Have you ever sat pondering about Christmas? Well of course you have, and obviously one of the first words that comes to mind is “the Postal Service”. By all means, I am not a Christmas person let alone someone who would willingly sit down to watch any movie made by the monopoly known as Hallmark or any movies to the same effect. However, when the reviews start off as “one of the worst Christmas movies I’ve seen. Starts off OK and then meanders off into a lame, hackneyed and unwatchable mess”, the primal instinct in my bones tells me to watch. This is my review on the dumpster fire of a masterpiece known as Christmas Mail. 

To my surprise, this artwork was not from Hallmark but from MarVista Entertainment. For this to be the first film I’ve ever seen by them, well – I’m not sure if I’m thoroughly impressed or not. A brief synopsis goes as follows, Kristie North was sent on a “special assignment” to respond to letters from Santa. Somehow this becomes an issue with the manager, why? I’m not terribly sure, the writers try to make conflict by saying that letters being sent to the post office is bad for business? Now I’m not a Post Office General but I feel like letters being sent to the post office is good for business. Matt, our questionable protagonist, weaves through this conflict all while raising his niece Emily. And, of course, romance ensues.  

The opening starts with Matt, collecting mail on foot. We are thrown immediately into a “meet-cute” between Matt and Kristie. After Kristie’s dog attempts to steal from Matt, we get our first taste of how little chemistry these characters actually have. Then there is some clunky dialogue that will not go away for the rest of the movie. Obviously, these two strangers won’t cross paths again.

You have been fooled! They do! Kristie now works at the post office unbeknownst to the manager on a “special assignment”. This is where we start to get the confusing conflict meant to be in this movie. I won’t spend too much time explaining this because neither does the movie. The manager in this movie is something, to say the least. He is played by Lochlyn Munro, whose claim to fame was playing Agent Jake Harper in 2004’s White Chicks. His form of acting is popping his “ps” and elongating his vowel sounds. I feel like he’s meant to be the villain in this movie but his villainous plot is trying to fire Kristie North. While Kristie is fulfilling her “special assignment”, Emily sends in her Christmas wish. No, it is not for her parents to be alive, it’s for her uncle to have someone to kiss him. 

The next scene we get is the most iconic moment of all time, the entrance of “missgetti.” Matt calls over Emily for dinner, saying that it’s “dinner time”. Here’s the kicker, he’s just now boiling the water. So, unless he has the hottest stove known to man, it is not dinner time sir. Then Emily calls the dinner of spaghetti, “missghetti” (because she misses it), and Matt draws this scene to a close-by ending the conversation with his niece like a phone call. 

I’m now going to take the liberty to speed past some parts of the movie and go to the obligatory makeover scene. Kristie takes off her glasses because obviously you can’t be attractive and have glasses in a cliche of a movie. She lets her hair down and puts on lipstick (over her already existing lipstick) and then unbuttons the top buttons of her shirt. However, this doesn’t matter at all in the end because she puts on a giant winter jacket so you don’t even know she unbuttoned it. 

The last scenes I’m going to talk about today are the sprinkle and song scenes. Our gang of main characters is baking cookies, which obviously leads to a sprinkle fight. Instead of using real sprinkles, they CGI them in, which obviously looks very real and good. Almost immediately after this Matt plays the guitar while Emily and Heather are singing, but it’s mixed terribly. You can’t hear anything the characters are singing which leads to a horrible mix of sounds in this scene. 

Now that’s not all of the gems and monstrosities in this movie, I highly encourage you to subject yourself to this film, hopefully, you can get a full grasp of how amazing this movie is.  In conclusion, I give “Christmas Mail” 5 Missgettis out of 5, Happy Holidays!