Review: Hallmark’s “Snowcoming”

“Snowcoming” aired on January 26, 2019 on the Hallmark Channel. It stars Lindy Booth as Samantha, and Trevor Donovan as Jake. After her father announces his retirement from teaching and coaching at her hometown’s high school, Samantha returns home for the town’s winter festival to celebrate her father’s retirement. Unfortunately, her old high school sweetheart, Jake, now an NFL quarterback, is also visiting for the celebration.

In a nutshell

Despite being a fan of Lindy Booth, I did not like this one that much.

Plot

The plot of the movie is promising on all fronts.  Samantha works in The Big City as a book editor (focusing on cookbooks) but yearns to be involved with YA books since she has a passion for getting teens to read more.  When she finds out her dad is retiring as coach/teacher she heads home to help celebrate his retirement and help her friend plan the schools big winter festival and dance, the Snow Ball.  She has some misgivings because her high school boyfriend Jake dumped her and even though it has been 12 years, she’s still hurt by it.

Turns out that Jake isn’t just in town for the retirement party, but he’s staying at her family’s home, since he continued his friendship with her father, who was his coach in high school (played by Ed Marinaro, who some may remember from “Hill Street Blues” in the 1980s).

Samantha visits the town’s library and discovers that it is in need of dire help.  She plans a “Tailgate at the Library” party in tandem with the winter festival, in the hopes of doing some fundraising to save the library and get people excited about reading again.  All the while, she’s spending time with Jake, who is reconsidering his career and future prospects.

Actors

I really like Lindy Booth.  She has one degree of separation from Kris Polaha since they starred together in “Rocky Mountain Christmas” in 2017.  I’ve seen a number of her Hallmark movies and she is solid and always gives a great performance.  And while I know there are some really big Trevor Donovan fans out there, I don’t know.  He has such a baby face (a cute baby face, don’t get me wrong, but still a baby face) that he just naturally seemed too young for the part.

Chemistry

The only chemistry I felt between Samantha and Jake was that of friendship.  The movie tried really hard to have romantic moments between the two characters, but I just didn’t see them together that way at all.

Feelgoods

I loved Ed Marinaro in this movie.  He is just so good and I enjoyed him as Coach very much and that alone was a feelgood.  And despite the leads having very little chemistry, I did like the scenes at the treehouse (when he said he thought their last kiss might not be their last one) as well as when he silently helped her put on her locket necklace.  Lastly, and I think this is why I got “just friends” vibes, whenever they ‘dinked’ their cookies or smores, it made me smile – but in a nostalgic way, not a “they’ve got chemistry” way.  But I did like the repetition of that habit to show they were definitely close at one time.

Tropes

There were some good tropes, y’all.  The movie started out strong – I think it was only 10 minutes in when Samantha drank her cup of hot cocoa with two hands.  The other tropes were larger ones – big city girl returning to small home town AND big city boy returning to small home town (a twofer!).  Seeing the old high school boyfriend was another one.  And they also made snow angels AND there was a one-throw-only snowball fight after they went sledding.  So yeah, this movie scored high on the Tropes scale, which made me happy.

Did I Hear/See That Right?

There were a few confusing moments, the largest one being that I didn’t think that just ANYone could be hired to be a librarian.  Don’t you have to have a degree for that? According to this movie, interviews and vetting are not necessary – just a fundraiser and helping one student grow a love of books is all you need to get hired.

Brussels sprout cookbooks?  How can you write an entire cookbook on brussels sprouts?  There are not that many ways you can cook up a sprout (and I say this as someone that loves Brussels sprouts).

Re-watchability

Would I watch this again? I doubt it.  Maybe if nothing else was on I’d watch it for a few minutes (if only in the hopes of seeing the awesome scene when Joe Theismann (who plays Jake’s sports agent) gets frustrated and throws his stress ball across the room).  And again, the scenes at the treehouse were all the best scenes in the movie.

The Ranking

So where does it fit in the rankings?  This one got HIGH marks for the tropes but middling scores for everything else.

1. Winter Love Story (air date: January 19) – 725 points – final weighted score: 117.8 points (77.2%)
2. One Winter Proposal (air date: January 12) – 635 points – final weighted score: 100.8 points (66.1%)
3. The Winter Castle (air date: January 5) – 605 points – final weighted score: 92.4 points (60.6%)
4. Snowcoming (air date: January 26) – 565 points – final weighted score: 91.3 points (59.8%)
5. A Winter Princess (air date: January 18) – 540 points – final weighted score: 78.5 points (51.5%)

To see my entire ranking of Hallmark movies, visit my Hallmark Movie Rankings page!

What are your thoughts on “Snowcoming?”