Last month, my better half persuaded me to watch a Hallmark Christmas movie with her. I don't remember the title, just that one of the characters was an actress, probably based in New York. Her temporal happiness hinged on her getting a part in "a play by David Mamet."
So my ears perked up immediately. My better half, who has heard me mention Mamet's name hundreds of times over the course of our 10-year relationship, braced herself for my commentary. I kept it brief, wondering which of Mamet's plays this fictional actress was hoping to perform. Since the actress was young and attractive - as all Hallmark protagonists are - I thought the play would be Oleanna, though it could have been some avant garde director doing an all-female version of American Buffalo.
I pondered this for a number of minutes, which stopped me from following the movie's connect-the-dots plot. If memory serves, the actress didn't get the part in the David Mamet play, which prompted her to run back to the small town where she grew up to celebrate Christmas, where she met the handsome son of a wealthy rancher who was having some trouble with a greedy banker, whose heart just might melt if he was exposed to the Christmas spirit...
You get the idea.
It's fashionable for the cultural elite to mock the Hallmark films, to decry them as dull and predictable fare that could only be enjoyed by simpletons. There are no plot twists in a Harlequin film. We don't learn, in the end, that Rosebud is a sled or that Bruce Willis is dead. No, the Hallmark movie doesn't promise us surprises. It doesn't pretend to be a roller coaster. It's always claimed to be a merry-go-round. You get on, you go around for a few minutes, and you get off exactly the same place where you started. You're no better now but you're no worse either.
I don't remember the essay, but David Mamet once wrote that if the purpose of eating is to nourish the body, then it's easy to choose the broccoli over the French fry. The 20th century has turned the act of eating into a form of entertainment. This is certainly true and so McDonald's is to dining what Hallmark is to cinema. You will not be surprised at either establishment. You will get what you came for.
So I won't pooh-pooh the Hallmark movies, all of which give actors and writers and crew members opportunities to work. Hopefully, they will move on to other, and better, things.
