Have you ever watched a Hallmark movie?

I have not

I think I watched a couple when I was married. I recall something akin to their motif a few times. One had Jodie Sweeten and one had Lacey Chabert. It's easy to remember them because they're hot. I couldn't tell you anything else about the films though. I probably spelt Jodie Sweeten's name wrong vis I am an atrocious speller, and yes she was an adult when she made it, in case you were worried. I recall one with Candice Cameron Brue (sp?) as well.

One thing is for sure; I am not the target audience. I don't think I hated them. I know they aren't my cup of tea so I didn't judge them too harshly.

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Yes, over 300 of them.

i thought it would be higher

I found a list with 1,080 films and it seems I've seen zero.

But what about Sarah Plain and Tall, wasn't that Hallmark? Looking it up - that was CBS as part of the Hallmark Hall of Fame series. So, while I've not seen anything from the Hallmark channel, I have watched some of their sponsored HOF movies, including A Doll’s House from 1959, which starred Julie Harris and Christopher Plummer, Hume Cronyn, Eileen Heckart, and Jason Robards (great cast).

Looks like I also saw Jimmy Stewarts redo of Harvey from 1972.

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A lot of these Hallmark movies are made out your way.

https://www.thespec.com/entertainmen...d200a70be.html

The one I was thinking of, An Officer and a Murderer, turns out is a Lifetime channel thing. I guess it might be easy to confuse Lifetime with Hallmark

I don't believe I have, but can't say with certainty.

I was gonna say I'd rather have my wisdom teeth grow back and have them pulled again than watch a Hallmark movie. But if Sarah Plain and Tall is indeed considered a Hallmark movie then I can't. I actually really liked that. I'd love to watch Skylark and Winter's End as well.

I have regularly seen them on in the background on TV in family get togethers and such when I was a bit younger, so unfortunately yes, but otherwise I avoid them like the plague.

I don't really have as much family now, so it's not a thing any more. But, if you're asking on my own, have I sat down and watched Hallmark films start to finish one? God no. I've seen too many to know better.

From what I've seen and from what I understand they all really follow a basic formula... some big shot late twenty or early 30 something woman who usually makes six figures and works in advertising or fashion or some nonsense and is living in the city somehow goes off to the country or some rural area during the Holidays and meets and falls in love with some rich dude who's at least six foot tall, earns six figures, and has hundreds of acres of land and has his own business or some ranch or something like that. Then they marry or something silly and all is well in the world and there's peace and harmony and shit tons of money and expensive gifts to go all around and huge houses and huge cars. The woman will ditch her job and have 20 kids all on her husband's $400,000/year income in their six bedroom 5,000 square foot home, fully furnished for Christmas too!

Ummm... no. No thanks.

Hallmark seems to forget that a lot of people live in reality-ville and at the end of the day, the world is often a shitty place full of struggle, hardship, poverty, violence, insecurity, and pain for a large majority of its inhabitants. It's full of people who will betray you, be apathetic, let you starve or die in the street, lie to you, and be cowards who don't have the courage of their convictions. Hallmark films are full of situations where there is no poverty, no deaths of despair, no alcohol abuse and no suicide around the holidays, no joblessness, nothing - in a Hallmark film all ends well and perfect. In the real world over half of children are born out of wedlock without a Mom and Dad in the situation. In the real world many children and adults are food insecure and can't even afford to own a home let alone the types of homes we see in Hallmark films.

Sure the world isn't always a rotten place, but more than often it is for a majority of people here and the data backs that up. The fact that most Hallmark movies almost completely ignore this reality and tend to normalize the lives portrayed in their naive and fantasy takes on life makes the material they put out so out of touch and disconnected and insulting. Moreover the writing is rotten and the characters don't even react in any semi-grounded or meaningful way to the already idealized plots and stories they inhabit.

Yep, I absolutely loathe, hate, despise Hallmark films in every way possible. They are low quality churn and burn outings, the writing is cold and mechanical, the characters unreal and have an aura of uncanny valley energy about them. The Hallmark films are insulting to and undermine people who struggle around this time of year (November - January) and they completely ignore these people exist in their made up world of nonsense.

So yep, I hate Hallmark films and yes, before you ask, I also hate this time of year too with its pretenses of love, kindness, and generosity. If I could hibernate like a grizzly bear and wake up at the start of March to avoid all the Christmas stuff, New Years stuff, and massive amounts of sub-zero temperatures and snow I easily would.

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You should watch some of the Christmas ones. I recommend:

Holly & Ivy 2020
Hearts of Christmas 2016
Christmas Magic 2011
The Nine Lives of Christmas 2014
Annie Claus Is Coming to Town 2011
Heaven Down Here 2023
Three Wise Men and a Baby 2022
Journey Back to Christmas 2016
A Very Merry Mix-Up 2013
Crown for Christmas 2015
Christmas with the Darlings 2020
Never Kiss a Man in a Christmas Sweater 2020
Next Stop, Christmas 2021
The Holiday Sitter 2022
A Biltmore Christmas 2023

I find their stories to be paper-thin. They make you feel good, but they don't really say much beyond a platitude or a quip. They're gimmicky consumer products intended to be discarded almost as soon as they viewed. I suppose that's why they make so many of them. Glossy, pretty, attractive to the eye, but a set-up up front which has an obvious payoff when you turn the page. And their movies suck too...

Yep. That pretty much sums it up. Hallmark films embody and represent everything I hate in art and in real life. Even some films that have a general positive outlook on life by filmmakers such as Steven Spielberg, Frank Capra, and Preston Sturges and to a certain extent even my favorite filmmaker of all time, Howard Hawks (although his films are in their own league in this regard), those filmmakers at least deal with reality and acknowledge that the world is inherently an evil and awful place (or indifferent at best) and as a foundation... well, just open a history book and you'll see that for the vast amount of human beings who have ever walked the earth, the world, life, and existence is a Hellscape, but yes occasionally people and/or institutions can rise above their base vileness and sometimes goodness, meaning, self sacrifice, and purpose can be found within those Hellscapes. And even though I don't entirely agree with Spielberg's world view on the whole, I think the fact that if you take a film such as Schindler's List or Saving Private Ryan, you'll see that Spielberg at least respects reality enough to acknowledge that the world is full of evil and despite the happy endings in many of his films, good outcomes are not shown as the standard in life.

Hell, even Disney films show tragedy and suffering and that evil is real regardless of how happily they end even if people in Disney films do rise to the occasion far more often than they do in real life.

Hallmark films live in some strange alternative reality that undermines all of human existence and is a betrayal to the fact that human beings love a good story that has some sort of a point to it and is tethered to portraying human nature and the world as it somewhat is. Hallmark films are just cash cows that take their money from false sentimentality and an imagined portrayal of an idyllic holiday or Christmas. They are cotton candy. They are the film version of lottery tickets for the poor. Take for instance a film like It's a Wonderful Life. With the exception of the ending, there's some extremely dark undertones there that wouldn't really play in a Hallmark film. Of course I strongly dislike the ending to It's a Wonderful Life because I think George Baily being saved by the community throwing money at him undermines the entire f'in point about the film and the Angel coming down to see him. If Baily learns through the angel that it's still better to go to prison and try to fight through pain and a raw deal than putting a bullet in your head, that message is entirely dismissed when he doesn't end up going to jail and is given all the money. But despite the garbage Frank Capra ending, unlike a Hallmark film, I can still respect it because it acknowledges pain and is somewhat tethered to the trials, tribulations, and suffering of real life.

Oh and one more thing; not to turn this into an It's a Wonderful Life analysis, but the one thing I do like about the ending however, which is an often criticized plot point, is that Mr. Potter never gets his comeuppance. Yeah that's the truth folks. More often than not in real life the people who are the most vile and evil get ahead and are the ones who have the means and connections to get away with it. For every Jeffrey Epstein or Sam Bankman-Fried we find out about there are dozens that we don't and will never find out about and never see justice toward. That's just how it is. So as much as I don't like the Capracorn ending to It's a Wonderful Life in regards to George Baily, the fact that Mr. Potter gets away with it would never fly in a stupid Hallmark movie.

Life's Chinatown and sucks.

Yes. I've seen a few Hallmark movies and liked them. I liked the general light, good nature feeling of them. I don't remember the titles except Murder, She Baked: A Chocolate Chip Cookie Mystery

I'm watching one now, Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story.

I have never made it through a Hallmark movie. Just too corny for me and I don't just mean the stories I mean everything about the presentations were so corny that I gave up. Couldn't take that much corn.

How many of these have they made?

The Hallmark version of film noir.

Hallmark movies or ones about football? There aren't many about football, but there have been over a thousand Hallmark movies in total.

I've seen a lot because a coworker would put them on a TV at work all the time.

Man, those female protagonists sure are prone to car breakdowns in small towns. Complex breakdowns that will take days to fix.

And they sure aren't feeling fulfilled by their jobs or fiance. If only there was a down to earth, hunky widower with 1+ kids (or sometimes a dog) that could solve all her problems?

I meant overall.