A December Bride

The last of our Christmas movies finally came in from the library. A December Bride, starring Daniel Lissing from When Calls the Heart.

The mountie uniform is better, but this will do

Like most of these movies it had some pretty dumb parts but still managed to be passably charming.  But also like a lot of these movies, the most annoying thing is that the dumb parts could so easily have been fixed.

So first the basic premise: Layla has to attend a December wedding between her ex-fiancee and her cousin. She goes to the wedding with her friend Seth (Lissing), who she is mad at because he introduced the couple. For plot reasons, they end up lying to everyone and saying they are engaged. While pretending to be engaged they fall in love.

One thing that I've learned about myself watching all these cheesy romance movies is that I'm a sucker for a fake couple who ends up falling in love, so in general I'm totally down. But the really ridiculous part is how short the timeline is.  It is fine for a couple to develop a connection in a couple weeks but THEY DON'T NEED TO GET ENGAGED AND/OR MARRIED DURING THAT TIME.

We find out early in the movie that one of the additional reasons Layla is so sad at her ex-fiancee's wedding, is that it is in December, and she had always dreamed of being...wait for it...A December Bride.

So when she and Seth are faking their engagement, everyone is extra excited because now she might end up as A December Bride. Cool cool cool. That could happen. They could get married a year or even two years from when the movie takes place.

But part of the way through the movie it becomes clear that everyone wants them to get married THIS DECEMBER. Like, THE SAME MONTH THAT THIS MOVIE TAKES PLACE. Everyone seems unaware that DECEMBER WILL HAPPEN AGAIN.

To pressure the main character into this idea, her aunt has her try on her late mother's wedding dress. Which is clearly just a regular, modern, strapless wedding dress.

LIES. FASHION HISTORY LIES.

ANYWAY when Seth and Layla finally do realize they are in love with each other they immediately get engaged and then IT CUTS TO THEIR WEDDING which by all indications is the SAME MONTH THE MOVIE STARTED.

Ok rating time.

Cheese rating: Three out of five wedges of cheese. Basically regular Hallmark fare.

Wine rating: Two and a half out of five glasses of wine. Had some basic charm, and extra points for the guy being the one one who learns a lesson about needing to work less and "get his priorities straight" whereas the woman is celebrated for career success. 

Hot men: Aforementioned charm machine Daniel Lissing would have chemistry with a candy cane. He is excellent at the required rom-com "I'm having such a great time with you because I'm so in love with you smile"

Quality stuff, although doesn't hold a candle to the "I'm in love with you and I'm really tortured about it" grimace required for any good period movie.

When Calls the Heart

We are going to start with When Calls the Heart because it was basically our gateway drug into this world of gentle watches.

We were drawn to it initially because:

1. Period piece
2. Plucky heroine
3. Hot Mountie - featured prominently in the Netflix promo screen
4. Low-stakes conflict that will be solved by the end of the hour
5. Easy to watch while also having a full conversation

A quick overview of the premise: Elizabeth Thatcher is a young socialite who leaves the big city to teach in the tiny frontier town of Coal Valley. Roughly six months before Elizabeth arrives, there was a terrible accident at the mine and 46 men from the town died, including Lori Loughlin's husband and son. It is a pretty dark beginning, and season one does deal (albeit superficially) with grief and PTSD and how a community moves forward after a tragedy. But as the show goes on, this disaster seems to be basically forgotten and everything is much more cheerful.  Mostly, it's a romantic story about finding yourself, learning heartfelt lessons and falling in love with ruggedly handsome men (Mounties, pastors, logging company owners, to name just a few).

Also inherent to the enjoyability of a gentle watch is how ridiculous or implausible some aspect of the story is. Fortunately ridiculousness abounds.

1. In season one, each episode focused on a different child going through the grief of losing their father in the mining accident. After that child was fixed, and learned to move on or love their mother or laugh again, we literally never see that child again.

2. In season one the town was drab, people wore brown, and miners actually came home with faces full of soot. By season two, the town is repainted in Disneyland colors, everyone suddenly has crisp new clothing, and looks clean and well rested. Nobody looks like they work in a mine anymore.

3. As part of the season two refresh, the costumes become atrociously hilarious. Check out Clara's old blog post about it here: http://thingsivacuumed.blogspot.com/2015/08/costume-meltdown.html

4. After some initial struggles, Elizabeth wins the children over with cheer and sincerity. After that they all sit quietly and hang on her every word. Take it from a teacher, that's literally never happened in a classroom in the history of the world.

5. Elizabeth is also basically teaching a freeform montessori education program. This is a frontier town when most kids would only be getting the "reading, writing, arithmetic" basics, yet Elizabeth is assigning environmental biology, essays about feelings, and endless art projects. All of the boys in this class would be going to work at the mine by the time they're 14, their parents would see learning the life cycle of a beetle to be a complete waste of time (which, let's be honest, that still sounds like a waste of time).

More spelling, less vision board making

6. Jack and Elizabeth have been "courting" for more than three seasons  - she would be straight-up considered a witch and a whore for the amount of time they spend alone together. In season four, it seems that Jack has dinner at Elizabeth's house every night, just the two of them. While obviously, in our modern times, this is fine and let's not slut-shame anyone here, but in 1910? It would be SO scandalous that the local school teacher and the town Mountie were basically living together unmarried. 

INAPPROPRIATE PUBLIC BEHAVIOR!!!

7. BROOKE SHIELDS?!?!

But enough about all that. Let's get to the good stuff. What is our rating and how hot are the men?

The Cheese Rating: It is definitely five out of five wedges of cheese.

[A real conversation that happened]

Olivia: This is so stupid.

Clara: ...are you...crying?

Olivia: ...no... *sniffs*

The Wine Rating: After much debate, When Calls the Heart get four out of five wine glasses. Despite our protestations, and the above list of ridiculousness, we're actually pretty emotionally invested in this show. We ship Elizabeth and Jack pretty hard and we have have very strong opinions about which of Lori Loughlin's many love interests is best for her .

Hot Men: Well stocked. Mountie Jack is the main eye candy but there is a pretty steady parade throughout. It might warrant its own post later, but for now we'll leave you with this.

Welcome to Gentle Watches

These days, it feels like everything is trash. The news is important, but terrible for mental health. Hallmark channel movies are terrible, but good for mental health.

So what is a gentle watch?

A gentle watch is a movie or TV show that is cheesy, uncomplicated, and always has a happy ending. It requires very little emotional involvement, and is fine to talk over. It always includes a predictable romance.

During the first year of Trump's presidency, we found ourselves drawn more and more to this kind of relaxing, silly entertainment. So we're here to share that joy with you all.

In doing so, we acknowledge that it is a privilege to be able to unwind. It is not a replacement for resistance; it is an attempt at self care.

Can you give me some examples? 

Over Thanksgiving we started a list and this is how long it is now:

Not in this category are actually good movies, like Strictly Ballroom, Clueless, 10 Things I Hate About You, and any Jane Austen adaptation.

Those movies are comforting and wonderful but they are TOO GOOD to count as gentle watches. They require focus and elicit emotional investment. We still get actively angry when Lucy Steele shows up in Sense and Sensibility.

What is your rating system?
Well, as a teacher, one of us uses rubrics fairly often, and the both of us enjoy a good standardized rating system. After many hours of calibration, we have developed a scientific, peer-reviewed rubric involving glasses of wine and wedges of cheese. Decisions will be subjective, deal with it, it's our blog.

The cheese scale: This defines the cheese factor - warm, comforting, sometimes makes your heart melt, sometimes just makes you gassy.

Wine scale: This is the X-factor of the film. Do we enjoy the leading lady? How hot is the leading man? How spicy/believable is their chemistry? Do they even have any chemistry?

Who is writing this blog?

This blog is written by Clara and Olivia: single gals, roommates, friends, self-proclaimed experts in many, many fields.