| Holiday Mismatch should be at the top of any Hallmark Christmas rotation. The characters are very simplistic but it’s a really nice romance with the right amount of comedy sprinkled in. It also employs two of the better rom-com tropes: fake dating turning into real dating; and meddling families who are constantly trying to get them together and then break them up and using reverse psychology and reverse-reverse psychology and then rinse and repeat. | | 2024
Directed by: Caroline Labrèche
Screenplay by: Sarah Wise
Starring: Beth Broderick, caroline Rhea, Maxine Denis and Jon McLaren
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The mismatch in the title is the simplistic and opposite characterizations for the two lead mothers. Barbara (Beth Broderick), who goes by Barbara not Barb, is a newly-retired accountant and has joined the town’s Christmas committee as something to do. She lives a perfectly ordered life with perfectly matching décor and knows she’s always right. The city employee who leads the Christmas committee is Kath (Caroline Rhea) a free-spirited artistic soul who has no plan and no watch, but also knows that she’s always right. They hate each other.
But they do have one more thing in common. Barbara has a single son, Shane (Jon McLaren), that she tries setting up; and Kath has a single daughter, Lauren (Maxine Denis), that she tries setting up. There is a great invention in this cinematic world: there is an app for mothers to use to find a match for their single adult kids. That is such a silly concept that the film just strikes the right comedic tone from the start.
The kids (in their 30s) have the same but contrasting simplistic characterizations as their parents: Lauren is an organized and controlled workaholic architect while Shane is an artistic actor/theater-owner who always tries to find the easy way around things. This is a common Hallmark problem but the annoyingly simplistic characters do bring down an otherwise well-balanced rom-com.
Shane and Lauren who are matched by their mothers on the “moms dating app” start the ruse by fake dating to appease their over-protective mothers. The now-bickering mothers change their minds and we have a romance born out of two people who don’t want to be together brought on by two people who want them together no longer want them together. And that’s just act one, there’s a whole lot more meddling to come.
The movie works because the romance works. Actors Jon McLaren and Maxine Denis have good chemistry together, the characters match well, and it is so easy to root for them as a couple. Even though it’s obvious where the ending is headed, you want to watch them get there and it is nicely helped along by all of the comedy along the way. It’s a simple concept but Holiday Mismatch is an enjoyable watch.
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