When Angels Come to Town

I know a lot of people don't believe in guilty pleasures, or dislike the term, and I can understand their logic; the term seems to imply liking something even though you feel like you shouldn't, like you're placing your enjoyment of something second to the judgment of some unknown source.

But I have a different feeling about guilty pleasures - I feel like the idea opens up the number of things I can enjoy, because to me, the definition of a guilty pleasure is a movie where you like one thing about it so much, or a few things about it so much, that you can ignore all of the other things it does terribly.

The best example of this for me is: Hallmark movies.  I LOVE THEM.  One of the highlights of 2010 for me was getting digital cable and being able to watch terrible Hallmark Christmas movies basically anytime I wanted!  So glorious! 

Exhibit A: When Angels Come to Town.  It's a ridiculous movie.  The official summary:

The angel Max seems to have bungled his heavenly mission.

What a description!  A little extra info: The Max in question is played by Peter Falk.

And why do I love Hallmark movies?  For a lot of reasons.  (1) They tend to provide a predictably happy ending, nice comfort food. (2) They provide a second layer of enjoyment when you ponder the logistics of the movie - why did Peter Falk choose this script?  Were the actors aware it was a disaster as they filmed it?  The people who made It Happened One Night thought it was going to be terrible and it was the first movie to sweep the Oscars.  Was it the other way around for the actors in this movie?  Then again: Peter Falk spends one scene in this movie dressed as a woman selling perfume, so I'm guessing they had a clue they weren't making a classic.  (3) The general blah-ness and predictability makes the occasional genuinely heartfelt, sweet moments stand out.

Like, in this movie - which is about these two angels played by the aforementioned Peter Falk and Katey Segal (I know, HOW did that happen?), who have to deliver a box or something to the owner of this ornament factory/store, only it gets misdelivered at first to a girl working at a store, who JUST HAPPENS to be the ex of the owner of the ornament factory/store.  And the girl has dead parents and a brother in foster care, and there's some stuff in there about the Holocaust, and constant instances of the angels disappearing when just out of sight - basically, it's a hot mess.

But then there's this one scene where the male and female lead run into each other, and you find out that they had been in love! And it ended because her parents died! And maybe because he went back to college? It was a little vague.  But the point is: That moment where they first saw each other kind of got to me.  I'M NOT MADE OF STONE, OKAY.  I'm so FAR from being made of stone, it's not even funny.  But still.  It was a genuinely sweet scene!

And mainly because of Tammy Blanchard, who played the female lead.  She won an Emmy for playing Judy Garland in that TV movie a few years back, and was nominated for a Tony, and is probably the best thing about this movie even though she plays almost every scene as if she's on the brink of tears, even some that don't seem to require it - but she does such a good job selling it that I kind of respected it as a choice!  The male lead is a guy who looked like he stepped out of a clothing catalog, almost like a mannequin come to life, with the acting chops to match.  That sounds really mean!  He did have a few charming moments, and seemed like he had potential, but overall he was just kind of there.  

Would I watch it again: Almost definitely, probably next Christmas, most likely (as I did today) while doing something else.

I would recommend it to: My future self. And not many other people.