Courtesy of Lifetime
Haylie Duff’s nose impersonates Gwenyth in Sliding Doors for our final made-for-TV Christmas Movie BINGO. Let’s bitch it out…
Plot: Up and coming party planner (what again?!) Eve Wright (Haylie Duff) lands the opportunity of a lifetime (Lifetime?) when she is personally requested to plan the holiday party for Tech giant Gobble after a meet-cute with its CEO Aidan Green (Chris Carmack). When she arrives late at the airport, her life splits into two timelines: one in which she makes the plane and falls in love with Aidan and one in which she misses the flight, gets fired, and discovers her boyfriend Warren (Stephen Colletti) is cheating on her. It’s totes an original story.
Conflict: In the Hollywood timeline Eve remains a workaholic like her dragon lady bitch boss, Elizabeth Cole (Connie Sellecca). That’s not entirely true, but for the ending of the film to work, the narrative gods demand that she break Aidan’s heart, eff everything up and run back to NY in shame. Meanwhile, in the unemployment timeline, Eve must rebuild her life from scratch, working in her friend Lila’s (Bianca Lawson) bar and taking an artist in-residence at a Village art shop. Because she’s secretly a wannabe-painter, because of course she effing is.
Weirdest Features: Where to start?
- Everyone drinks before 11am: Eve’s boss Elizabeth drinks during what appears to be an 8am meeting and Eve gets sloppy in first class on her 7:30am plane. According to All About Christmas Eve if you want to succeed in the party business, you gotta party…before breakfast.
- Half of the extras are gay porn stars. Like actual gay porn stars. But it’s never addressed. It’s enough to make me wonder if the casting agent was actually f*cking all of these guys in real life and promised them a shot in a real movie <cough>, then tried like hell to make sure that the director and Haylie never realized that the super smiley gate attendant at the airport is the same guy who makes his living gagging for dicks.
- In the unemployment timeline, Eve laments her bad fortune over drinks with drag queens at her friends’ bar. Because why not? (See the above point) It’s kind of progressive, except that the queens’ make-up is atrocious; to the extent that it’s closer to clown-drag than regular drag. All in all this is the gayest made-for-TV holiday movie we’ve ever seen (outside of Make The Yuletide Gay, of course, but the less said about that, the better)
- In the Hollywood timeline, Adrian poses as a flower vendor to prank call Eve. The issue? His prank doesn’t just border on sexual harassment, it’s downright creepy. Clearly we’re meant to laugh and think he’s being silly and cute, but asking her about what she’s wearing and suggesting that he’s supervising employees naked? That’s actually incredibly unprofessional and icky, bud.
- In the Hollywood timeline, getting American Idol has-been Diana DeGarmo to play the party is a big deal. I won’t lie: I literally had no idea who the hell she was (she apparently took runner-up spot in 2004). Is she still relevant 8 years later (when this film was made)? Ditto for her paramour, Ace Young (from AI S5) who I also had to look up. This is some serious D-List shit here, folks.
- In the unemployment timeline, Eve paints her friend Lila’s store window on the outside. And then everyone applauds like morons.
Ugh Element: Why is the movie’s title a play on All About Eve when the young up and comer taking out the seasoned pro is barely a minor plot point? There’s only one reason moment that justifies the title: Matt (Gib Gerard) includes party photos of Eve – in a bikini no less! – during the Gobble presentation in an effort to undermine his boss. Naturally all it does is make Aidan and his fundraiser Tino (Patrick Muldoon) salivate like horny dogs. I, on the other hand, had to hit pause and rinse out my eyes with bleach.
- Also: the up-tempo Christmas songs are really treacly and annoying. Faux jazz for the fail!
- Also, also: when the two timelines finally converge, it becomes this fantastic, silly schmaltzy moment as the pair of Duffs (now there’s a holiday movie title!) mimic each other’s movement and evocatively place the hand in the same position on opposite sides of the glass. Picture it this way: Duff looks like she’s about to make out with and/or poke herself in the eyes. So magical…
Saddest Moment: The biggest single tearjerker moment occurred when I realized that all of the great BINGO elements like ‘Dead Family’, ‘Financial Constraint’, ‘Cute Animal’ and ‘Canadian Content’ wouldn’t make it onto the list. Still, I do feel like ‘Mini-Golf’ is at least the equivalent of ‘Ice Skating’.
Sample lines of atrocious dialogues:
- Aidan (when Eve asks what he does for work as he illegally pours them drinks when the bartender isn’t looking): “You mean other than whip up girlie drinks for complete strangers?”
- Eve (when her mom talks about her sex life): “Ok TMI, mom” and later: “You guys I’m right here!” Haylie Duff as the straight man in an elderly person sex romp is my new xmas wish
- Eve (when Lila offers her a job in the bar): “Or I could just strip?” OH GAWD NO
- Elizabeth (frowning on Eve’s attempt to use her goodbye): “Oh no, Ciao is mine.”
And here’s the trailer!
That’s it for our made-for-TV Christmas Movie BINGO. What did you think of All About Christmas Eve? Is Haylie Duff your favourite Lifetime/Hallmark/UTV actress evah? And what’s your favourite made-for-TV holiday film? Sound off below.