A Christmas themed product from the Lifetime network and actress/producer Melissa Joan Hart (whose mother Paula gets both producer and executive producer credits). A VERY NUTTY CHRISTMAS is of note because it’s one of the weirder Lifetime movies I’ve seen, offering a cockeyed inversion of THE NUTCRACKER and a message that fully lives up to the “nutty” designation: that true holiday cheer is possible only through the intercession of a doll in human form.
A VERY NUTTY CHRISTMAS (2018) Trailer
As in most movies of this type, the setting is a small Northeastern town housing an especially cozy bakery. Its owner Kate (Hart) is readying the place for “Operation Cookie Drop,” i.e. a massive upswing in business, despite having lost her Christmas spirit after being dumped by her actor boyfriend Mark (Ryan Caltagirone). She’s given a wooden nutcracker doll, apparently the “original” such figure, which the following morning becomes a full-sized man (Barry Watson). This fellow calls himself Chip, sports a goatee and has a “Made in Germany” neck tattoo–and threatens to resume his original form on Christmas Day.
Among Chip’s oddities are the mistaking of a traffic signal for Christmas lights and an impulsive climb to the top of a Christmas tree decoration. He also proves quite useful to Kate’s business, being able to make cookies at an impossibly fast clip and crack nuts with his hands and teeth. He furthermore provides Kate with the romantic spark her life currently lacks, escorting her to a Christmas ball and using his powers to ensure that she wins everything in the end-of-the-night raffle.
Things invariably go south between Kate and Chip, with she kicking him out of the bakery and he insisting on stationing himself outside—to protect her, he maintains, from the Mouse King. The latter arrives in the form of a sleazy fellow (John Mondin) who runs the Mousel and Sons Trucking outfit, and Chip uses his powers to make sure the guy can’t do any lasting damage. This fails to stop Chip from performing his scheduled Christmas Day disappearing act, but a friend’s serviceman son who looks just like Chip returns from Germany to carry on the holiday romance.
Contained in A VERY NUTTY CHRISTMAS are many the things that make cable TV Christmas movies annoying, namely a relentlessly cloying, cutesy tone and an overabundance of traditional chick flick staples. Included in that category are the obnoxiously stereotypical gay best friend character, a trying-on-dresses montage and a male lead who’s too good to be true (a designation made quite literal here).
There’s no sense going into the paint-by-numbers narrative, which hits all the expected holiday movie beats, or the uniformly perfunctory characterizations; the protagonists are identified in the credits by their first names only, with everyone else going nameless (“Kid,” “Woman At Post Office,” “Snow Guy,” etc.). The performances follow suit, with Hart delivering a notably underachieving turn (with gratuitous shout-outs to her past career—a cookie named “Sabrina,” etc.).
Yet there’s an ineffable strangeness to A VERY NUTTY CHRISTMAS that places it apart from its fellows. It’s certainly not good; just the opposite, in fact, being a film that is in all respects very, very bad.
Vital Statistics
A VERY NUTTY CHRISTMAS
Hartbreak Films
Director: Colin Theys
Producers: Paula Hart, Andrew Gernhard, Erica Joseph Hunter
Screenplay: Keith Giglio, Juliet Giglio
Cinematography: Branden James Maxham
Editing: Rob Pallatina
Cast: Melissa Joan Hart, Barry Watson, Marissa Jaret Winokur, Rizwan Manji, Conchata Ferrell, Ryan Caltagirone, Joanna Howard, Richard Riehle