FILM FOCUS: LOVE AT THE THANKSGIVING DAY PARADE

I’ve been trying to get Nick to watch Love at the Thanksgiving Day Parade with me all month long.  One of the best things about Christmas TV is the seemingly endless parade of holiday made-for-TV movies, mostly on Lifetime, Hallmark Channel and ABC Family.  I can’t get enough of these cheesy, filmed-in-Canada, D-List TV star delights.  And I can’t be the only one who enjoys them: our TIVO is working overtime recording a never-ending lineup of movies with increasingly wonderful-ridiculous titles (Fir Crazy, anyone?).

I was especially excited about Love at the Thanksgiving Day Parade because there are so few Thanksgiving-themed made-for-TV movies, especially in comparison with the innumerable Christmas variety.  Nick finally relented and last night and we sat down to watch this Hallmark Channel original, starring Autumn Reeser and Antonio Cupo.  Reeser’s name was vaguely familiar to me in connection with The O.C., though I’d never actually seen her in anything, and a Google search revealed that Cupo is an Italian soap star.

Autumn Reeser doing her best Maureen O'Hara in Miracle on 34th Street impression.

The premise is a sort of rom-com Frankenstein’s monster, shamelessly borrowing plot points from Miracle on 34th Street, You’ve Got Mail, and Two Weeks Notice.  Emily, your typically spunky heroine who only wears vintage clothes, lives and works in Chicago.  Her job is to organize the annual Thanksgiving Day parade and generally be excited about life.  She’s also longing for a proposal from her long-distance marine biologist boyfriend despite her fear of boats.  One of the things I love about these movies is the sheer number of random character traits they throw in: “So she’s a brunette and an orphan and… let’s say she’s terrified of boats.”  Yes!  Her nemesis/inevitable true love Henry is a corporate-yet-dashing drone who gets assigned to evaluate the parade and perhaps ruin it for vague, money-making reasons.

The two predictably clash and end up striking a bet that Emily will be engaged to her boyfriend by Thanksgiving.  Meanwhile she does her best to bring out  Henry’s sentimental side and prove the parade's worth by doing things like dancing with old people, a carriage ride, and cheering up sick kids at the hospital with some clowns.  Along the way they fall in love; Emily’s boyfriends fails to propose; complications arise.  I won’t give away the ending but I’ll give you a couple of potential endings: Ending #1: Emily is killed by a boat or Ending #2: Emily & Henry end up engaged. Within the first five minutes of the movie, in which we learn Emily is casting Santa for the parade, I told Nick that by the end either the real Santa would show up or the love interest would end up subbing in at the last minute.  Rest assured, one of these things does happen.

Clowns!

Despite my reliance on words like “predictable” and “obvious” in descriping the plot I am happy to report that I really, genuinely enjoyed this movie!  And an even bigger surprise: Nick did too!  Maybe chalk it up to low expectations but we were both really won over, despite the incredibly stock story.  A lot of the credit goes to Autumn Reeser and her portrayal of Emily.  She’s just so gosh-darn likeable, whether she’s drunkenly singing Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” or wearing a series of really adorable 60s-inspired outfits.  Her vintage wardrobe adds a lot of visual appeal to the movie.  The male lead, both the actor and the character, is rather wooden but Reeser/Emily makes up for it.  

Even better, this is the kind of Thanksgiving movie that I can really get behind because it’s a not-so-stealth Christmas movie in thin disguise.  Despite the title and the fact that it takes place in November this is a Christmas movie through and through.  Christmas decorations are in every scene, there is much talk of Santa, Christmas songs make up the soundtrack and Emily drinks from a giant Santa-head mug at one point.  Emily even says at the beginning of the movie that the Thanksgiving parade was originally called the Christmas parade.  I’m a stickler for enjoying each holiday in its own timeframe but I am DYING to get started on Christmas so this movie allowed me to indulge in some pre-December yuletide fun without the jumping-the-gun guilt.

 PDSA = Public Display of Santa Affection

I even learned a little about the Chicago Thanksgiving Day parade and I don’t normally expect to learn any history watching movies of this type.  I did wonder why the movie was set in Chicago when the most famous Thanksgiving parade is obviously in New York.  However I figured that they couldn’t do it without Macy’s cooperation so choose a lesser known parade to get around the corporate interference (and cost of filming in NYC).  There were a couple very pointed references to the Ronald McDonald House charity in the movie and when I looked up the Chicago parade sure enough it’s called the “McDonald’s Thanksgiving Parade.”  So much for avoiding corporate synergy, but at least it wasn’t too overwhelming.

I’m sure Love at the Thanksgiving Day Parade will be running on a loop from now until Christmas on the Hallmark Channel, plus it's available on DVD as well.  I heartily recommend it as the escapist holiday fare that it is, but also as an especially good example of this type of holiday programming.  I’m taking the fact that my first made-for-TV movie of the season was so enjoyable as a very good omen for the coming avalanche of Christmas TV!