By Geno McGahee
Why do holiday movies have so much hate for the city? I get it. The country is a better place. The people aren’t in as much of a rush and they seem nicer…but I like the city too. Sure, you see those annoying bums that get in your face or take up the sidewalk. It’s not all bad in the city though. You got those people that sell pretzels and hotdogs and those are good. You never ever see one of these holiday movies talking about good city hotdogs. I find that sad.
Ellen Langford (Eliza Taylor) is pretty much based on Paris Hilton. She was born into a great deal of money and has earned a reputation as a party girl. During a fundraiser for Toys for Tots, Ellen does some acrobats to impress the crowd and they were impressed. If a hot chick wants to show their panties, you will find many dudes cheering that on. I felt sort of weird cheering from my living room and writing a check to Toys for Tots. I was that inspired.
Unfortunately, Ellen went too far and tried a more complicated flip, launching her into a Christmas tree and making front page news. I didn’t see the big deal, but the Toys for Tots representative sure did. This old bitch was furious with Ellen, but I think it was pure jealousy. You never hear an old hag say a nice word about a hot chick. Even taking out a Xmas tree shouldn’t have pissed anyone off. Ellen was there to raise money and she did. Why the negative press?
Jim Langford (Neil Crone) isn’t happy to find his daughter on the cover of the entertainment rags and needs to do something to save the company reputation. He decides to send his daughter to the small town where the company was conceived, and maybe she was too, to learn about love, life and how there is more to life than partying and money. She agrees because she wants to prove herself and is sent to the small town with only 100 dollars and the vow not to tell a soul who she is to avoid any special treatment. This doesn’t go over well with her fiancé, Gray (Michael Xavier), a city guy that thinks little of the country. At this point, I realized that Gray was not going to last long. These movies always have that asshole first boyfriend from the city, replaced with the good-natured country boy.
The small town inn is run by Jake (Jake Lacy) and he looked so fucking familiar. I sat there and thought and then it hit me…WARLOCK MOON. He looked like Joe Spano from WARLOCK MOON but with much better hair. I then concluded that Spano was his father or they possibly used DNA stolen from a sperm bank that Spano donated to create Jake. I guess that neither is true, but Jake did have a Spano vibe and I kept just thinking of WARLOCK MOON and it gave me trust issues with Jake.
Ellen gets a room at the inn and her initial meeting with Jake is less than friendly. Both have baggage. Jake met a girl from the city that broke his heart and he’s never loved again and Ellen is desperately fighting the party girl label. I get Jake’s plight. I have a hard time with Ellen’s problems. She’s a billionaire and the thing that bothers her is that she’s called a party girl? If I was a billionaire, they could call me anything. I’d be honored to be called a party girl if it came with a few billion. Hell, if they gave me 10 grand, they can call me one. I guess they could call me one for free, but I hope they’d feel bad about it.
At the diner, Ellen meets Debbie (Andie MacDowell), Jake’s aunt. I was shocked at how well Andie MacDowell age. She looked tremendous! She has not changed that much since GROUNDHOG DAY and that was in 1993. Anyway, Debbie likes Ellen immediately and they start talking about the company that was born there that the Langfords started. She has some great framed historic pictures, but damn, what is it with films using bad photoshopped images and getting close up shots of them? They were trying to create an old picture with Jim Langford and his partner and it was just so bad. I am hoping that one of the characters in one of these films will eventually look closely at one of these bad photoshop pictures and say “what the fuck is this? Who you trying to fool?” At least then it would be believable.
It doesn’t take long for Debbie to figure out the identity of Ellen. She confronts her pretty quickly with hit, but she keeps the secret under her hat. She is subtly trying to get Jake and Ellen together, and things start to click. At one point, Jake was ready to smooch Ellen, but she backed away, remembering her man Gray is still in the city. I felt bad for Jake. First the girl from the city leaves him and now he has blue balls.
Despite the lack of a kiss, Ellen is quite taken with Jake and vows to help him with the Christmas auction that he does every year. She does one hell of a job. She brings cookies to every local business and gets them to donate something. She has a hard time with the guy at the Apple store, but he relents and gives her an Imac to auction. That’s way better than that wooden sled thing that the other store owner gave her.
She brings the entire load to Jake and the two embrace and a kiss was about to happen when Gray pulls up and starts being a total dick. I sort of understand it. Gray is watching some dude that looks like Joe Spano feeling up his soon to be wife should be angry. Ellen doesn’t take his attitude very well and he gets worse, calling all the people in the town “hicks”. And you wonder why people from the city are so hated.
Gray is causing all sorts of trouble, including divulging Ellen’s true identity. When Ellen finds out all the shit he’s been pulling, she jumps out of Gray’s car and ditches him, returning to the small town to stay for the Christmas festivities. Gray really didn’t have to be a dick for this to happen. Ellen was looking for a reason to leave him for Jake. He just made it easier. When her dad comes to town for the final celebration for the holiday, you get the sense that he also had the plan to hook up his daughter with Jake. The bonus is that Jim hooks up with Debbie. Sure, he’s got money falling out of his ass and can get whatever chick he wants, but Debbie looked great and loved him for him, I think. Then again, she may have thought that he could bankroll her diner forever and then she’d get all the money when he died. They could probably make a sequel to this where Debbie and Jake are actually scammers and kill the Langfords for the money, only to be attacked by an angry Santa Claus. It’s just an idea. Don’t get your panties in a bunch.
CHRISTMAS INHERITANCE is a good film. I didn’t like how Ellen dragged a homeless guy into the inn and let him stay there rent free because you can’t trust homeless people. When you see him at the end of the film, he’s still dirty as fuck and wearing a Santa hat. I wonder what poor Salvation Army Santa had his head bashed in, money stolen, and hat stolen to make that bum’s holiday better. Besides that, I really enjoyed this film. I recommend it!
