Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Secret Gift of Christmas’ on Hallmark Channel, About A Personal Shopper Who Falls For Her Client While Doing His Holiday Shopping

In Hallmark’s The Secret Gift of Christmas, a gruff, busy contractor hires a perky personal shopper to help take some work off his plate at Christmas, buying gifts for his coworkers and loved ones. Eventually, she softens his tough exterior, they discover common ground, and of course, fall in love.

THE SECRET GIFT OF CHRISTMAS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Personal shopper Bonnie Parker (Meghan Ory), who actually dresses like she’s gift-wrapped, in a bright red coat and beret and huge white bow-scarf, goes shopping. Along the way she customizes her picks for the perfect items for people, occasionally breaking the fourth wall to declare why the things she’s buying are perfect for her clients.

The Gist: With only a few days before the holiday, Patrick Armstrong (Christopher Russell) has hired Bonnie to do his Christmas shopping. Patrick, a busy contractor and widowed father, is in the midst of a huge construction project, and he has hired Bonnie to buy presents for his clients and his daughter. Well, actually, his assistant and nephew Bernard has hired Bonnie because he saw her “trending on socials” and thought she could help out his super busy uncle. Bonnie and Patrick are opposites (he’s no fan of social media; she’s an “influencer,” she’s bubbly and fun, he’s gruff and unfancy), so he’s skeptical of all of her suggestions and her role here in the first place.

As all of Patrick’s gift recipients open their presents, they love them, but Patrick is annoyed that Bonnie’s getting too creative with her gift choices, he just wants her to buy everyone a plastic plant and call it a day. Eventually, the gift giving starts to open new doors for Patrick though: one of his clients is so impressed by the personal touch that he signs Patrick to a big new contract. Grateful that Bonnie is actually helping his business, he starts to spend more time with her, and they bond over the fact that they’re both dealing with loss (the deaths of Bonnie’s mom and Patrick’s wife). They grow closer, and despite a couple of hiccups along the way, including a jealous music teacher and some tension between Bonnie and her dad, they realize that sometimes a person’s presence is the best present.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Much like Hallmark’s Christmas With A Kiss, our female protagonist is a social media influencer struggling to connect with a more traditional guy, and they have to get past their initial judgment of each other to find lo-oove.

A Holiday Tradition: Nothing says Christmas tradition like the pure, unadulterated commercialism of shopping for gifts for every person you know.

Does the Title Make Any Sense?: Yes, in that Bonnie buys gifts for a living and it’s Christmas and LOVE between Bonnie and Patrick is the secret gift.

Our Take: The Sound of Music is my favorite movie, so I don’t want to give you the wrong impression when I draw a comparison between that and The Secret Gift of Christmas and have you think you’re about to see a jaunty nun singing in the Alps. No, it’s just that it just shares a lot of the same major plot points: Patrick is the sad widower who has decided to throw himself into work and ignore his daughter, and while it’s giving me Captain von Trapp vibes, it’s nowhere near as nuanced or sexy as an aloof, young Christopher Plummer. Bonnie is not a musical governess who makes clothing out of curtains, but as a perky, upbeat personal shopper, she brings fun and life back into Patrick’s world and pushes him out of his comfort zone one Christmas sweater at a time.

And like The Sound of Music, Bonnie bonds with Patrick’s daughter, Phoebe (Ellie Cluett) before really getting close with her dad, but eventually the two adults realize they can confide about their shared grief and the more intimate aspects of their lives.

I make all of these comparisons to The Sound of Music to point out that even when two films share some common ground, it’s all the details that flesh out the movie that can make it great, or just meh. In both movies, the girl gets the guy and they form a solid family bond, and Patrick even rediscovers his passion for singing (!), but The Secret Gift of Christmas offers nothing more than the most generic character traits and doesn’t create any stakes or drama along the way.

Parting Shot: Patrick offers Bonnie a holiday sweater – one that matches ones that he and Phoebe already have – and invites her to have Christmas dinner together. And then, of course, they walk over the Alps to escape the Nazis. Just kidding, that should say they kiss.

Performance Worth Watching: Christopher Russell looks like a real-life version of Prince Charming from Shrek, and though his haircut and stubbly beard are a little too perfect, he manages to excel as the gruff but sweet construction dude. He was also the star of Peppermint and Postcards, where he played an ambitious newscaster, another role he looks perfectly suited to play.

Memorable Dialogue: “My only problem? Is that I love shopping!” Bonnie tells her sister, who tells her she has a spending problem.

Our Call: SKIP IT! Go watch Fraulein Maria sit on a pine cone instead.