Christmas Together With You debuted Saturday, Nov. 20, 2021, on the Hallmark Channel as part of its Countdown to Christmas series.
Megan is an unlucky-at-love coffee shop owner who is best friends with Frank, a 70-ish widower who carries around a photograph of Claire, his first girlfriend from 50 years ago, and not his wife of thirty-plus years who recently died.
With her own love life in tatters, Megan urges Frank to look up his old flame. Odds are Claire’s either buried or married, and he wants to leave the past in the past. She ignores his wishes and stalks her on the Internet.
Turns out Claire is alive and kicking in a town a few hundred miles away, and Megan suggests a road trip. Once again Frank says he’s not interested in reliving the past, but after realizing how much effort Megan put in to finding her (thirty minutes of Googling and a short email to a stranger), he decides to go along on the off chance Claire still carries a torch for a guy she hasn’t seen in fifty years.
Megan stops to buy Frank a coffee. A rude lout on a cell phone lets his mangy mongrel of a mutt run amok and smash into Megan. She spills coffee all over her jacket. The boorish man shoves a wad of cash at her and mumbles an apology, all the while managing to keep his cell phone glued to his ear.
When Frank and Megan reach their destination, they check into the only inn in town. Lo and behold, the buffoon with the unruly pooch runs the lodge. Steve, a hotel hotshot who lives on the other side of the country, bought the place a year ago as an investment. He forced his parents to ditch their retirement plans and run it, but their indifference and incompetence has let the inn fall into a dangerous state of disrepair. Despite a list of one-star reviews longer than Courtney Love’s rap sheet, the inn continues to pull in paying customers and is somehow booked for the weekend.
Before Steve gives Megan and Frank the Joseph and Mary treatment and tells them the inn is full, an unhappy guest demands to be freed from this hellhole because the heat in her room isn’t working and she’s worried about catching fleas from that mangy mongrel Max, who lounges around the lobby licking his balls all day long. You’re in luck, Steve tells Megan and Frank, and happily boots out the old coot to give them a room that doesn’t even meet the standards for POWs set by the Geneva Convention.
Frank’s reunion with Claire gets off to a rocky start. She turns him down when he asks for a date and then blows him off when he shows up with a group of Christmas carolers and starts singing their song. Turned off by his tone-deaf caterwauling, she tells him she doesn’t want to set herself up for more heartbreak and stomps away.
Megan convinces Claire to give him another chance, and they enjoy a romantic dinner at a nice restaurant followed by a moonlit stroll. Their love seems to be rekindling, but Claire admits she can’t let go of the heartache and splits again, leaving Frank stammering more apologies.
Before leaving town, Frank writes a note to Claire explaining that he ditched her half a century earlier because her old man believed his daughter could do better (why Frank couldn’t have told her this face-to-face the first, second or third time she brought up how heartbroken she was beggars belief).
Unbeknownst to Megan, Steve’s mangy mutt Max somehow climbed into the back of her car undetected and pops up when they’re about halfway home. Given no choice, she returns to the Inn and drops off the stowaway. Steve, a heartless monster who didn’t realize his dog was missing for half a day, asks Megan to stay. Despite having spent little time alone together, she agrees.
Relationship update: Steve gets sued for all he’s worth when an octogenarian guest tumbles down the rickety steps his parents neglected to repair. Realizing Steve’s about to lose everything, Megan hightails it back to the city and her beloved coffee shop.
Real review: This movie was hard to watch. Niall’s character was unlikeable for so many reasons. The plot, what little there was of it, moved along at a glacier pace. There was zero chemistry between the two love interests, mainly because they hardly spent any time alone together. The attempts at comedy fell flat. Just a huge swing and miss by Hallmark. Won’t be watched again.
My IMDb rating: 4 stars out of 10.
Check out these other reviews
- Christmas Together with You (2021)
- Coyote Creek Christmas (2021)
- You, Me and the Christmas Trees (2021)
- Christmas by Starlight (2020)
- The Angel Tree (2020)
- Jingle Bell Bride (2020)
- If I Only Had Christmas (2020)
- A Glenbrooke Christmas (2020)
- Christmas Wishes and Mistletoe Kisses (2019)
- Dashing through the Snow (2015)
- Christmas Land (2015)
Edits by Todd 
One Comment
Dear Todd,
Full disclosure, this was not my favorite Niall Matter movie. Underneath your snarky sarcasm, I actually agree with at least some of the points you were trying to make. But, respectfully, when did you decide it was ok to not only criticize the work, but to tear down the creators and performers personally? How much time and effort did it take to write your comments? How would this compare with the time and effort the actors committed to their work? And to support your comments, you added points that made it sound worse, but were not exactly accurate: e.g. Frank didn’t decide to go along because he “realized how much effort Megan put in to finding her (thirty minutes of Googling and a short email to a stranger),” but rather because he realized this could be a healing trip for Megan’s pain. Or, we don’t know that “Steve, a heartless monster who didn’t realize his dog was missing for half a day.” So here’s my challenge to you. Write your next review with equal attention to detail, but honestly, with true humor instead of cheap shot snark. What do you say?
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