Leah’s Perfect Gift (2024)
Meet the Parents: Hallmark-style: The Sequel
Much like Christmas With the Singhs, this movie focuses on a couple who are spending the holidays together with their families for the first time. This go-round, we have Leah - a Jewish woman enamored with the idea of Christmas activities. Graham, meanwhile, comes from a Christmas crazy family with a mom who turns every activity into the most intense version of it - think, decorating trees for hours on end; gingerbread houses are a competition with the winner earning pride of place at a local event; and snowmen who need to be cartoonishly perfect Frostys. Compounding this pressure is Graham’s mother - played to perfection by Hallstar Barbara Niven - a woman with a very clear of view of how Christmas should be celebrated with no wiggle room for newbies (like Leah). Not to mention, the presence of an ex-girlfriend who is still close to Graham’s family.
I was fully prepared for this to be a snoozefest but was pleasantly surprised by how it turned out. The whole “meet the parents” storyline requires much less suspension of reality than lots of the “fall madly in love in 2 days and uproot your entire life for a stranger” storylines that are the bulk of Hallmark holiday fare. I can’t lie, when Graham gifts Leah a Pepperidge Farm-type gift basket, I thought it might have jumped the shark, but that was basically a red herring for what was to come.
Strong entry to the Countdown with this one.
