sleeps or Harmony Chills Out or Harmony Withers on the Vine and Dies a Slow and Anonymous Death, but Harmony SPRINGS. For some reason, this feels like a place to write a sweet new Christmas song and/or finally root and stick around for a while.
Which movies will it remind you of?: holiday harmony carries a real Christmas movie pedigree with Lauren Swickard, who co-wrote and also wrote the screenplay and starred in both California Christmas Movies for Netflix. So this movie is like those movies – you know, mildly pleasant – crossed with School of Rockas the main character ends up teaching music to a class of adorable misfit kids.
Notable performance: Cepero can sing fairly well and act almost as well, so she shows promise in her first leading role. She certainly deserves a better script to recite and a song to sing than what she gets here.
Memorable dialogue: Gail subtly breaks the fourth wall with the following line, which suddenly makes her realize she’s in a cheesy Christmas movie: “A woman named Van wants to vixen my Van. Where the hell am I?”
gender and skin: none.
Our opinion: holiday harmony differs from the Christmas TV-movie industrial complex in one important respect: it beats the usual 85-minute running time of these things by a whopping 25 minutes. Whole worlds are created and destroyed in TV Christmas movies during this time, but nothing happens in this one that’s dramatically compelling or funny – it’s just 25 more uninspired minutes that add to the overall bland whole.
The screenplay, written by Swickard and Christopher James Harvill, consists of a “Just So Happens” storyline with levels of invention that are off the charts (or should be off the charts). musical Diagrams yuk yuk har har?). It doesn’t do much to inspire Cepero and Sumpter, whose struggle to spark much chemistry makes this film a rom-blah. It doesn’t touch on much comedy either; The wacky alpaca is quickly sidelined for the antics of the schoolchildren in Gail’s class, an exchange of rather dubious merit. And musically – well, two rapping middle schoolers go a long way in torpedoing the goodwill generated by Cepero’s moving rendition of Johnny Cash’s “Wayfaring Stranger,” giving the film a strong lyrical metaphor it doesn’t deserve. This holiday musical just sings flat.
Our appeal: SKIP IT. holiday harmony is boring, perfectly sane background fodder, perfect for half-watching while scrolling through your phone trying to find a good deal on an air fryer for your mother-in-law. Other films of this type are not as boring and serious and achieve just as much in less time.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more about his work below johnserbaatlarge.com.
