Stream It Or Skip It?

In the new Hallmark movie, Christmas on Duty, Janel Parrish and Parker Young play two rival Marines who are forced to spend Christmas Eve working together as punishment for ruining the base’s holiday party. With a storm approaching, the two adversaries have to head out and procure toys for a group of local kids and as they do, they realize that maybe they were wrong about each other. It’s classic, generic Hallmark Christmas fare, all dressed up in military fatigues.

Opening Shot: A group of Marines prepare to run an obstacle course during a training camp at Quantico. Two rivals, Blair and Josh (Janel Parrish and Parker Young) go head to head, and when their race is over, Blair, who is at the top of their class, informs Josh that she’s going to be joining the infantry. Josh and Blair’s families have a long history together in the service, and Josh, who comes from a long line of infantrymen, is furious that Blair is taking a spot that he thinks is rightfully his.

The Gist: Six years after basic training, Blair – now Captain Birch – is planning to spend the Christmas holiday… working. Though she’s carved out some time for her father, as it’s the first holiday they’ll be spending after the death of her mom, she’s in an all work-no play mindset. A few days before Christmas at the base’s Christmas party, Blair runs into Josh for the first time since they fell out at boot camp and they cause a scene, flipping a cake on their commanding officer. As punishment, their colonel assigns them to Christmas duty at the base on Christmas Eve. 24 hours alone with the one person they both despise the most.

As a big storm approaches, all gift deliveries around the base are canceled, which means that dozens of local kids won’t be getting the gifts they’ve asked for. And so, on Christmas Eve, with a weather-proof truck to get through the snow, Blair and Josh take the kids’ wish list and head out so they can play Santa and save Christmas. At every store, they face some kind of obstacle that derails their tight schedule, but teamwork makes the dream work and on top of that, they start to bond. It isn’t long before they discover that they’re actually pretty compatible, and has preconceived notions about each other from the beginning.

When they finally make it back to the base and back to reality, their fathers, longtime enemies stemming back from when they served together, disapprove of the budding relationship. But soon the dads realize that their own problems were born out of a misunderstanding and they make up. By the end, hatchets get buried and romance blooms.

Our Take: Early on in Christmas on Duty, Blair’s father stops at a USAA booth that’s handing out free ice scrapers at a holiday fair. “Insurance, banking, and ice scrapers? What don’t you guys do?” he asks the USAA rep. “Taking care of military families is what we do,” the USAA rep responds. If it wasn’t clear from this exchange, USAA sponsored the film, and the brand integration feels uncomfortably egregious. I can see where Christmas on Duty fills a void, offering representation for military families and life on a base, but with none of the difficulties, no talk of combat, or any of the other things that come with the territory. But it also feels a bit jarring; the combination of Hallmark, whose films are famously apolitical and perpetually optimistic, and the Marines feels like strange bedfellows that wouldn’t otherwise coexist.

Parrish and Young have an easy chemistry that keeps the movie light and charming, it doesn’t really feel like their characters have any personality. (Meanwhile, the rest of the cast just feels like variations on an archetype – specifically the rigid, military dad archetype, which is every older man in the film.) The movie’s ending, which features Parrish singing “Silent Night” to a crowd made up of her and Josh’s families, can’t come soon enough.

Parting Shot: Blair and Josh head outside, a rematch of their obstacle course race from the first scene of the film. But before they start, Josh says, “Hold on,” and pulls Blair in for a kiss.

Performance Worth Watching: It’s a tiny role, but Theodore Turner who plays Tate, Josh’s nephew, steals every scene he’s in.

Memorable Dialogue: “Ooh, I love this song!” Blair says, cranking the radio up when “Silent Night” comes on.

Our Call: While Christmas on Duty has some some ridiculous, unrealistic moments and a lot of generic characters. While it still manages to muster up a bit of jolly Christmas spirit, you can SKIP IT.

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.