Christmas At Graceland: Home For The Holidays.

No, this isn’t a sequel to any other Graceland movies and Kellie Pickler isn’t in it, it’s just another marketing opportunity. Whatever, Hallmark. Priscilla Presley must be getting some great kickbacks. Also, as the TVMovieChristmas blog points out, they did the same plot TWICE.

Anyway, Harper is a girl who works in European art museums and wants a curator job. I’m confused as to why the job seems to be at Graceland and yet requires her to live in London. I know nothing about art curation but this seems confusing. She also doesn’t have a Ph.D like all the other candidates, which I would guess IRL would rule her out for the job, but Harper is giving it a try anyway, God love her. Anyway, she’s at her sister’s for the month waiting around on this job offer and doing not much else. We also find out that she used to work at Graceland as a tour guide and if she gets this job “you wouldn’t be here very much.”

“You’re one of our more interesting candidates,” the lady says, completely straightfaced and with no snark whatsoever. That is some amazing deadpan delivery you have there, ma’am.

This movie stars Adrian Grenier, a man who’s usually noted for his curly, curly hair. Now he has flat Lego hair. This is odd. He’s Owen, a single dad with three kids, no nanny, and A Schedule.

Priscilla Presley gets a cameo here. The woman is so pale that she looks like a ghost or zombie or something, and the screaming red hair only makes it worse. She looks literally inhuman. Find the woman a blusher, please, and some foundation that gives her a skin tone. The movie tells us, “Isn’t she the sweetest?” She may be, but I’m concerned about her now.

Harper hangs with her old boss at Graceland and volunteers to do a tour, like immediately. This turns out to be for Owen’s kids, and her old boss suggests that while she’s waiting around, she might as well be his nanny. Uh...I’ll think about it? She takes the job after her sister is all, oh, more relatives are coming, can you sleep on the couch? Because Owen has a guest house.

“I was supposed to go to Europe for a month and I ended up spending 3 years, so who knows?” Harper is a Free Spirit, y’all! She can wing things! Meanwhile, Owen is all, we have A System in this house, and we do not wing it. He says this politely, mind you, not like he’s a Von Trapp or a Gilbreth, but it’s still very corncob up the ass. But hey, he’s got the guest house, so there’s no commute on icy roads and food in the fridge. And The Schedule. “Believe it or not, weekdays are quiet times.” I don’t believe it. Harper is already wanting to back out of this job, but the kids walk in and uh...I guess not.

Because Harper has all this free time despite The Schedule (which she is ignoring), she argues to her old boss that since Elvis sells Graceland, they should do a whole Elvis experience for the place. She’s got plenty of free time to do that, really! That should also sell her for the curator job.
I actually think this idea is cool, but I still think it’d be a challenge to juggle all that shit.

Owen’s lone guy friend is some tech genius who razzes him delightfully. “YOU? LIKE THINGS ORGANIZED?!?!” his friend snarks so hard at Mr. Prim. Owen’s retort is, “Go make some brilliant code or something.”

While nannying, the kids suggest making an elf house instead of (yet another) Santa house like all the other kids are doing. This makes sense to me. They also bake a Yule Log and then Owen walks and is all “did anyone do their homework and chores first before having fun?” She is all, “Yule Log?”

But...the schedule! “It’s the holidays, everything gets thrown off!” Harper (reasonably) argues. Then he’s all, my dead wife used to enjoy the chaos too, but they won’t enjoy Christmas if they don’t Follow The Plan. Someone please remove the corncob from this fellow’s ass. I kinda feel like he borrowed it from Mr. Darcy or something. (The “Unleashing Mr. Darcy” movies, featuring dogs. I love those.)

Blah blah blah THE SCHEDULE Xmas tree shopping art projects and singing ALL the lyrics to “O Christmas Tree,” most of which you do not know. This reminds me of singing “Carol of the Bells” in my play, which is another song of which most people do not actually know the darned words to (and in fact, we needed to hold onto the lyrics so we don’t mix up the verse order).

This movie has the fanciest light up musical advent calendar ever. Nice job there! “The Holiday Calendar” movie wishes it had your budget.

I started zoning, but at some point Owen has some big work development come up that means he should be working his ass off...but what about sledding?!

Owen and Harper go to some work party of his.

“Is this your date?”
”Friend... ly, she takes care of my kids.”
”Also I don’t date.”
“Well, I got that wrong!”

As they sit around at a table, Owen figures out that somehow this party has the exact same decor, music, nutcrackers on the table, as the one he is going to throw. This seems incredibly weird. Like, did they hire the event planner equivalent of that cheerleading guy in Bring It On who just taught everyone the same routine? Like, I assume most parties have classical music and similar decor... BUT THE NUTCRACKERS!!!! Harper gives some reasonable suggestions like, don’t parties have different guest lists, and he’s all, no, it’s the exact same people! “Well, why don’t we hide the nutcrackers then?” Just kidding!

Somehow they agree to combine his party and The Elvis Experience (good job), which leads to the line, “Elvis, charity, AND Christmas?”

(The ghost of) Priscilla Presley returns and says that Elvis would just throw tinsel around (no joke, she says this). She can’t be there for their party, doesn’t explain why, but I guess she hangs around to throw tinsel around with everyone else. That is special.

Owen finally sucks it up and asks Harper out (to their party) officially. Good job, dude.

After throwing a great party, the job lady comes up and offers Harper the job, but she has to be in London by the 28th. “That’s so soon.” Duh, it’s not like they didn’t mention that at the start of the movie. WHATEVER WILL SHE DECIDE?!? I HAVE NO IDEA!!!! She’ll think about it.

Owen offers free medical technology to everyone, more or less.

The musical act couldn’t make it, but the kids are now going to force their dad to sing.

It’s good news, bad news time about her job! Bad timing, he says, and they are so lucky to have her, and thank you for all your work. Well, at least he was polite.

Harper isn’t going anywhere! “Two weeks ago, it was.” I smell a two week theme here, Hallmark. She tried to talk boss lady into letting her stay here and “she’ll think about it.” We’ll make it work, Mr. Schedule says.

This was...okay. I’m not gonna remember much about it in the future. It had slightly more going on than the other movie with the same plot, I can say that much....

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