Sugarplummed
Writer: Ryan Landels
Director: Ryan Landels
Cast: Janel Parrish, Maggie Lawson, Brendon Zub, Kyra Leroux, Shiraine Haas, Avan Stewart
Maggie Lawson (Christmas in Evergreen: Tidings of Joy) plays Emily, a big city lawyer (is there any other kind?) who just wants one teeny, easily-accomplished thing: a perfect Christmas for her and her family! Her family, however, is kind of allergic to perfection. Her daughter Nina (Riverdale's Kyra Leroux) wants to go to college for music, which — liberal arts? When your mom is a lawyer and your dad is an architect? I don't think so! And Emily's son Max (Avan Stewart) is having a terrible time fitting in at school. He unwinds by making secret TikTok-style dance videos that he's too scared to actually share. And Emily's husband Ben (Time for Them to Come Home for Christmas' Brendon Zub) is constantly being pushed around by a boss that's equal parts Scrooge and Grinch. How is Emily going to check all five items off of her holiday checklist if her family is in such disarray?!
It turns out if you want to have a flawless holiday, all you have to do is wish upon a magic tree-topper that's somehow made its way into your family's ornament box and — ding! — the protagonist of your all-time favorite series of Hallmark — excuse me, Harmony Home holiday movies will magically appear and give you all the rules you need to have the greatest Christmas ever.
This, if you haven't gathered, is what Emily inadvertently does when her assistant accidentally sends her old ornaments to her corporate office. Emily has a meet creepy with Sugarplum (Never Been Chris'd's Janel Parrish), the perky embodiment of the lovable, perfectly styled Type-A overachiever that both Parrish and Lawson have absolutely played in previous Hallmark movies. But Sugarplum is something no other Hallmark leading lady is: she's fully self-aware, as in she knows she's a character and she knows The Rules.
The Rules are, of course, a thick book of tropes, plot contrivances, themes, and dei ex machina that make Hallmark movies the right kind of preposterously cheerful. Rules about always entering a Christmas contest, everything you bake always turning out right, finding the perfect gift on Christmas Eve no matter what — all you have to do is follow the rules!
But, uh, Sugarplum — you're in the real world now. And Emily has a real life with real problems. This holiday magic can't really solve all these headaches, can it? And surely Emily's very practical to-do list isn't as unreasonable and unattainable as Sugarpum's big leather-bound rule book...?
Home for the Holidays: We're in a big, unnamed city and the only small town vibes we get come from Sugarplums wistful memories of her home, Perfection. The Mitchell family has one key ritual: the Holiday Checklist, which was devised by Emily's mother. It includes:
- Beautifully decorated house
- Plenty of family time
- Perfect gifts
- A gorgeous tree
- One magical Christmas memory made as a family
Emily has never completed the checklist.
Twas the Night Before This Movie: Okay, it's not exposition, per se, but this line from Emily to her assistant killed me: "Jess, can you please not watch full-length made-for-TV holiday movies while at work and, I don't know, assist me?" It's like this Hallmark movie needed to explain the concept of Hallmark movies to us. I live. I was killed, and I live.
Ho Ho Ho: Okay, Sugarplummed has by far the funniest script of the holiday season — at least of the movies I've seen. Emily devising the fake name "Sue Garplum" for Sugarplum; the rule that "flannel is a natural aphrodisiac" (girl, true); but I'll give this to Sue's response when she finds out Emily has ... a career: "I never dreamed I'd meet a big city girl who didn't turn her back on [a career] to be with the small town guy who's taking over his family's generational business!" It's the phrase "generational business" that is so specific and so pitch perfect.
They Brought Presence! Janel Parrish as Sugarplum stands head and shoulders above every other comedic performance in any Hallmark movie this year, maybe every year. Hallmark movies so rarely introduce characters with this much of a fantastical bent who have this clear of a character game, who are performed with such gusto. She's like Mary Poppins meets Buddy the elf, as filtered through Hallmark. There's a bit of Jenna Maroney, if Jenna was rated G. There's some old school Eva Gabor in Green Acres to her. There's even a bit of Spock, oddly! She's constantly walking this line between clueless, clued-in, glamorous, and weird. It's a stellar performance.
Exactly as Advertised: Sugarplummed is an odd title, admittedly, because it conveys absolutely nothing unless it's paired with the trailer or a cast list. What does it mean to be "sugarplummed"? I also have a lot of questions about how the in-universe Sugarplum franchise works. Is the character's name Sugarplum? Or is the actress named Sugarplum, like a Christmas Beyonce? Is Sugarplum the same character in all of those movies and, if so, why does she keep losing and finding so many holiday jobs? Anyway — the title is great once you know what the movie is about, but it doesn't do a great job of telling you what the movie is about on its own.
But who cares? Sugarplummed is the most exciting Hallmark movie of the year. The movie has such an extremely high concept, one that is primed to skewer the very traditions that fans love, and it commits so fully to that concept while still retaining the joy of the genre and never once turning cynical. I am admittedly a sucker for movies that go for tropes (like The Bitch Who Stole Christmas and A Clusterfunke Christmas), so I'm an easy mark for Sugarplummed. That's why I found it so remarkable that it managed to maintain its Hallmarkiness while still having fun with Hallmarkiness.
What keeps Sugarplummed from being an outright satire, though, is that it retains the sincerity and heart that is more integral to Hallmark movies than adherence to any rules. I love the way that the movie points out that all of the hyper-specific holiday aspirations we all break our necks to reach are just as weird and unattainable IRL as the rules that holiday rom-coms follow. We spend the season poking fun at how these movies always end predictably with a kiss on Christmas Eve — and then we stress ourselves out trying to take the perfect Christmas photo to end all Christmas photos. It's equally silly!
I also have to applaud writer/director Ryan Landels (who also crushed it with Santa Tell Me — he is two for two!) for writing a Hallmark romance wherein the central love story is not between an uptight business lady and her high school crush. Sugarplummed is, ultimately, a love story about familial love — the love between a husband and wife, sure, but also between a mother and her children, and the love between the entire family unit. Once that became clear to me? It was over. Tears all over the keyboard.
All that, plus a fantastic character arc for Emily portrayed by Maggie Lawson and all the wonder of Ms. Sue Garplum? I'm convinced. I'm a believer in whatever magic this movie is selling. Oh — I got Sugarplummed.
