Yeah, I know. Me, reviewing a new Hallmark movie. Sounds completely nuts, right? Well, this movie matters in a few big ways and are worth discussing. Happy reading!
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“Artist Traci is a once-devout Christian who has stopped believing in God after her husband tragically died despite her prayers. As her second Christmas without him approaches, she tries going to a support group for inspiration and comfort.”
A movie like this, airing on the 2nd channel of a main network that has had nothing but 1 non faith based movie after another this holiday season. Sounds a little out of place, right? Like, when was the last time a faith based movie like this was even made for Hallmark?
If this looks like something Hallmark wouldn't even think of making these days, well. Technically, Faith Based company Dayspring produced it, and they are quite reliable when it comes to making sure faith and religion is represented in movies. So there's your answer. Hallmark probably just bought this movie because 2 of it's regular stars are in it and they obviously needed something to appeal to the audience that they have completely turned their backs on for the last 2 years.
Hallmark and it's brand was built on quality family friendly entertainment, and faith based movies, or movies with a similar view to them was a big part of it. It thrived on good clean movies like this. Movies like this or close to it is where it really shined.
Unfortunately, with new woke leadership at the company came trying to appeal to an audience that will definitely never really care about Hallmark like it's true audience will. And thus came all the movies with woke themes or sneaking in background gay couples and less and less of the movies with faith included.
Tragic isn't it? That a huge company that built itself with a core audience that is mostly conservative and Christian would just turn it's back on them over the course of 2 years, and then agree to air a movie that now feels completely out of place in it's new lineup because they clearly needed something to prove they might still care about their REAL core audience?
Don't get me wrong, it's nice to see an actual Christian movie airing on HMM. Except there's a couple of facts that I find fault with:
1, Look at what new movie Hallmark is airing tonight. Would the real Hallmark that actually cares about it's real core audience agree to air a movie about 2 disgusting 'uncles' looking after a kid?
2, Given the amount of really bad writing, woke themes, and pandering to crowds that definitely don't really care if they're 'represented' in movies that has happened this season, would the real Hallmark agree to air any of those stupid movies if they really cared about their real audience?
Long story short, Is this movie actually just pandering to the audience that built this network to be the movie destination that it is today?? An audience that they have clearly left behind in pursuit of losers that only care about if non whites, gays or whatever loser group exists out there is in whatever form of entertainment there is in these movies????
Think of it. A movie like this would've fit right in on this network just 3 years ago. Now, it just looks completely out of place in a lineup consisting of a lot of movies that don't even bring up God, or the real meaning of Christmas, and are really badly written in a lot of cases.
As nice as it is to finally have a new, real faith based movie on a network that was built on family friendly entertainment, what's really the point of airing this if you're clearly not going to change back into airing actual clean movies that don't uselessly pander or have woke themes or everything else that is now wrong with the network??
Am I trying to say that Hallmark should give up on airing faith based movies altogether? No. What I'm saying is Hallmark needs to quit the 'playing both sides' junk and determine what side they're really on. Is it the side of evil? Is it the side of the core audience they were built on? They can't have it both ways, that just gets frustrating and confusing. And also, movies that are obvious pandering to a crowd that the company doesn't care about annoy me to hell! (if you're wondering what kind of pandering I'm talking about, here's 1: The new movie that Hallmark made to try and pander to the color blind community, 'The Most Colorful Time of the Year', didn't even bother to get basic facts about color blindness right! So all that movie ended up doing was make complete fools out of the very community they were pandering to!!).
As for how I suspect that this wonderful movie is just another pandering attempt, I found out from a friend that Hallmark was promoting this as 'their 1st faith based movie'. That's an absolute lie. Remember the 'Love Comes Softly' movies?
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To wrap this up, This was a lovely movie, and I enjoyed it very much and I'm glad Dayspring made this. If I ever go through a terrible loss, I can't think of a better community then this 1 to get through it with.
What I don't like is that given the circumstances now, this movie looks like Hallmark is pretending to still care about it's core audience. If it really DID still care, it would make more faith based movies like this year round and cut out the propaganda movies. And since I don't see any evidence of that happening, well. That means a lovely faith based movie like this, looks like pandering to the very audience that has been slowly yet surely rejected several times in the past 2 years on a network that was built by the conservative Christian audience! Very sad indeed.