Lancom Entertainment, Monogram Pictures (II),
Patrick Muldoon, Dina Meyer, Ian Ziering, Bill Cobbs, David Chokachi, Erin Gray, Kirstin Dorn, Devin Lawrence
Joe (Patrick Muldoo) and Jessica (Dina Meyer) Brady are a soon to be divorced couple with two kids. Joe has been offered a position in Los Angeles and decides to take it, tearing the family apart further. The kids decide it’s time to get the family back together again, so when they find out that Mom is going to Palm Springs on a business trip with her boss, and bringing the kids, they make a fake call on their Dad’s behalf to get his meeting moved to Palm Springs as well, setting the two up without their knowledge for a Christmas in Palm Springs.
Well, UP TV brings us another “kids trying to get the parents back together again Christmas film. For some reason swimming pools and cactus don’t get me in the Christmas spirit nearly as much as snow covered cabins in Colorado and fir trees covered in snow. Perhaps that’s why I have a grudge against the hot weather Christmas movies before they even start. Perhaps I’m being too harsh on this movie for that bias, but it is a romantic comedy with kids and Christmas, and I guess that’s what they are shooting for. Christmas in Palm Springs has all the cliche moments that every movie of this genre has, and I guess we know how it’s going to end up. One thing that was rather interesting is that the tricks Walt Disney and Haley Mills used 50 years ago in The Parent Trap like late night secret phone calls and pranks on the unsuspecting fiance of Brian Keith are replaced by very high tech modern tricks, but they still have the same results. We’ve come a long way technology-wise, but human nature is still the same. The problem with this film is that the script is pretty shabby. I hesitate to blame the actors, because they can only work with what they have, and it seemed like they needed a 2 hour time slot for a holiday movie, and they just started shooting. They spent so much time on the hotels and the Palm Springs location, that they forgot to put an ending on the story, so they rushed through it in like 10 minutes. Be careful about taking a bathroom break near the end or you could come back with no idea how it all got resolved. This was one of the most rushed endings I’ve seen. Perhaps the biggest complaint is that it doesn’t seem to feel like it fits in the UP TV network list of “uplifting” programs. In the end, you don’t find it very uplifting and there is very little purpose in all the effort. I really didn’t care whether they got back together or not, as this couple was so unpleasant that the kids might be better off with some fresh blood. I was thinking foster care might be better for them than this family! It’s not a very good “holiday” film I’m afraid.
[Here’s the home page with the info on Christmas in Palm Springs].
