Stream It Or Skip It?

It’s Christmas in July over on Hallmark, which means that all month long, the channel will be airing holiday-inspired romances that will put you in the holiday spirit even if it’s 100 degrees outside. This week, Unwrapping Christmas: Mia’s Prince arrives to the channel. The film, the second in a series about four friends who run a gift-wrapping store and find romance as they plan a holiday gala, stars Kathryn Davis as Mia, a hopeless romantic who wishes her own love life could be more like the romance novels she obsesses over.

Opening Shot: A gorgeous, snow-flecked winter wonderland. A woman in a red cape runs through the woods, and eventually a dashing man/prince catches up to her.

The Gist: This opening scene was but a dream. Mia, one of the owners of All Wrapped Up, a popular gift-wrapping store, seems to have fallen asleep reading a romance novel while she was at work and she’s woken up by her three friends and co-owners. They gently rib her for dreaming about her Prince Charming again, before getting to work planning a big charity gala in town.

Mia’s been working her tail off to save up for an original edition of her favorite book, Christmas in Derbyshire, at the local bookstore – she’s been visiting it for ages and has long dreamed of owning it, as it’s the perfect romantic tome. Her holiday season is completely thrown off though when her sister, Ashlyn (and Ashlyn’s cat) show up to her house unexpectedly to crash for a few days. Mia is overwhelmed and also allergic to cats, so she goes to sleep at the store, and that’s when she meets Beau (Nathan Witte), a man who assumes the shop is open and desperately needs a late-night gift-wrapping job (as one often does).

Sparks fly between the two (even though he seems utterly confused as to why she’s sleeping at her shop), and Mia’s ears perk up when he tells her he’s visiting town because he plans to attend the big gala – the one she’s helping to plan. It’s clear Beau is taken with Mia because he returns to the store to ask if she’ll teach his mother’s book club how to gift-wrap, since she did just a great job for him. When Mia arrives to Beau’s mother’s house, she realizes that his mother is the famous and wealthy Claire Cavannagh, and Beau is the heir to the family fortune.

Mia learns that Beau is engaged to a woman named Penelope, a similarly wealthy woman that his mother is forcing him to marry, and Mia, a relative nobody, with no clout or money, has no chance with him. It turns out, neither Penelope nor Beau even want this marriage – Penelope confides in Mia that she has a boyfriend and that Beau is definitely smitten with Mia (he’s also similarly obsessed with Christmas in Derbyshire!). But they still have to get through the intense gala planning and Claire’s plans for Beau and harsh judgment of Mia in order to be with one another.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? If you’ve been watching The Gilded Age lately, you can’t help but feel like Claire is just Bertha Russell, forcing her child into a marriage of pedigree and status. But unlike on that show, Claire eventually comes around to the idea of being with someone for love rather than money.

Our Take: Unwrapping Christmas: Mia’s Prince, is a classic Cinderella tale in the purest sense. A lower-status women falls for a man who is essentially a prince, and after facing and overcoming some trials, they end up together. It’s a gentle romance, thanks in part to Kathryn Davis’s performance. Davis is a Hallmark regular and she often plays the quiet underdog, and she imparts an innocent vulnerability to Mia. She’s a romantic, but also someone you don’t want to see get hurt. But once we get to know Beau, it’s clear that that’s the last thing he wants to to do her.

As the movie’s central villain, Lanette Ware plays Claire with no warmth whatsoever. It feels like she’ll be an impossible nut to crack, even at Christmas. Until eventually (and sort of out of nowhere) she realizes the err of her ways. While there’s not really an incident that makes her come around, the fact that she does apologize for treating Mia poorly and for having unrealistic expectations for Beau helps add to the film’s happy ending. It doesn’t have to make sense, what’s important is that by the final frame, everyone in this blissful little snowglobe of a world has come to their senses and is feeling the Christmas spirit.

Parting Shot: Mia and Beau kiss under the mistletoe at the charity gala while everyone around then looks on and claps!

Performance Worth Watching: Beau is a character who needs to be likeable despite coming from a snooty background and having a mother who expects him to embody class and excellence. Nathan Witte does a great job balancing being a decent guy with upholding his mother’s expectations, he’s an ideal prince charming.

Memorable Dialogue: “It’s beautiful,” Mia says, as she stands next to Beau while looking at Christmas lights. Beau, looking at Mia, says, ” I agree.” It’s pure cheese, but it works.

Our Call: STREAM IT. I felt like the first film in this series, Unwrapping Christmas: Tina’s Miracle, lacked some warmth and felt overly generic, but Mia’s Prince makes up for it. While it’s still pure fantasy, in the sense that many of the characters seem like caricatures (Claire Cavannagh is a classic upper-class snoot…until she isn’t) but Mia and Beau are warm and kind, a perfect couple to root for.

Liz Kocan is a pop culture writer living in Massachusetts. Her biggest claim to fame is the time she won on the game show Chain Reaction.