Stream It or Skip It: ‘A Kiss Before Christmas’ on Hallmark Reunites ‘Desperate Housewives” Teri Hatcher and James Denton

With A Kiss Before Christmas, Hallmark does a solid for everyone who spent Sunday nights in the mid-’00s watching Desperate Housewives just to see what obstacle would be thrown at Teri Hatcher and James Denton. Now, 9 years later, these two stars find themselves once again tasked with falling in love with each other—but this time they’re in a Hallmark Christmas movie. Does their soap-y chemistry translate to seasonal fare? Or should you just pull out your old Housewives DVDs?

A KISS BEFORE CHRISTMAS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: James Denton stars as Ethan, a mid-level guy working at a property development firm. His career may be stalled, but he does have a wife (Teri Hatcher) and two kids—but then again, Joyce wants to go back to law school and the kids are on track to attend some fancy colleges. Where’s all the money gonna come from? Not from Ethan, because he can’t get promoted! If only he’d chosen differently 20 years ago and gotten on a different elevator. Then he wouldn’t have missed out on a career opportunity—uh, and he also wouldn’t have met his wife!

Unfortunately for Ethan, he made the big mistake of making an existential wish during the holiday season. Of course a guy dressed like Santa’s gonna make that wish come true and give Ethan the life he would’ve had if he hadn’t missed that elevator to opportunity!

Now Ethan’s the CEO of his company. He doesn’t have a family but he does have a Ferrari. And Joyce? She’s a high-powered attorney who represents the properties that this new Ethan’s trying to tear down! This scenario comes with a mission, too: if Ethan wants to return to his old life, he has to get this Joyce to fall in love with him before Christmas. Otherwise, he’ll be trapped in this CEO reality with no memory of what he’s lost.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Any movie wherein a depressed lead gets to see what the world would be like had things turned out differently is gonna get compared to It’s a Wonderful Life, and A Kiss Before Christmas deserves that comparison. But I’m gonna go a step further and say that Denton and Hatcher’s chemistry, and this film’s whole conceit, reminds me of the kinda classic romance movies that would star Cary Grant or Audrey Hepburn way back when. They don’t make’em like this anymore!

Performance Worth Watching: With Denton and Hatcher being who they are, you really gotta reach to find someone that seems like they could intimidate our leads. That’s where Marilu Henner comes in. She’s a TV legend in her own right because of Taxi, one of the greatest ensembles in the history of the medium, and she’s also a Hallmark holiday movie mainstay. Every time she’s on screen, you’re reminded of all of that.

Memorable Dialogue: You know Joyce is a damn good lawyer because she immediately asks Ethan for clarity on Mystery Santa’s big plan: “At what point: Christmas Eve going into Christmas, or Christmas Day itself?” “That’s a really good question. I should’ve asked that.”

A Holiday Tradition: Since Ethan and Joyce first met when they got trapped in an elevator on Christmas Eve, that date has a special significance to them. Well, it does when Ethan remembers.

Does the Title Make Any Sense?: It makes sense in that Ethan does literally need a kiss before Christmas so that he can go back to his normal life, but it’s still pretty vague. What about It’s My Wonderful Life or, to steal a title from another Hallmark movie this year, Christmas CEO? Eh, A Kiss Before Christmas is pretty darn good.

Our Take: To reiterate and clarify: they really don’t make’em like this anymore—unless you take Hallmark holiday movies into consideration. It’s while watching A Kiss Before Christmas that I really picked up on the TCM vibe that permeates the best of this channel’s seasonal offerings. If you watch movies from the ’30s to the ’50s, you’ll see that the premises are pretty straightforward. It’s a Wonderful Life or Christmas in Connecticut or The Bishop’s Wife or The Shop Around the Corner—these are all great movies, and these are the movies that inspired Hallmark Christmas movies like A Kiss Before Christmas. Or, I mean, maybe they inspired the movies that inspired the movies that inspired A Kiss Before Christmas. Whichever—the DNA is still there.

This becomes apparent when you cast really good leads who have excellent, lived-in chemistry with each other (like Hatcher and Denton) and pair them with material that is just rock solid (if you’re not a sucker for “I’d do my life differently if I could” stories, then I don’t know what to tell you). Seriously—swap out Hallmark’s patented bright and cherry holiday palette for grainy black and white, give everyone a Mid-Atlantic accent, and put all the men in well-tailored tweed suits and all the ladies in gorgeous dresses and you have A Kiss Before Christmas (1948).

All this is to say that everything about this movie worked for me and also on me. Did I get surprisingly emotional when Ethan found out where his adopted kids landed in this new timeline? Maybe I did! And that’s the sign of a Hallmark holiday movie working its timeless magic.

Our Call: STREAM IT. And now we’re desperate for more holiday movies starring Teri Hatcher and James Denton.

Watch A Kiss Before Christmas on Hallmark