Unless you’re trapped under a rock, you’ve probably seen at least one of the barrage of Hallmark holiday films unleashed on the viewing public over the years. They release so many, in fact, that many times, they have more new holiday movies than there are days between Thanksgiving and Christmas!
And I’ve watched a LOT of them. This won’t surprise longtime readers, given my extensive reviews of Hallmark’s Crossword Mysteries series in the past.
But you might be surprised by just how many Hallmark movies feature puzzly themes as the hook on which to hang yet another holiday romance.
So today, let’s look at the puzzliest offerings of Hallmark’s holiday season!
The Christmas Quest
Debuting just this week and starring Hallmark movie royalty like Lacey Chabert, Kristoffer Polaha, and Erin Cahill, The Christmas Quest answers the question “What if Indiana Jones, but Christmas?”
They’ve got ripoff music, the map gimmick, and even a giant boulder joke, as Lacey’s treasure hunter recruits her ex-husband (an expert on dead languages) to complete the treasure hunt started by her mother years before.
Okay, so it’s less Indiana Jones than that one episode of MacGyver with the big sapphire, but it’s actually cool to see the mix of Scandinavian lore with standard Hallmark tropes… even if the ending doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
Mystery on Mistletoe Lane
A historian and single mom moves into a historic home for her new job, and her children discover a Christmas mystery lurking in the walls of the house.
As our historian butts heads with the former head of the historical society, as well as the douche-hat deputy mayor, she tries to revive the town’s Christmas spirit (in a historical way), drive up interest in the historical society, and unravel the festive mystery she calls her new home.
The scavenger hunt with semi-riddle-y clues is pretty fun (and turns the obnoxious children into more engaging characters as they explore), and unlike many of the “puzzly” Hallmark films, you can enjoy solving along with the characters. Plus you get the big reveals, the perfectly timed snowfalls, and a romance that takes about two weeks to cook. Not bad.
On the 12th Date of Christmas
Two designers of puzzly scavenger hunts — a man who prefers working alone and a woman who needs to find her confidence and voice — are seeking the same promotion, but get thrown together to create a holiday scavenger hunt for a big client.
These might be the two least socially capable people in the universe, so seeing them bumble around Chicago as they come up with twelve festive events to coincide with the 12 days of Christmas is a little bit of a chore.
Honestly, this one is barely a story. She resolves her voice thing in the first twenty minutes, and the requisite 90-minute-mark misunderstanding is so cartoonishly simple to resolve, and yet, they both buffoonishly avoid doing so.
Unlocking Christmas
An injured air force vet returns home and meets a doctor just starting out in town, and sparks definitely do not fly at first glance.
But when they each discover a key and a riddle waiting for them that night, they work together to solve a Christmas mystery that requires them to perform a few acts of kindness for others along the way.
This one is relatively harmless fun, as this romance is clearly being orchestrated for the benefit of both lonely parties. Of course, that doesn’t stop the side characters from being much more likable than our protagonists. I’d rather watch hometown boy’s soon-to-be-father best friend and doctor lady’s new hospital pal solve Christmas mysteries instead.
Christmas in Evergreen: Tidings of Joy
Katie is vacationing in the famously (almost suspiciously) Christmassy small town of Evergreen, only to get roped into writing about the town for a magazine article.
But as she explores the town and gets wrapped up in its many Christmas stories (including a smashed magic snowglobe AND the mystery of a lost time capsule), she finds her cynical views on Evergreen fading and her affections for a particular Evergreen resident growing.
This almost feels like a parody of a Hallmark movie. They set up the out-of-towner, the Christmas mystery, the friends-who-clearly-like-each-other, the loved-one-who-will-miss-Christmas, and more within the first few minutes.
Plus there are so many Hallmark alums (many of them referencing OTHER Hallmark movies) that it feels intentionally wink-at-the-camera-y.
The puzzling here is very minor, but it’s worth watching for two reasons:
- the friends-who-clearly-both-want-more-but-don’t-want-to-risk-the-friendship who work together to fix the magic snowglobe
- one very funny bit of CGI moment you simply have to experience for yourself.
A Christmas to Treasure
We switch to Lifetime for this one, but most of the Hallmark tropes still fit.
Six childhood friends are reunited at Christmas by a treasure hunt, posthumously created the old woman who used to host their clubhouse.
While one treasure hunter hopes to find the money he needs to buy the property and bring it back to life, another wishes to find seed money for his growing business. And wouldn’t you know it, they used to date but things ended badly. Will one last treasure hunt be the key to everyone’s happily ever after?
Kinda cool to see a non-hetero romance take center stage for once. That being said, this one is incredibly saccharine-sappy, and the most entertaining character is the wacky villainous real estate agent trying to cash in on the property.
As for the puzzly hunt… it’s more of a walk through memory lane for the characters, so not much to solve here.
The 12 Games of Christmas
A film from the Great American Family channel takes up the final spot on our list today, as our protagonists actually get sucked INTO a Christmas board game and have to complete holiday tasks in order to return to the real world in time to enjoy Christmas festivities.
Sounds like a slam dunk, right? Cool concept, great cast, what’s not to love?
Well…
The “lessons” behind each festive task were so ham-fisted and the logic so lacking that I couldn’t even enjoy the campy fun of it all. It was a bummer, because I was sure we had a winner on our hands here.
So, when it comes to Hallmark holiday fare, are the puzzly ones any better than the average festive fare? It’s hard to say.
There are lots of Christmas scavenger hunts (like the one seen in the creatively-named Christmas Scavenger Hunt), but most of them are just lists of things to do, and not the more elaborate puzzly hunt of our first entry.
But I think they do make a nice scaffolding upon which to spend two hours watching attractive people fall in love. Add a smattering of snowfall, and you’ve got a recipe for Yuletide entertainment… or at the very least, fun background noise while you do a jigsaw puzzle or solve a crossword.
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