Oy to the World

I did not have high expectations for this year's Hallmark Hannukah movie and this about lived up to my expectations.

When Jake, Rabbi's son, and Nikki, Reverend's daughter, were teenagers, they were inseparable best friends, until high school academics made them rivals and brought out a dysregulated competitive streak in both that ruptured the friendship.

As grownups, they both seem to live stunted lives. Nicki appears to have zero adult friends and works at her father's small church as children's choir director. Jake has spent 20 years playing tiny NYC rock clubs and chasing a label signing (in 2025!) and refusing to visit his henpecking mother.

When the temple has a fire the week before Hannukah, the church invites their Jewish neighbors to make use of the church space to celebrate Hanukkah. This soon bizarrely evolves into a joint Chrismukkah with combined sermon ("Both Hanukkah and Christmas are about love," natch) and combined choir concert, as Jake and Nikki are guilted and manipulated into co-choir directing by their pandering parents.

The Chrismukkah merger is eerily frictionless. The movie is not at all interested in interrogating the reasons why Hanukkah and Christmas are distinct observances or exploring how Jewish people and Christian people are different and approach the world differently. Religion is represented as a sort of universal fiber, with the different versions no different than a comic book with variant covers.

This lack of friction extends to the film's romantic chemistry. Jake Epstein and Brooke D'Orsay are charming actors and it's clear that their characters like each other, but because all their seeming differences resolve so simply, we don't see their relationship really deepen. Everyone in both families is on board with intermarriage, nobody discusses what religion future children will be raised in, everything is just easy. At worst, Nikki is briefly confronted at dinner eith the fact that if she marries Jake, her mother in law will be the worst version of a stereotypical Jewish mother in law, but this is quickly papered over. Even the inevitable, overforeshadowed moment where Jake has to miss the concert to go back to New York and meet with a label is resolved without any argument, and doesn't actually force Jake to compromise. Surprise! Turns out he can make it to the concert after all, without missing his meeting.

Hallmark really fooled us with Round and Round. The past two years have been a reversion to the nonsense we used to get in Hallmark Hanukkah movies. I will continue to watch them, of course, but I am back to watching them with gritted teeth.