Vintage: Hallmark, 2022
Summary: Sarah is a children’s book author who returns to her hometown, where she reconnects with her family and Travis, her teenage crush. She soon discovers that a long-held family legend might actually be true.
Cast member prestige: Our lead actress is Sarah Ramos, who I know as Haddie Braverman from Parenthood but who now also does some kind of performance art on TikTok and curates photography exhibits of her childhood snapshots with celebrities. Also featured: Marilu Henner, who we last saw in Love on a Limb.
We open on a book shop in an anonymous Big City, where our heroine Sarah Grace is reading from her bestselling children’s novel Isabella’s Kismet Cookies in front of a rapt crowd of children in matching cosplay. The camera zooms in and we see that the book in question appears to feature two heroic children fighting some kind of giant sea creature. There are oversized cardboard standees, none of the children in the audience are screaming, and none of their parents are having top-volume cell phone conversations in the back of the room. So: this is a fantasy film, got it.
As Sarah concludes the reading, her agent Benny strides up front to make an announcement to the crowd about something called the Isabella Christmas Contest. Apparently children across the country were invited to write letters detailing charity projects they think would reflect the “spirit of Isabella,” whatever that is. Benny says that a winner has been chosen, and that Sarah will soon be traveling to the winner’s hometown to announce their name. “Get ready, kids of New Britain, Maine - Sarah Grace is coming,” Benny chirps. The assembled kids, none of whom live in New Britain and as such are all contest losers, cheer for some reason, and Sarah looks aggrieved.
Afterwards, Benny is all what’s with the face, and Sarah tells him that New Britain is her hometown… kind of. “You’ve never mentioned this place before,” Benny retorts. Sarah tells him that her time in New Britain ended badly. Benny, who understands his role as a Hallmark Side Character of Ambiguous Sexuality, demands to know all the sordid details, and we enter flashback mode.
“It was Christmas…” Flashback Sarah begins. Because of course it was.
Sarah tells us that as a child she spent summers and holidays at her grandmother’s house in New Britain. Her voiceover shares that she was “a late bloomer” with a deep crush on the boy next door. The flashback footage attempts to show us this late bloomer by taking adult actress Sarah Ramos and putting her in a puffy white coat, the double side ponytails of a toddler, and about twelve different brightly colored hair clips. So: a child, yes? But she is also getting out of the driver’s side of a car so… not a child? Either way, she gets hit from behind by a snowball that was thrown by the aforementioned “boy next door,” a grown-ass man named Travis who is cleaning a black sportscar he calls Night Runner. He is preparing to sell the car, he tells child/teen Sarah, because “it’s time to grow up and get something more practical.”
Child/teen Sarah leaves Travis there and goes inside to hug Grandma Marilu Henner hello. She is in the middle of baking “kismet cookies,” an old secret recipe, and Sarah jumps in to help. She asks Grandma how to know when the cookies are done baking and Grandma replies: “you know how it is: the kismet doesn’t work unless you really believe in the magic. Don’t peek - use your heart, not your eyes.” Does that mean, like, 12 minutes at 375 degrees?
Then the doorbell rings and it’s a woman named Helen who heard about the kismet cookies and wanted to try one for herself. Grandma invites her in to share “the legend” of these cookies, which is essentially that Grandma Marilu Henner’s own Grandma, a woman they call Nana Sue, found this cookie recipe in a little hidden nook in the kitchen of this very house, many years ago. The recipe said that if you follow it exactly and then put one of the resulting cookies under your pillow at night, you’ll dream of your true love. Nana Sue did this and proceeded to dream about the grocer, who she then stalked and subsequently married. I kind of feel like that’s less kismet and more manifesting, but whatever gets those cookies sold, I guess. Anyway, Helen’s buying it. She takes a cookie and bolts.
That night, child/teen Sarah sneaks a cookie under her own pillow. The next morning – Christmas morning! - she wakes up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, clearly excited by whomever had appeared in her dreams. She pops out of bed and appears downstairs mere seconds later in an insane sequined Christmas sweater and, once again, two ridiculous side ponies, this time adorned with tiny Santa hats. She exuberantly announces “I know who my true love is” and flies out the front door, Grandma calling out in vain for her to wait.
Sarah runs next door and knocks insistently until Travis opens the door, wearing what appears to be a suit. “Hey Sarah,” he asks awkwardly, “what are you doing here?” Sarah says she has something to tell him and it just won’t wait, pushing her way in and backing Travis into his own home while breathlessly rambling. I slept with this magic cookie, she yells, and the cookie says we’re supposed to be together, and while she’s going on and on and backing him further and further towards the living room we see: a bride, in a white wedding dress, standing in front of a besuited officiant, and no groom.
Because Travis is the groom.
Next-Door Travis, a grownass man, is getting married in his empty home on Christmas morning and hears a knock on the door between, like, the vows and the rings and is all HANG ON and then he excuses himself to OPEN HIS OWN FRONT DOOR and then converses with the spiral-eyed child/teen he finds there.
“This is a good day for me - be happy,” Travis says to Sarah, which is a perfectly normal thing for a perfectly normal groom to call out to his neighbor as she turns and runs away from his perfectly normal at-home Christmas morning wedding ceremony. Sarah flies back into Grandma’s house, grabs the paper with the kismet cookie recipe on it, and tears it to shreds.
And with that, we return to the present day. Sarah’s agent Benny asks, “So… the kismet cookies are real?” Sarah says yes, except for the fact that the kismet cookies in her book turn children into superheroes rather than make them, you know, fall in love with their adult neighbors. Sarah reveals that she hasn’t been back to New Britain since her own kismet cookie disaster, and she wants to pick a new contest winner so she doesn’t have to go back now. Benny says it’s too late; the mayor has already been notified, and he wants Sarah to announce the contest winner at New Britain’s annual “Dickens in the Park” Christmas Carol-themed event. Naturally.
“Wait,” asks Sarah. “Do they know that Sarah Grace the author is really Sarah Collins?” Benny shakes his head. “I haven’t told anyone,” he replies. Sarah is relieved. “Perfect! So there’s no problem, then.”
Friends, you know that I am willing to suspend disbelief to an almost irresponsible degree. But are we to believe that a town where actual magic cookies are peddled annually - nay, where there is a Magical Cookie Legend tied to generations of property owners - would not make the connection between the granddaughter of their own local magic cookie dealer and the same-first-named author of a magic cookie-themed book series that is so beloved and bestselling that it has inspired a national sweepstakes and a line of cosplay gear? It’s too much; I can’t abide it.
Anyway. Sarah expositions that this will have to be a quick trip to New Britain, since the first draft of the next book in her series is due by January 3rd. She is 80% done, but she’s already been given two extensions and she needs to figure out the ending, pronto.
Next thing we know, Sarah is arriving at her Grandma’s house in New Britain. Sarah and Grandma have a joyous reunion at home. Sarah drops off her suitcases in the bedroom where she used to sleep as a child/teen in love with the adult man next door. Then Sarah and Grandma head downtown for the aforementioned Dickens in the Park, for which they, along with the entire town, are suddenly somehow in complete period dress, full hair and makeup. How does one small town in Maine have so much Dickensware? It is daytime; how is literally everyone idling around in giant wool dresses and updos? What is happening?
The mayor calls upon “author Sarah Grace,” who is for sure a stranger and not someone who has a childhood bedroom full of her luggage three blocks away, to approach the podium to announce the winner of the Isabella Christmas Contest. Sarah reads from a cue card: “The winner is…Jasmine!” Ah, yes, winners of national literary contests are usually referred to by first name only.
Jasmine NoLastName is present in the crowd and thrilled. She runs up to hug Sarah and is followed by a man dressed in a Santa suit. “Father Christmas is my dad,” Jasmine offers up in explanation. Sarah nods at Santa, before all three of them head over to a waiting carriage for a photo opportunity. After the picture is snapped, Father Christmas grabs Sarah’s hand to help her out of the carriage. Creepily, he leans in and says, “I remember that smile.” You guys! Father Christmas is Grownass Neighbor Travis!
After the ceremony, Sarah is back home at Grandma’s house, and she’s pissed. Why didn’t Grandma tell her that Travis was back in town? She threatens to leave immediately, but Grandma begs her to stay, saying that “this year, more than any other year, I want us to spend Christmas in this house.” Sarah is like “what?” but then she is immediately distracted when the front door flies open and Jasmine NoLastName runs right in, followed by Father Christmas. Hey, guess what? Turns out that not only is Travis still in town, he still lives next door! Way to conceal info, Grandma, damn. Travis and Jasmine join Grandma in convincing Sarah to stay for the holiday. To sweeten the deal, Travis pulls a small bag out of his pocket. “Roasted chestnuts still your favorite?” he asks. What on earth, Travis, no. Come back when you’ve got buckeyes or peanut butter blossoms or something else that normals eat.
Sarah, Jasmine, and Travis all head next door so that Jasmine can show Sarah the project that won her the Isabella Christmas Contest. Ingeniously titled “Let’s Read at Christmas,” it’s an angel tree where kids from New Britain’s sister city who, as Travis puts it, “aren’t as lucky as we are” request books that they want to receive for Christmas. Book titles are written on paper ornaments so that other families [presumably the lucky ones?] can pluck one off the tree and buy the requested title, which will be wrapped and delivered on Christmas Eve.
Sarah, enchanted by the idea, immediately texts her agent to have copies of Isabella’s Kismet Cookies overnighted for the project. Presume much, Sarah? Pretty sure like 75% of those tags say Dog Man on them, but ok. “It’s good to be Sarah Grace,” she chirps, leading Jasmine to ask her why she uses that name instead of her real name, Sarah Collins. Sarah tells her that she took on the pen name Sarah Grace when she was 17, feeling lonely and rejected, wishing she could be someone more graceful. Christmas Groom Travis looks wistful.
Later in the day, Grandma, still in period dress for some reason, asks Sarah to go with her to visit a candy shop downtown, where they sample different flavors of fudge. “Miss Patsy,” Sarah swoons to the shopkeeper, “nothing compares to your candy! Spill. What’s your secret?” Miss Patsy gets dreamy-eyed. “Oh that’s easy,” she Hallmarks. “I use the best chocolate, real vanilla, and of course my secret ingredient….love.” Sarah looks dubious, but Miss Patsy goes on: “When people bake these days, they do it fast, trying to get to the other 20 things they have to do.” Grandma butts in to interject: “Not Patsy - she has a close relationship with everything she makes.”
Wow, nice judgment Grams, I’ll alert the third-shifters and the ER nurses and anyone else who dares to try to balance life with cookie baking that they should try slowing down so they can properly love their shitty Aldi’s imitation vanilla.
Later, Sarah and Jasmine and Travis work on decorating Jasmine’s book tree, which has been placed in New Britain’s community center for the holidays. Jasmine tells Sarah that she can’t wait to see what happens in the sequel to Isabella’s Kismet Cookies (Sarah is like: you and me both) and shyly reveals that she has been writing Isabella fanfic. Sarah’s like that’s cool, I used to write A Wrinkle in Time fanfic and your dad totally used to help me brainstorm. Travis nods, adding, “The crazy thing is that your fanfiction was so good that I ended up checking out the actual books at the library. You were actually the reason I got my first library card.”
Objection: pandering.
We flash to the next day, where the Dickens festival is still going on and somehow everyone is STILL in period dress and the mayor is hanging out downtown calling out “Hear ye! Hear ye! It’s time for the Christmas scavenger hunt!” Sarah has been asked to serve as one of the items to be “hunted,” so Travis and Jasmine, working together as a team, grab a clue sheet and read the first clue: “Find the teller of stories in the place filled with stories.” I’m sorry, that’s not a clue, it’s a Google map. Jasmine is all “That’s Sarah in the book store!” No shit, genius. They run off to the bookstore and find Sarah sitting in a corner reading A Wrinkle in Time.
Later, ostensibly after the scavenger hunt, the assembled townspeople with zero jobs but plenty of disposable income for hoop skirts gather at the community center to listen to Travis, dressed as Santa, reading aloud from A Christmas Carol. Everyone claps and cheers and a familiar-looking woman breaks apart from the pack and heads over to tap Sarah on the shoulder. It’s Helen from the past, the lady we met in Sarah’s flashback who begged for kismet cookies on Grandma’s doorstep. “The cookie worked for me,” she gleefully tells Sarah, because it led her to her husband. She’s very grateful and wishes that Sarah’s family was still making those cookies. “We need all the kismet we can get,” she says. Afterwards, Sarah and Travis wrap donations for Jasmine’s book tree project and talk about Sarah’s lack of inspiration. “If I’m not a writer, I don’t know who I am,” she despairs.
The next morning, Sarah’s despair multiplies when she calls Benny and learns that if she doesn’t finish the new book by her January 3rd deadline, the publisher is going to bring in a ghostwriter to finish it. I… don’t think that’s how any of this works. Sarah goes for a walk along a pier so she can feel her feels, and here comes Travis. “This is our brainstorming spot,” Sarah nostalgias. Travis says he remembers how Sarah has always used escape as a form of self preservation, and then non-sequiturs that his life has not turned out the way he expected it would. Sarah asks how long his marriage to Jasmine’s mom lasted, and he says not long. “Crystal is traveling around the world with her band, living the life she loves,” he reports. “And so am I. But she checks in a lot. No bad guys here.”
Travis drives Sarah to the bookstore to sign books, and then he comes running back a little later with some kind of crisis where he can’t figure out which sweater to buy Jasmine for Christmas, and then they go shopping, and then they walk past a bar offering “Christmas Trivia” so of course they go in, and the prize is a gift certificate to the candy shop with the fudge made entirely of fair trade cocoa and love. I am telling you this movie is like 75% filler.
The next morning, Sarah is typing away at the kitchen table when Travis knocks on the door and interrupts, grabs her coat and boots and tells her she needs to come help him cut down a Christmas tree STAT. Sarah says ok because what is logic. They drive for about a half hour before arriving at a charming cottage in the woods decorated festively with Christmas lights. Sarah is like “are these guys cool with you, like, chopping down their trees?” and Travis says that he knows the owner and he doesn’t mind. Once they’ve felled their tree of choice and tied it to the top of Travis’ minivan, Travis surprises every viewer who has never seen a movie before by revealing how he knows the owner of the cottage: it’s him! He owns the cottage! Soylent Green is people!
Travis leads Sarah inside and sits her down at a rustic table in front of a pile of notebooks and pens. He takes her phone away from her and announces that he has transformed the cottage into a writing retreat. “I can’t finish the book for you, but I can clear the road,” he says. He will feed her and be there to bounce ideas off of the whole time. Sarah protests that she doesn’t have her laptop, and Travis points at the notebooks and pens. Instead of crafting a neon sign that spells out the words “That’s Not How Any of This Works,” Sarah picks up a pen and gets to brainstormin’. “So when I left off, Roger was having some issues,” she muses as we go to commercial break.
Aaaaaaand when we return, Sarah is furiously scribbling in her notebook. “Roger helping Isabella find her kismet was genius!” she says to Travis, who smiles proudly. She writes one more line, grins, and holds up the notebook for Travis to see. At the bottom of a page of a literal spiral bound notebook this bestselling author has scrawled the words THE END in orange colored pencil. “Are you kidding?” asks Travis, echoing the thoughts of all viewers everywhere, except with less scorn and derision. They hug joyfully. “I’m gonna type this up when I get home and send it to Benny,” she announces like a five-year-old
When we next see our heroine it’s morning, the sun is shining, and Sarah is sitting on her bed busily typing up her report on how bees make honey and sending it to her third grade teacher – I’m sorry, I mean she’s typing her actual novel and submitting it to her actual literary agent for actual money. She calls Benny and tells him to check his email for a Christmas Eve surprise, then hangs up and walks into the hallway to find a pile of boxes marked “garage sale.” Concerned, she heads downstairs to ask Grandma what’s up, but she stops in her tracks when finds Grandma sitting in a chair, crying, talking to a framed picture of her late husband.
Grandma notices Sarah standing there and apologizes, saying that she gets emotional on Christmas Eve. Then she heads out to run errands, leaving Sarah with a determined look on her face. Can you guess what happens next? If you guessed “Sarah closes her eyes, wishes real hard, and then opens the hidden nook in the kitchen to find the original kismet cookie recipe tucked in and magically intact,” you win an improbable two-book deal from a major publisher! She starts to bake. A little later, Jasmine pops in to see if Sarah wants to come over and help decorate the tree and sees the cookies. “You made kismet cookies!” she observes with delight.
That night, Sarah and Travis walk around downtown. Sarah is fretting because Benny has yet to respond to her email about the book. And then, hey, what do you know: they look up and there’s Benny, somehow also walking around downtown New Britain, holding a coffee cup, in an unbuttoned light jacket in Maine in December. “I have to meet family tomorrow,” he says, “so I added a stop because we need to talk.”
Instead of asking the obvious relevant questions like WHAT or WHY, Sarah wants to know what Benny thought of the book. Benny pauses dramatically and then says…”it’s spectacular.” Sarah is delighted. Benny heads back to his last minute Christmas Eve B&B while Sarah heads home to chat with Grandma, who is sitting by the Christmas tree with a serious case of the sads.
“I found the recipe,” Sarah tells Grandma. “I know,” Grandma replies. Then Grandma finally admits that she’s selling the house. She misses teaching and has signed up for a program for senior citizens who want to teach English abroad. “What about the house?” Sarah asks. “The kismet needs a Collins here.” Very supportive, granddaughter who hasn’t been back to visit since she was in side-ponies. She hands Grandma a kismet cookie so she can dream of Grandpa again that night.
Over at Travis’s house, Sarah and Travis talk about Grandma’s plans. Sarah doesn’t know what to think. “This town,” she says. “And the cookies. It feels like home again. I struggled for years to write my second book - then I came here and filled a notebook with ideas for the next three. I don’t want someone else to live here.” Travis says that he doesn’t either, and wonders aloud if Grandma would give her a good deal on the house if she wanted to buy it. Sarah is all “but the big city,” to which Travis responds: “what if the cookie was right? If I promise not to marry anyone tomorrow, we can find out.” WHAT.
Sarah bolts, runs to Benny’s B&B, and the two of them walk around New Britain in the middle of night. Benny serves up a helping of Wise Hallmark Gay, telling Sarah she has two choices: “come back to the city, or move here to this cute town that inspires you and the handsome guy you’ve loved since you were a kid.” Sarah is all what if none of it is real, and Benny replies “but what if it all is” even though no one can hear him over the chorus of all God’s creatures screaming IT ISN’T.
So the next morning Sarah wakes up, sits straight up in bed with stars in her eyes, and runs downstairs to hug Grandma. Then we cut next-door to Travis waking up the same way. It turns out that Jasmine, that merry Christmas rascal, stole two kismet cookies and put them under both pillows. Once Travis figures it out, he makes Jasmine head next door to apologize for the stunt, but when she gets there Sarah is already gone. No worries, though - she left a gift for Jasmine on the table: a hard copy of the new Isabella book, printed on 8x11 copy paper, bound with a ribbon. LITERALLY HOW.
Grandma says the book is “hot off the presses,” and that Sarah left it for Jasmine before heading to the airport. Oh no! Jasmine and Travis run out the door to chase her down, only to find Sarah… walking up the front walk. She isn’t leaving, sillies - she just gave Benny a lift to the airport. “I thought I’d stick around,” Sarah tells them with a sly smile, “do some more writing, maybe buy my Grandma’s house. Unless you got married while I was at the airport.”
Wingman Grandma brings Jasmine inside so that Sarah and Travis can be alone. “I don’t need a cookie to tell me I’m in love with you,” Travis says. Embroider that on a pillowcase for me, someone. They kiss. The End.
Cast member prestige: Our lead actress is Sarah Ramos, who I know as Haddie Braverman from Parenthood but who now also does some kind of performance art on TikTok and curates photography exhibits of her childhood snapshots with celebrities. Also featured: Marilu Henner, who we last saw in Love on a Limb.
We open on a book shop in an anonymous Big City, where our heroine Sarah Grace is reading from her bestselling children’s novel Isabella’s Kismet Cookies in front of a rapt crowd of children in matching cosplay. The camera zooms in and we see that the book in question appears to feature two heroic children fighting some kind of giant sea creature. There are oversized cardboard standees, none of the children in the audience are screaming, and none of their parents are having top-volume cell phone conversations in the back of the room. So: this is a fantasy film, got it.
As Sarah concludes the reading, her agent Benny strides up front to make an announcement to the crowd about something called the Isabella Christmas Contest. Apparently children across the country were invited to write letters detailing charity projects they think would reflect the “spirit of Isabella,” whatever that is. Benny says that a winner has been chosen, and that Sarah will soon be traveling to the winner’s hometown to announce their name. “Get ready, kids of New Britain, Maine - Sarah Grace is coming,” Benny chirps. The assembled kids, none of whom live in New Britain and as such are all contest losers, cheer for some reason, and Sarah looks aggrieved.
Afterwards, Benny is all what’s with the face, and Sarah tells him that New Britain is her hometown… kind of. “You’ve never mentioned this place before,” Benny retorts. Sarah tells him that her time in New Britain ended badly. Benny, who understands his role as a Hallmark Side Character of Ambiguous Sexuality, demands to know all the sordid details, and we enter flashback mode.
“It was Christmas…” Flashback Sarah begins. Because of course it was.
Sarah tells us that as a child she spent summers and holidays at her grandmother’s house in New Britain. Her voiceover shares that she was “a late bloomer” with a deep crush on the boy next door. The flashback footage attempts to show us this late bloomer by taking adult actress Sarah Ramos and putting her in a puffy white coat, the double side ponytails of a toddler, and about twelve different brightly colored hair clips. So: a child, yes? But she is also getting out of the driver’s side of a car so… not a child? Either way, she gets hit from behind by a snowball that was thrown by the aforementioned “boy next door,” a grown-ass man named Travis who is cleaning a black sportscar he calls Night Runner. He is preparing to sell the car, he tells child/teen Sarah, because “it’s time to grow up and get something more practical.”
Child/teen Sarah leaves Travis there and goes inside to hug Grandma Marilu Henner hello. She is in the middle of baking “kismet cookies,” an old secret recipe, and Sarah jumps in to help. She asks Grandma how to know when the cookies are done baking and Grandma replies: “you know how it is: the kismet doesn’t work unless you really believe in the magic. Don’t peek - use your heart, not your eyes.” Does that mean, like, 12 minutes at 375 degrees?
Then the doorbell rings and it’s a woman named Helen who heard about the kismet cookies and wanted to try one for herself. Grandma invites her in to share “the legend” of these cookies, which is essentially that Grandma Marilu Henner’s own Grandma, a woman they call Nana Sue, found this cookie recipe in a little hidden nook in the kitchen of this very house, many years ago. The recipe said that if you follow it exactly and then put one of the resulting cookies under your pillow at night, you’ll dream of your true love. Nana Sue did this and proceeded to dream about the grocer, who she then stalked and subsequently married. I kind of feel like that’s less kismet and more manifesting, but whatever gets those cookies sold, I guess. Anyway, Helen’s buying it. She takes a cookie and bolts.
That night, child/teen Sarah sneaks a cookie under her own pillow. The next morning – Christmas morning! - she wakes up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, clearly excited by whomever had appeared in her dreams. She pops out of bed and appears downstairs mere seconds later in an insane sequined Christmas sweater and, once again, two ridiculous side ponies, this time adorned with tiny Santa hats. She exuberantly announces “I know who my true love is” and flies out the front door, Grandma calling out in vain for her to wait.
Sarah runs next door and knocks insistently until Travis opens the door, wearing what appears to be a suit. “Hey Sarah,” he asks awkwardly, “what are you doing here?” Sarah says she has something to tell him and it just won’t wait, pushing her way in and backing Travis into his own home while breathlessly rambling. I slept with this magic cookie, she yells, and the cookie says we’re supposed to be together, and while she’s going on and on and backing him further and further towards the living room we see: a bride, in a white wedding dress, standing in front of a besuited officiant, and no groom.
Because Travis is the groom.
Next-Door Travis, a grownass man, is getting married in his empty home on Christmas morning and hears a knock on the door between, like, the vows and the rings and is all HANG ON and then he excuses himself to OPEN HIS OWN FRONT DOOR and then converses with the spiral-eyed child/teen he finds there.
“This is a good day for me - be happy,” Travis says to Sarah, which is a perfectly normal thing for a perfectly normal groom to call out to his neighbor as she turns and runs away from his perfectly normal at-home Christmas morning wedding ceremony. Sarah flies back into Grandma’s house, grabs the paper with the kismet cookie recipe on it, and tears it to shreds.
And with that, we return to the present day. Sarah’s agent Benny asks, “So… the kismet cookies are real?” Sarah says yes, except for the fact that the kismet cookies in her book turn children into superheroes rather than make them, you know, fall in love with their adult neighbors. Sarah reveals that she hasn’t been back to New Britain since her own kismet cookie disaster, and she wants to pick a new contest winner so she doesn’t have to go back now. Benny says it’s too late; the mayor has already been notified, and he wants Sarah to announce the contest winner at New Britain’s annual “Dickens in the Park” Christmas Carol-themed event. Naturally.
“Wait,” asks Sarah. “Do they know that Sarah Grace the author is really Sarah Collins?” Benny shakes his head. “I haven’t told anyone,” he replies. Sarah is relieved. “Perfect! So there’s no problem, then.”
Friends, you know that I am willing to suspend disbelief to an almost irresponsible degree. But are we to believe that a town where actual magic cookies are peddled annually - nay, where there is a Magical Cookie Legend tied to generations of property owners - would not make the connection between the granddaughter of their own local magic cookie dealer and the same-first-named author of a magic cookie-themed book series that is so beloved and bestselling that it has inspired a national sweepstakes and a line of cosplay gear? It’s too much; I can’t abide it.
Anyway. Sarah expositions that this will have to be a quick trip to New Britain, since the first draft of the next book in her series is due by January 3rd. She is 80% done, but she’s already been given two extensions and she needs to figure out the ending, pronto.
Next thing we know, Sarah is arriving at her Grandma’s house in New Britain. Sarah and Grandma have a joyous reunion at home. Sarah drops off her suitcases in the bedroom where she used to sleep as a child/teen in love with the adult man next door. Then Sarah and Grandma head downtown for the aforementioned Dickens in the Park, for which they, along with the entire town, are suddenly somehow in complete period dress, full hair and makeup. How does one small town in Maine have so much Dickensware? It is daytime; how is literally everyone idling around in giant wool dresses and updos? What is happening?
The mayor calls upon “author Sarah Grace,” who is for sure a stranger and not someone who has a childhood bedroom full of her luggage three blocks away, to approach the podium to announce the winner of the Isabella Christmas Contest. Sarah reads from a cue card: “The winner is…Jasmine!” Ah, yes, winners of national literary contests are usually referred to by first name only.
Jasmine NoLastName is present in the crowd and thrilled. She runs up to hug Sarah and is followed by a man dressed in a Santa suit. “Father Christmas is my dad,” Jasmine offers up in explanation. Sarah nods at Santa, before all three of them head over to a waiting carriage for a photo opportunity. After the picture is snapped, Father Christmas grabs Sarah’s hand to help her out of the carriage. Creepily, he leans in and says, “I remember that smile.” You guys! Father Christmas is Grownass Neighbor Travis!
After the ceremony, Sarah is back home at Grandma’s house, and she’s pissed. Why didn’t Grandma tell her that Travis was back in town? She threatens to leave immediately, but Grandma begs her to stay, saying that “this year, more than any other year, I want us to spend Christmas in this house.” Sarah is like “what?” but then she is immediately distracted when the front door flies open and Jasmine NoLastName runs right in, followed by Father Christmas. Hey, guess what? Turns out that not only is Travis still in town, he still lives next door! Way to conceal info, Grandma, damn. Travis and Jasmine join Grandma in convincing Sarah to stay for the holiday. To sweeten the deal, Travis pulls a small bag out of his pocket. “Roasted chestnuts still your favorite?” he asks. What on earth, Travis, no. Come back when you’ve got buckeyes or peanut butter blossoms or something else that normals eat.
Sarah, Jasmine, and Travis all head next door so that Jasmine can show Sarah the project that won her the Isabella Christmas Contest. Ingeniously titled “Let’s Read at Christmas,” it’s an angel tree where kids from New Britain’s sister city who, as Travis puts it, “aren’t as lucky as we are” request books that they want to receive for Christmas. Book titles are written on paper ornaments so that other families [presumably the lucky ones?] can pluck one off the tree and buy the requested title, which will be wrapped and delivered on Christmas Eve.
Sarah, enchanted by the idea, immediately texts her agent to have copies of Isabella’s Kismet Cookies overnighted for the project. Presume much, Sarah? Pretty sure like 75% of those tags say Dog Man on them, but ok. “It’s good to be Sarah Grace,” she chirps, leading Jasmine to ask her why she uses that name instead of her real name, Sarah Collins. Sarah tells her that she took on the pen name Sarah Grace when she was 17, feeling lonely and rejected, wishing she could be someone more graceful. Christmas Groom Travis looks wistful.
Later in the day, Grandma, still in period dress for some reason, asks Sarah to go with her to visit a candy shop downtown, where they sample different flavors of fudge. “Miss Patsy,” Sarah swoons to the shopkeeper, “nothing compares to your candy! Spill. What’s your secret?” Miss Patsy gets dreamy-eyed. “Oh that’s easy,” she Hallmarks. “I use the best chocolate, real vanilla, and of course my secret ingredient….love.” Sarah looks dubious, but Miss Patsy goes on: “When people bake these days, they do it fast, trying to get to the other 20 things they have to do.” Grandma butts in to interject: “Not Patsy - she has a close relationship with everything she makes.”
Wow, nice judgment Grams, I’ll alert the third-shifters and the ER nurses and anyone else who dares to try to balance life with cookie baking that they should try slowing down so they can properly love their shitty Aldi’s imitation vanilla.
Later, Sarah and Jasmine and Travis work on decorating Jasmine’s book tree, which has been placed in New Britain’s community center for the holidays. Jasmine tells Sarah that she can’t wait to see what happens in the sequel to Isabella’s Kismet Cookies (Sarah is like: you and me both) and shyly reveals that she has been writing Isabella fanfic. Sarah’s like that’s cool, I used to write A Wrinkle in Time fanfic and your dad totally used to help me brainstorm. Travis nods, adding, “The crazy thing is that your fanfiction was so good that I ended up checking out the actual books at the library. You were actually the reason I got my first library card.”
Objection: pandering.
We flash to the next day, where the Dickens festival is still going on and somehow everyone is STILL in period dress and the mayor is hanging out downtown calling out “Hear ye! Hear ye! It’s time for the Christmas scavenger hunt!” Sarah has been asked to serve as one of the items to be “hunted,” so Travis and Jasmine, working together as a team, grab a clue sheet and read the first clue: “Find the teller of stories in the place filled with stories.” I’m sorry, that’s not a clue, it’s a Google map. Jasmine is all “That’s Sarah in the book store!” No shit, genius. They run off to the bookstore and find Sarah sitting in a corner reading A Wrinkle in Time.
Later, ostensibly after the scavenger hunt, the assembled townspeople with zero jobs but plenty of disposable income for hoop skirts gather at the community center to listen to Travis, dressed as Santa, reading aloud from A Christmas Carol. Everyone claps and cheers and a familiar-looking woman breaks apart from the pack and heads over to tap Sarah on the shoulder. It’s Helen from the past, the lady we met in Sarah’s flashback who begged for kismet cookies on Grandma’s doorstep. “The cookie worked for me,” she gleefully tells Sarah, because it led her to her husband. She’s very grateful and wishes that Sarah’s family was still making those cookies. “We need all the kismet we can get,” she says. Afterwards, Sarah and Travis wrap donations for Jasmine’s book tree project and talk about Sarah’s lack of inspiration. “If I’m not a writer, I don’t know who I am,” she despairs.
The next morning, Sarah’s despair multiplies when she calls Benny and learns that if she doesn’t finish the new book by her January 3rd deadline, the publisher is going to bring in a ghostwriter to finish it. I… don’t think that’s how any of this works. Sarah goes for a walk along a pier so she can feel her feels, and here comes Travis. “This is our brainstorming spot,” Sarah nostalgias. Travis says he remembers how Sarah has always used escape as a form of self preservation, and then non-sequiturs that his life has not turned out the way he expected it would. Sarah asks how long his marriage to Jasmine’s mom lasted, and he says not long. “Crystal is traveling around the world with her band, living the life she loves,” he reports. “And so am I. But she checks in a lot. No bad guys here.”
Travis drives Sarah to the bookstore to sign books, and then he comes running back a little later with some kind of crisis where he can’t figure out which sweater to buy Jasmine for Christmas, and then they go shopping, and then they walk past a bar offering “Christmas Trivia” so of course they go in, and the prize is a gift certificate to the candy shop with the fudge made entirely of fair trade cocoa and love. I am telling you this movie is like 75% filler.
The next morning, Sarah is typing away at the kitchen table when Travis knocks on the door and interrupts, grabs her coat and boots and tells her she needs to come help him cut down a Christmas tree STAT. Sarah says ok because what is logic. They drive for about a half hour before arriving at a charming cottage in the woods decorated festively with Christmas lights. Sarah is like “are these guys cool with you, like, chopping down their trees?” and Travis says that he knows the owner and he doesn’t mind. Once they’ve felled their tree of choice and tied it to the top of Travis’ minivan, Travis surprises every viewer who has never seen a movie before by revealing how he knows the owner of the cottage: it’s him! He owns the cottage! Soylent Green is people!
Travis leads Sarah inside and sits her down at a rustic table in front of a pile of notebooks and pens. He takes her phone away from her and announces that he has transformed the cottage into a writing retreat. “I can’t finish the book for you, but I can clear the road,” he says. He will feed her and be there to bounce ideas off of the whole time. Sarah protests that she doesn’t have her laptop, and Travis points at the notebooks and pens. Instead of crafting a neon sign that spells out the words “That’s Not How Any of This Works,” Sarah picks up a pen and gets to brainstormin’. “So when I left off, Roger was having some issues,” she muses as we go to commercial break.
Aaaaaaand when we return, Sarah is furiously scribbling in her notebook. “Roger helping Isabella find her kismet was genius!” she says to Travis, who smiles proudly. She writes one more line, grins, and holds up the notebook for Travis to see. At the bottom of a page of a literal spiral bound notebook this bestselling author has scrawled the words THE END in orange colored pencil. “Are you kidding?” asks Travis, echoing the thoughts of all viewers everywhere, except with less scorn and derision. They hug joyfully. “I’m gonna type this up when I get home and send it to Benny,” she announces like a five-year-old
When we next see our heroine it’s morning, the sun is shining, and Sarah is sitting on her bed busily typing up her report on how bees make honey and sending it to her third grade teacher – I’m sorry, I mean she’s typing her actual novel and submitting it to her actual literary agent for actual money. She calls Benny and tells him to check his email for a Christmas Eve surprise, then hangs up and walks into the hallway to find a pile of boxes marked “garage sale.” Concerned, she heads downstairs to ask Grandma what’s up, but she stops in her tracks when finds Grandma sitting in a chair, crying, talking to a framed picture of her late husband.
Grandma notices Sarah standing there and apologizes, saying that she gets emotional on Christmas Eve. Then she heads out to run errands, leaving Sarah with a determined look on her face. Can you guess what happens next? If you guessed “Sarah closes her eyes, wishes real hard, and then opens the hidden nook in the kitchen to find the original kismet cookie recipe tucked in and magically intact,” you win an improbable two-book deal from a major publisher! She starts to bake. A little later, Jasmine pops in to see if Sarah wants to come over and help decorate the tree and sees the cookies. “You made kismet cookies!” she observes with delight.
That night, Sarah and Travis walk around downtown. Sarah is fretting because Benny has yet to respond to her email about the book. And then, hey, what do you know: they look up and there’s Benny, somehow also walking around downtown New Britain, holding a coffee cup, in an unbuttoned light jacket in Maine in December. “I have to meet family tomorrow,” he says, “so I added a stop because we need to talk.”
Instead of asking the obvious relevant questions like WHAT or WHY, Sarah wants to know what Benny thought of the book. Benny pauses dramatically and then says…”it’s spectacular.” Sarah is delighted. Benny heads back to his last minute Christmas Eve B&B while Sarah heads home to chat with Grandma, who is sitting by the Christmas tree with a serious case of the sads.
“I found the recipe,” Sarah tells Grandma. “I know,” Grandma replies. Then Grandma finally admits that she’s selling the house. She misses teaching and has signed up for a program for senior citizens who want to teach English abroad. “What about the house?” Sarah asks. “The kismet needs a Collins here.” Very supportive, granddaughter who hasn’t been back to visit since she was in side-ponies. She hands Grandma a kismet cookie so she can dream of Grandpa again that night.
Over at Travis’s house, Sarah and Travis talk about Grandma’s plans. Sarah doesn’t know what to think. “This town,” she says. “And the cookies. It feels like home again. I struggled for years to write my second book - then I came here and filled a notebook with ideas for the next three. I don’t want someone else to live here.” Travis says that he doesn’t either, and wonders aloud if Grandma would give her a good deal on the house if she wanted to buy it. Sarah is all “but the big city,” to which Travis responds: “what if the cookie was right? If I promise not to marry anyone tomorrow, we can find out.” WHAT.
Sarah bolts, runs to Benny’s B&B, and the two of them walk around New Britain in the middle of night. Benny serves up a helping of Wise Hallmark Gay, telling Sarah she has two choices: “come back to the city, or move here to this cute town that inspires you and the handsome guy you’ve loved since you were a kid.” Sarah is all what if none of it is real, and Benny replies “but what if it all is” even though no one can hear him over the chorus of all God’s creatures screaming IT ISN’T.
So the next morning Sarah wakes up, sits straight up in bed with stars in her eyes, and runs downstairs to hug Grandma. Then we cut next-door to Travis waking up the same way. It turns out that Jasmine, that merry Christmas rascal, stole two kismet cookies and put them under both pillows. Once Travis figures it out, he makes Jasmine head next door to apologize for the stunt, but when she gets there Sarah is already gone. No worries, though - she left a gift for Jasmine on the table: a hard copy of the new Isabella book, printed on 8x11 copy paper, bound with a ribbon. LITERALLY HOW.
Grandma says the book is “hot off the presses,” and that Sarah left it for Jasmine before heading to the airport. Oh no! Jasmine and Travis run out the door to chase her down, only to find Sarah… walking up the front walk. She isn’t leaving, sillies - she just gave Benny a lift to the airport. “I thought I’d stick around,” Sarah tells them with a sly smile, “do some more writing, maybe buy my Grandma’s house. Unless you got married while I was at the airport.”
Wingman Grandma brings Jasmine inside so that Sarah and Travis can be alone. “I don’t need a cookie to tell me I’m in love with you,” Travis says. Embroider that on a pillowcase for me, someone. They kiss. The End.
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