2019
Director: Michael M. Scott
Writers: Tippi Dobrofsky and Neal H. Dobrofsky
Stars: Chyler Leigh, Paul Campbell and Naomi Judd
Holiday score: 4
Some may see holiday windows at a shopping mall as an important part of Christmas, but is it? Really, is it?
Romance score: 8
The characters have a back and forth that provides the friction to start the fires of love.
Comedy score: 7
This movie has enough humour that I consider it a true holi-rom-com and that is saying something.
Today I am reviewing the movie Window Wonderland. This movie reminded me a lot of an 80s movie and, if you know me then you know I LOVE 80s movies. Maybe it’s just nostalgia. I do get misty-eyed watching that YouTube video tribute to 80s entertainment. Maybe it’s because I have low standards. I do enjoy watching Hallmark movies so that’s a definite yes. Maybe, just maybe, it’s because the 80s had the greatest movies of all time. Even the “bad” movies like Better Off Dead were amazing. That was the secret of 80s movies, they could be terrible and amazing at the same time. Just like a holi-rom-com, I guess.
80s movies had protagonists like Ferris Bueler who were confident without being cocky (ok, maybe a little cocky), romantic without being sappy (but if we don’t like sappy then why do we watch holi-rom-coms?) and they got away with absolutely everything. Sometimes they got away with more than they should have, but that is a discussion for another day.
80s movies had plots that resonated with everyone like “a girl has to choose between a poor guy who is super cool and a rich guy who is a total douche” or “a really nice poor guy tries to convince a rich girl that he’s cool enough for her” or “a poor guy tries to date a rich girl then realizes he is really in love his best friend”. I know every decade romanticizes the struggle of poor vs rich, but the 80s turned it into an art form.
80s movies had the raddest hairstyles from Molly Ringwold with her super cute short hair in Sixteen Candles to Christy Wills with her super cute short hair in The Secret of My Success to Mary Stuart Masterson in Some Kind of Wonderful with her super cute short hair.
What’s that you say? My list of awesome 80s hair is a little short? Sure I could include others like Cary Elwes’ flow in The Princess Bride, Eriq La Salle’s Jheri curl in Coming to America or Jennifer Beals’ frizzy do in Flashdance, but I didn’t want my list to be too long so I kept it short.
80s movies also had the most excellent soundtracks. Movies like The Breakfast Club, Some Kind of Wonderful and even Top Gun had you singing, “you’ve lost that lovin’ feeling.” And there was Dirty Dancing that had so many great songs that even Patrick Swayze sang a track. You younger kids may not remember Patrick Swayze, but he was the 80s version of a triple threat. He could dance, sing and he rocked a gorgeous mullet. Yes, I probably should have included Patrick Swayze in my list of great 80s hair. His mullet was totally righteous.
Window Wonderland reminds me a lot of an 80s rom-com for all of these reasons. It has a most triumphant, charismatic lead character, it has bitchin’ storylines and it has a radical soundtrack. Oh and there is something special about Chyler Leigh in this movie, but I just can’t put my finger on it. Oh well, I think it’s time to cut this intro short and get into the review.
Winter Wonderland stars Paul Campbell as Jake Dooley. Jake is an associate window dresser at McGuires department store in New York. Jake is fun-loving and easy going. Imagine the Hallmark version of Ferris Bueller. He is confident with a sharp wit, but Hallmark just can’t afford the goofy side-kick and, sadly, no classic Ferrari. Sigh, I loved that car, it is so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up.
We learn that Jake is really an artist. His window dressing job allows him to express himself and pay the bills while he works on his passion. One problem is that his day job just doesn’t pay the bills as well as he would like. Lucky for Jake, the head window dresser at McGuires just up and quit her job to join another department store. Just the opportunity Jake has been hoping for.
A handsome artist like Jake, should be a shoe-in for the job, but he’s got competition. Enter Sloan Van Doren played by Chyler Leigh. I know what you are thinking, but no, it’s not that Sloan. Sloan is also an associate window dresser at McGuires and she also has her eye on the vacant head window dresser gig. Sloan is the polar opposite of Jake. Think the Hallmark version of Christy from The Secret of My Success. She’s ambitious, straight-laced, serious and she would be kind of boring, but she does have something special about her. I’m just not sure what it is. Is it her positive, can-do attitude? An attractive quality, but no. Her snarky sense of humour? Love it, still not right. What’s that? Does she have a super cute short hair cut? Yes, but why do you ask? No reason? Oh well, it will come to me at some point. You are probably thinking I need to shorten up this preamble. Fine, let’s move it along.
Sloan and Jake’s boss has decided to give both of them a shot at the head window dressing job. How will he decide between the two of them? A duel with sharpened candy canes would be fun, but too much blood. A race on reindeer would be interesting, but Sloan can’t go to the race track anymore, too many gambling debts. A Zoolander-style walk off to see who has better hair? Love it, but that wouldn’t be fair. No, their boss decides to go the boring route and have Sloan and Jake each design a Christmas window and the best window wins the job.
Will Jake’s confidence and wit win him the head window dresser job? He’s an 80s rom-com lead so, probably, but it will take a few hijinks to win the job and the girl. Will Sloan’s determination and hard work win her the head window dresser job? She is kind of stuffy, but she just has that something, so it’s possible. Will Jake accidentally kill the real Santa then pretend Santa is his uncle Fred then use Santa’s body in his window display? It’s totally morbid, but it’s exactly the stupid kind of hijinks you find in a terrible yet awesome 80s movie. Will stuffy Sloan open up the window of her heart to confident Jake? No, she’ll probably see right through him. Two window puns in a row? I’m sure I’ve shattered your trust in me. (That’s a hat trick folks! Hey, you’re supposed to throw hats, not tomatoes.) Well, you’ll have to watch Window Wonderland to find out and I recommend you do.
The first thing I like about Window Wonderland are the characters. While Jake may be the Hallmark version of Ferris Bueler, Ferris Bueler is a very, very high bar. It allowed Matthew Broderick to make a career out of a ton of mediocre movies he did after Ferris Bueler. Jake may not be Ferris, but he is confident enough to take risks that we wish we were brave enough to take. He doesn’t seem to care what others think which allows him to say things we wish we could. He is a little down on his luck, but he’s a pretty happy guy and it’s infectious. You want this guy to win.
Sloan is serious and determined, which may seem kind of boring...because...well it usually is. Luckily Sloan is also snarky and sarcastic. Kind of like a Sloan-in-the-box where it looks safe, but she pops up and says snarky things like, “Really?” or “You can take that window display and shove it…” Whoa, hey, whoa there Sloan-in-the-box, let’s keep it PG here. Sloan thinks that Jake is a jerk, but she refuses to take his shenanigans. Jake may be confident, but Sloan isn’t giving in to his boyish charm. These two go back and forth and I enjoyed every minute of it.
In addition to their back and forth, Jake and Sloan also show us different parts of their personality. Jake plays it confident, but he’s not always Sunny-D and Cabbage Patch Kids. Sloan appears to have it all together, but is she covering some dark hidden secret? Did she actually “take care of” the last head window dresser? What a crazy idea to have characters with more than one emotion. Interesting characters always have more than one side to them. Even Derek Zoolander has more than one look. If he wore blue steel all the time, we’d all be melted by his awesomeness. Unfortunately, typical holi-rom-com characters have a single emotion, only it’s not blue steel, it’s more like brown cardboard or tan corduroy or beige linoleum. Characters who are only nice make me want to punch them in their nice little faces. Fortunately, Window Wonderland has a couple of decent characters to lead the story.
The second part I like is the storyline. No, not the rich vs poor storyline. Window Wonderland does pit the poor Jake vs Sloan’s rich, jerk of a boyfriend, but its a secondary storyline. Just like the classic 80s movie Can’t Buy Me Love. In that movie the main storyline is that if you save enough money you can buy the girl of your dreams and become popular. The secondary storyline is friendship.
The primary storyline in Window Wonderland is the “opposites attract” relationship of Sloan and Jake. I think it goes without saying that the most important thing in a romantic movie of any kind (rom-com, holi-rom-com or straight-up romance) is the relationship of the protagonists. Well, you would think that would go without saying, but for so many holi-rom-coms, the primary relationship often falls flat. Not just roadkill flat or pancake flat, but crepe flat, but without any fancy toppings like berries or whipped cream or Nutella...hmmm Nutella.
Way too often the relationship is just way too easy. Let’s be honest, we know that 99% of the time, the main characters get together in the end. But we want it to look like they won’t. We want it to be difficult. We want tension, excitement, romance! We want to feel like these crazy opposites shouldn’t have a snowball’s chance in H-E-double-hockey-sticks, but against all odds, they make it work. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it a hundred times more, you need friction to start to fires of love.
In Window Wonderland, we have friction between Jake and Sloan. I’ve mentioned that Jake and Sloan are opposites who go back and forth with each other. Their styles are like the two sides of Patrick Swayze’s mullet. Sloan is the business in the front and Jake is the party in the back. One of my regrets from the 80s was never growing a mullet. I never had the patience to grow out the back of my hair. I also didn’t have the patience to grow a rat tail, but I have no regrets about that.
The third thing I enjoyed was the music. I enjoyed it enough that I actually thought, “Hey, I enjoy the music in this movie.” A great movie soundtrack can take a movie from “Meh” to “Oh yeah!” Take the movie Say Anything. The story, it’s OK, but you add an epic soundtrack and you’ve got a hit. Or Purple Rain. This movie “suuuuuucked”, but the album is one of the greatest of all time. Every movie needs a decent soundtrack, but give a movie with a great soundtrack and then it practically doesn’t matter what the movie is like.
Most of the background music in Window Wonderland is whistling with a jingly tune. Normally whistling sounds like the devil farting to me, but I liked it in this movie. I guess I am wrong sometimes. Just kidding, I’m never wrong, I just make exceptions. This movie also had a couple of solid songs in Two Hearts Set on Fire by Shawn Hook and This is Christmas by Suzie McNeil. There were other good songs in this movie, but I couldn’t find the soundtrack anywhere.
Lastly, this movie has great 80s hair. Sloan’s evil boyfriend has perfect evil hair because it’s super boring. It’s not as good as James Spader’s feathered hair in Pretty and Pink, but it fits his character. Sloan’s Mom has pretty cute curly red hair. Oh and Sloan’s hair is fine too. What’s that, you say? You think I’m hiding my true feelings about Sloan’s hair? Well shut your mouth. I do not have an unnatural obsession for girls with short hair. I just...well.... OK FINE! I may have a completely normal liking for girls with short hair, but it’s fine and totally normal for a boy who grew up in the 80s. Everyone liked it. It was a THING! Sure before then it might have been a little weird to like hairstyles that were usually found on men and sure it sometimes didn’t work out so well and maybe it made me question my own sexuality, but it was the 80s. We did lots of different things and we turned out fine...right? Right!?! Well, at least the movies of the 80s turned out fine.
If you are looking for your standard holi-rom-com with boring characters, lame storylines, terrible music and girls with long hair...you should probably look somewhere else.
If you love movies of the 80s and you want to watch a holi-rom-com that you will actually enjoy...then you should watch Window Wonderland.
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