I’m a cord cutter, not by choice, that’s what happens when you marry a geek. There’s a whole lot of technology going on in our house that I don’t understand. I have to tell the Alexa to turn on lights (if she listens), I have apps on my phone (somewhere) to see if our garage door is closed, and smart thermostats that outsmarted me a long time ago. The TV and I have an understanding, it works as long as my partner is in the house, the minute he leaves, all bets are off.
When it was announced that Rupaul’s Drag Race would be premiering New Years Day on VH1, without cable, I had to find a way to watch. In other words, it became my partner’s problem. So we did our research (“we/our” meaning “he/his”) and paying to put Philo on our Roku would get us VH1 as well as the Hallmark and Lifetime channels. Which was perfect because they had gay Christmas movies this year and I’m a sucker for a good old fashioned Christmas rom-com. I live for their simplicity and at this time of year my heart melts with holiday happy endings. So I settled in for some long winter nights of trashy homo Christmas goodness, this time I do mean I, since my partner would rather have his eyes poked out with reindeer antlers than sit through any of these.
I started my holigay celebration with Hulu’s Happiest Season. Perfect daughter, Harper, invites her Scrooge of a girlfriend, Abby, home for the holidays to meet her family but Harper is in the closet. The movie wanted to be a cute coming out story with quirky family anecdotes, however, Harper is a horrible woman who treats her girlfriend badly and then is expected to be forgiven because coming out isn’t always easy. Ugh! Way to take the fun out of what Christmas movies are all about. The only redeeming quality of this movie is the supporting cast.
Then I got all excited because Hallmark had it’s first “gay” holiday movie, The Christmas House. Hallmark didn’t get the memo that just because you have two guys kiss and give them a mediocre subplot (adopting a baby together, ugh, really?), that doesn’t make a holiday movie gay. Grown sons, Brandon and Mike (plus Mike’s partner), come home for the holidays to work transforming their childhood home into The Christmas House that was a tradition that neighbors traveled far and wide to experience. All isn’t cheery and bright with the mom sulking around as if someone has a terminal illness but it’s just because her marriage is on the rocks. Once the romance picks up between Brandon and his childhood girl-next-door crush (who just happens to move back in next door after her divorce), it was a better, yet not a gay, movie.
It took Lifetime to send me a life-line (disguised as Fran Drescher) to give me the gay holiday movie I had been hoping for, The Christmas Setup. What’s a New York lawyer (with career angst) to do when he needs to head home to Wisconsin to be with his mother and brother for Christmas? Pack up his fag-hag and get wrapped up in fix-up hijinks with his old high school crush. Mindless? Yes. Predictable? Definitely. Give me a case of holiday feels? You already know!
Having my spirit of Christmas restored, I read online about a gay holiday movie called Dashing In December on The Paramount Network. Never heard of The Paramount Network? Me either, but Philo had my back. Heath, a pompous investment guy from New York, has to head home to Colorado to celebrate the holidays with his mom (Andie MacDowell) and to convince her to sell the family ranch. Can Heath reconnect with his mom after years apart, fall in love with her helpful and handsome ranch hand, save the ranch from financial ruin while keeping it in the family, and save Christmas at the same time? It’s a Christmas movie, spoiler alert, of course he can.
Although my heart is full of cheezy Christmas goodness, let me take a sec to vent and be the Christmas Cunt that I truly am by complaining about what should have been the gayest movie of the holiday season, Netflix’s Christmas On The Square. This musical has gay boys dancing around like a Fire Island production of West Side Story, Dolly Parton has more sequins on her angel outfit than Liberace had in his whole wardrobe, Christine Baranski plays an evil landlord driving around the square to evict everyone, and hair salon owner Jenifer Lewis isn’t given one trash-talking line. The movie is boring and with this gay’s wet dream cast, someone dropped Santa’s balls on this one!
In my gay opinion, this year was a rough one but at least it ended a little more merry and gay than it started…at least on my TV set.
