One Starry Christmas (2015) - sometimes you just get the urge to watch another hallmark movie about falling in love with a cowboy, seasonally appropriate or not, and this one delivers on all the content you want to see - he tips his hat in acknowledgement at multiple points (sometimes down, sometimes up - unsure if there’s a contextual meaning), rides a horse, carries a saddle everywhere he goes, calls the heroine “miz amy”, delivers cosmic sayings about how riding a bronco is comparable a “vision quest”, linedances, and plays harmonica (“silent night”). sometimes he does multiple of these in the same scene! also the cowboy is played by a miraculously preserved Damon Runyon, who has seemingly not aged a day since the heyday of Guys & Dolls - - actually it appears to be a completely unrelated guy called Damon Runyan. why would anyone do that to their child?
but the cowboy was not the only reason i watched the film. you see, the word “starry” is in the title, and the movie has a star emphasis - the main lady is a doctor of astronomy and the plot summary assures us that she bonds with the cowboy over their joint love of the stars - so i was frankly curious how far this would go, would it veer into astrology and star magic or is that too pagan for the hallmark brand… it turns out i was on the wrong track since while the main characters do chant things like “magic stars, grant my wish tonight” the main form of religious devotion in this world appears to be christmas worship. everyone is constantly talking about the importance of christmas and being home for christmas and decorating the tree and drinking eggnog and stuff, the single character in the movie who doesn’t really care about any of that is actively reviled as a result, particularly by the protagonist’s mom who is particularly hardline and aggressive about the whole thing. if there was a christmas equivalent of the taliban she’d be in it. her nemesis is the protag’s starter boyfriend, and considering the extent to which hallmark movies softpedal any conflict, the naked contempt and hostility that everybody in the movie has towards this wretched seasonal agnostic is a pleasure to see.
other than that the main notable thing about this movie is how vague it is - all the reactions are just slightly off and delayed, all the lines of dialog have an improv-theater wooliness to them, as if the actors have been told what the general emotional feel is for each scene and have to make up the rest themselves. lines like “hey, yeah, i love christmas, no problem, and you brought a cowboy” or the exchange “miracles do happen” / “this whole adventure’s been a miracle”. when the starter boyfriend wants to make fun of the cowboy he just says “horseback riding in the city…? that’s…” and scrunches up his face. a cow, a hat? preposterous. when the cowboy rides back to make his love declaration at the end the heroine declares “you crazy cowboy…!”. stretched over the whole movie, it’s a very pleasingly disorienting effect. it sort of feels like you fell asleep during the real hallmark movie and your brain had to come up with something in the same general shape.
the rest of it goes as you’d expect, except for the throwaway sideplot about the cowboy having an also-cowboy rodeo star brother, that the heroine’s mother tries to reunite him with in her house apparently just because she needs another hit of those family christmas feelings so badly, even secondhand. nobody is safe. les liasons dangereuses but for cowboys. the brother is played by someone with the authentically cowboy name of George Canyon and there’s a good part where he sings a plot-relevant song at dinner (“The Ballad Of Wild Bill”) while his mic echo is so loud it sounds like he’s auditioning for the jesus & mary chain.
the other big musical setpiece is when the cowboy finds himself attending the prestigious xmas soiree of a big new york tech company while being regarded with naked lust by practically everyone in attendance, and his response is to immediately organize them all into a line dance, which everybody finds delightful apart from the heroine’s boyfriend. if this movie has taught me anything it’s that cowboy is the spice of life. the next time you have to organize a party, funeral, wedding, bar mitzvah or latin mass try bringing along some cowbys to liven up proceedings. satisfaction guaranteed.
COWBY: MEGU of the cowboy affectation which is full of a sense of justice.
