Hope’s Hollywood Christmas

I’m beginning to regret this plan to watch all the location-based Christmas movies over winter break. There are so very many with titles that mention a place, and many of them, including Hope‘s Hollywood Christmas are 92 minutes that I wish I could get back.

Synopsis: A mom (an aspiring singer) and her daughter leave Nashville to move in with her father in California. She takes a temporary job with an elderly movie star, who‘s trying to do Swedish death cleaning, but her lawyer and agent seem to think they’re going to inherit everything and they don’t want her to get rid of it. There’s also the movie star’s driver, who‘s actually her nephew keeping an eye on the lawyer or agent.

The couple: These are the two blandest people possible, but this one sets a new record for the characters to fall in love. The singer (Hope) leaves her cell phone at work on the first day, the driver brings it to her house, she accuses him of stalking because he looked at her address on her job application, but then they‘re making out on the couch by the end of the night. He proposes to her by the end of the movie, which is still within the same Christmas season, so we’re talking maybe a two-week courtship.

There is a brief moment when the driver looks up Hope‘s backstory because shady lawyer and agent try to convince him she’s bad, and he finds out she was a “lounge singer” back in Nashville. I think “lounge singer“ was code for sex worker, and driver dude had a bit too much judgment in his voice for my taste.

How Hollywoody is Hope’s Christmas? We see a shot of the famous Hollywood sign at the beginning, and some close ups of street signs and other landscapes, but this could have been filmed anywhere. I guess it had to be in Hollywood for the storyline to include an aging movie star.

So where was this actually filmed? Tulsa, Oklahoma. Here’s some background on the filming of this movie, which happened in the dead of summer. I would like to see more warm Christmas representation in these movies. It was 80 degrees in New Orleans today.

Where are we heading next? I’m honestly not sure because this movie was so dull, and the others I’ve watched haven‘t been great either. That’s a lot of wasted time. I’d much rather watch Heated Rivalry again (and again, and again). Now that’s a story worth my time.

Yes, let’s talk about Heated Rivalry! I’ve read and listened to a lot of spicy romance stories over the years. My mom raised us on Danielle Steele and, later, Nora Roberts, and most of what she read was fairly mild on the romance spice level:

• Level 1 (Mild/Sweet/Closed Door): Meaningful glances, kisses, but no explicit sex on or off page; "fade to black" moments.
• Level 2 (Medium/PG-13): Intimate scenes happen behind closed doors; some suggestive content but not graphic.
• Level 3 (Hot/Open Door): On-page sex scenes using euphemistic or descriptive language, not fully explicit.
• Level 4 (Spicy/Explicit): Detailed, explicit sexual acts, multiple scenes, adventurous.
• Level 5 (Nuclear/Spiciest): "Hottest of the hot," often involving kink, dub-con, or non-con, very graphic. 

I somehow fell into #booktok and #spicybooktok this year, and took recommendations from those TikTokers. I’m not a prude, but some of those books had my pearls clutched! “Pucking Around” was a hockey romance story highly recommended by TikTok and Reddit, but I couldn’t finish it. Not to sound judmental like the driver/nephew from today’s movie, but that story was too much for me.

“Still Beating“ is another one I didn’t finish this year. There’s a sub-genre of Level 4-5 that involves trauma, and that can be hard to read/listen to. I appreciate the authors who put trigger warnings at the beginning of their books.

I did some research after Pucking Around wondering what I’d just listened to, and that‘s when I learned that there’s a whole other sub-genre of spicy romance that involves professional sports players.

I think what sets Heated Rivalry apart from Pucking Around is that, at its core, it’s a very realistic story about two people at the top of their game falling in love. There was something about the two main characters’ interactions that always felt safe too, and stories of that spice level often involve some kind of lower-case or upper-case T trauma. Heated Rivalry gives the fire without the burn.

After so many years of reading/listening to “trashy romance novels” and being somewhat embarrassed by my love for them, I‘m glad the world is finally catching on to how fun they can be. But, wow, is it hard to go back to watching these unsalted, flavorless holiday movies now.