Christmas Inheritance
Director: Ernie Barbarash
Writer: Dinah Eng
Cast: Eliza Taylor, Jake Lacy, Andie MacDowell, Neil Crone, Michael Xavier, Lori Hallier, Mag Ruffman, Bill Lake, Anthony Sherwood, Martin Roach, Lindsay Leese
Seen on: 27.12.2019

Plot:
Ellen (Eliza Taylor) is set to inherit her father’s (Neil Crone) company and wealth. But she doesn’t really understand what that means and after one too many embarrassing moments in public, her father intervenes and sends her to the small town his company originated in to deliver a letter to his friend and business partner. But there are some conditions for her to complete the task: she can tell nobody who she really is and can only use the 100 dollars in cash that he gives her. Ellen is ready to prove herself to her father, but this might be easier said than done, especially when a snow storm hits. Thankfully, the people in town are very helpful – especially Jake (Jake Lacy).

Christmas Inheritance was a little bit too much for me, even halfway through a Christmas movie binge. Everybody is so good here and the plot is so very contrived, it was hard to take.

Christmas Inheritance is a story of rich girl redemption, but if you look more closely, it becomes unclear why said rich girl had to be redeemed in the first place. I mean, yeah, she tried acrobatics at a party and landed in a Christmas tree, which is embarassing for sure, but she did it not because she was so drunk she didn’t know what to do anymore, but because she was dared to do so to raise money for charity. That doesn’t seem like much of an offense to begin with.

When her father sends her off with those surpremely weird stipulations to her task, okay, fine, I can accept that. It’s pretty standard fare for a movie of its type. But when she arrives in town and everybody is so absolutely nice and sweet and lovely and helpful? Maybe my own small town experience has poisoned me for life, but I just cannot believe that at all.

The rich people are nice (though not so nice that they actually buy a house for the one homeless dude in town or do anything that amounts to structural change), the townies are nice, the spoiled heiress is nice, just naive in many ways. And while I’m generally a fan of being nice, I felt like I was being smothered with good people by this film. That the only person who doesn’t seem completely great in the film is one of two people of color in it (Ellen’s boyfriend Gray) also made me gulp.

At last it was an absolute pleasure to see Andie MacDowell again. She is not in enough films. But other than that, I mostly have to write off Christmas Inheritance.

Summarizing: Better to watch another of the many Christmas movies.