Review: “The Christmas Checklist” (2022)

Plenty of winter wear: hats, scarves, coats, gloves throughout.

As the story opens, Emily wears drab grays and blacks, setting her apart from the festive season and emphasizing her grieving doldrums. As she progresses through the checklist, her wardrobe brightens and becomes more festive, signifying her slow thaw from grief.

Her Christmas Eve dress is a bold pop of bright, festive Christmas red — the perfect visual representation of her healing journey!

Emily loses her mom at Christmastime. Freelance writer Noah needs to land a staff position by writing a viral-worthy Christmas fluff piece.

Emily asks her mom for a sign and discovers Ruby’s letter: “The Christmas Checklist: Twelve things I want you to do before Christmas… in no particular order, just make sure you do them all.”

The twelfth item is blank for Emily to fill in.

Emily and Noah meet as she fulfills her mom’s list — sparks fly, but she doesn’t want him writing about her.

But, of course, he does write an article.

When she discovers this, different kinds of sparks fly.

Add in simultaneous dialogue, ladder-catching moments, and all the formulaic tropes showing these two are “made for each other.”

My Issue: The fight between Emily and Noah felt contrived.

Emily accuses him of using her to land the job and missing the checklist’s point. But that’s not true — he didn’t write the story ABOUT HER (her original objection). He wrote about how the list affected HIM and others around them, which is totally fine.

He didn’t miss the point; he’s spot-on about the list’s objectives. Maybe he should’ve apologized for keeping her in the dark, but not for writing it generally. Yet he apologizes anyway.

Decent kiss… except Emily’s taller than Noah, creating askew visuals when she stoops to kiss him. (More on this in Personal Notes.)

No swearing or inappropriate content. The only potential concern for some viewers: Noah’s brother Isaiah romantically cuddling/hugging/hand-holding with his boyfriend in the finale.

A good story with an excellent concept — a Christmas Checklist motivating people outside their holiday comfort zones. But the drama between Emily and Noah feels manufactured since he really didn’t do anything wrong. They just needed to inject tension.

I’m an old-fashioned girl who prefers heroes taller than heroines. That way, when the kiss comes, SHE’S not stooping to kiss HIM.

But this movie doesn’t deliver on that preference. Emily is at least an inch or two taller than Noah, and her slight heels at the end make her even taller, creating weird optics during their kiss.

Also not a fan of the song she sings at the end. I’ve never been into folk music, and while she has a lovely voice, you can’t tell from that song. She calls it a Christmas song, but it’s not really.

This movie came at a very low point for me — my father had just died, my dearest friend (who was more of a second mother to me) was in the ICU, and I’d just unexpectedly lost my job. So I was a soppy, sobbing mess.

Emily’s line resonated deeply: “I’m cried out. I think I’m clinically dehydrated.”

I SO understand that feeling. Every little thing that got added to my list made me wonder aloud how much MORE could a girl cry?!?