Stream It Or Skip It?

The Hallmark Channel continues to kick off its Countdown to Christmas 2025 with A Christmas Angel Match. This fun seasonal romantic-comedy features returning Hallmark stars Meghan Ory and Benjamin Ayres as Christmas Angels who are forced to team up for some high-stakes holiday matchmaking. With one Angel extremely by-the-book and the other more focused on flexibility and fun, they’ll have an uphill battle when it comes to overcoming their opposing matching methods and becoming a true team… perhaps both career-wise and romantically.

The Gist: Monica (Meghan Ory) is a 587-year-old Angel who has spent decades upon decades as the top performer at the Christmas Connection Department, for whom she successfully sets up the “Tender Hearts” (aka humans on Earth) who are most deserving of a Christmas soul match year after year. But in more recent years, Monica has struggled where she used to easily succeed as her traditionalist, by-the-Hark matchmaking methods now fail in the face of humanity’s disconnected digital age. Adding salt to the wound is the fact that Monica is getting outperformed by an upstart named Michael (Benjamin Ayres), a young 97-year-old Angel whose spontaneous, fun, and rule-bending way of working goes against everything Monica stands for. As Monica stews over Michael and his seeming irresponsibility, her reliable coworker and friend, Mirabelle (Amanda Jordan), gently suggests that perhaps times are changing and that the Angels need to adapt with them.

This point is further hammered home when Monica, Michael, and Mirabelle’s manager, Gabriel (Michael Dickson), awards Michael with Best Angel of the Year and then breaks the difficult news from Cloud Command that their department might downsize and be forced to merge with the Cupids over at Valentines if the Angels can’t pull themselves together and deliver on this year’s quotas. When a glitch in the system has Monica and Michael trying to set up the same couple, the higher-ups demand that the two top Angels work together on this match, and that the future of the CCD depends on their success.

After receiving their assignment, Monica and Michael head straight to Earth to set up Tender Hearts Daisy Willoby (Lindura) and Patrick Glen (Francesco Filice). Monica is extremely averse to working as a team and wants to do things her way, while Michael is much more willing to work together and go with the flow. When he agrees to do things her way at first, it ends up a failed first meet-cute between the overworked author, Daisy, and the constantly online and on his phone coder, Patrick, and escalates into a meet-ugly where Patrick has an allergic reaction and burns himself with hot chocolate. Following this initial failure and forced to deal with Gabriel and Cloud Command breathing down their necks, Monica and Michael slowly learn how to come together despite their opposing philosophies. In the process, they help each other to grow… and maybe even fall in love.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: A Christmas Angel Match might call to mind other angel-oriented Hallmark holiday romances like Angels and Ornaments, Christmas in Angel Falls, and A Heavenly Christmas.

Performance Worth Watching: Since A Christmas Angel Match is a true two-hander with Meghan Ory and Benjamin Ayres as the leads, they both deserve a shoutout for their committed and entertaining performances as our magical Angel matchmakers, Monica and Michael.

Memorable Dialogue: Honestly, there are multiple moments of solid banter to choose from, but I’ll go with this one, which comes after Monica and Michael successfully get Daisy and Patrick to talk for the first time:

“I could be mistaken but it looks like you’re having a lot of fun, and I like to see that.”

“No, you’re wrong.”

“Oh, it’s just, you were jumping.”

“No, I do not jump.”

“Hopping?”

Honorable mention for this take from Monica: “Michael, gossip is not very Angelic, and neither is hot chocolate.” If this is true, then being an Angel doesn’t sound worth it to me!

Sex and Skin: None. There’s no tomfoolery amongst Angels, come on now.

Our Take: A Christmas Angel Match is an enjoyable movie that expertly toes the line between self-awareness and earnestness. I love the moments where Michael and Monica sort of poke fun at classic Hallmark movie tropes, like a coffee shop collision or holiday market meet-cute, and it’s entertaining to imagine that there’s now a Hallmark Cinematic Universe in which Angels are the ones actually pulling the strings off-camera to make your favorite holiday romances come to pass. I loved that even the Angels started falling for their own Hallmark rom-com tropes, leading all the characters to have a good time except for poor Patrick, who was living in more of his own personal horror movie than a romance (until the end, so I guess all’s well that ends well, even if you have to suffer various physical and emotional pains in the process).

A large part of this movie’s success is due to Meghan Ory and Benjamin Ayres, whose banter, commitment, and chemistry as our leading Angels Monica and Michael make them a joy to watch whenever they’re onscreen. They played their parts with such sincerity and almost childlike innocence that even moments that could have been potentially eye-roll-inducing or cringeworthy in other actors’ hands, like their silly Christmas flash mob dancing or heart-to-heart stretch session on a cloud (AKA a very obvious green screen), ended up being completely charming instead. The actors around them display a similar commitment that further uplifts the film to create a heavenly finished product that makes for an easy viewing experience that pulls you in from the start. Come for the earnest Angels, stay for witnessing whatever accidental torments they have in store for Patrick!

Our Call: This Tender Heart had a great time watching A Christmas Angel Match and thinks you will too. STREAM IT!