Midnight at the Magnolia

Once again, I watched a cheesy holiday movie so you don’t have to (unless you want to). We close out the week with Midnight at the Magnolia (2020), chosen to represent all the movies that fall into the “two people fake dating fall in love” category. Do I even really need to make official predictions for this one? We all know how this is going to end.

[Spoilers starting here.]

Best friends Maggie Quinn (Natalie Hall) and Jack Russo (Evan Williams) host Windy City Wakeup, a local morning radio show in Chicago. They’ve gotten the attention of big radio guy Judd Crawford (Peter Michael Dillon) who might syndicate them nationally if he likes them enough, and are currently doing a weeklong trial for Judd in the week between Christmas and New Year’s. To really make an impression on radio guy, Maggie and Jack come up with the idea to introduce the people they’re dating to their families while on air. Only problem is, they’ve both just been broken up with, so the solution they come up with is to pretend to date each other and reveal it at a livestreamed party at the Magnolia, a jazz bar that their dads own and run together.

Yeah, we all know they’re actually in love with each other. Sometime during their fake dating charade, it will cease to be an act and they’ll realize they’re more than friends. However, before they can truly be together, they need to have a big fight about something, possibly involving the words “there’s no time to explain.” One of them will then have to make a grand gesture declaring their love, proving once and for all that they’re meant to be together, and then they’ll be able to be a couple.

With some additional details, that’s how things play out. As they prepare the Magnolia for the New Year’s party, Jack and Maggie both come to the realization that maybe they kind of might like each other in a romantic sort of way. But to complicate matters, Jack’s old high school girlfriend Bianca makes an appearance, causing Jack to be late for a planned dinner/movie night with Maggie. This unearths all sorts of high school grievances, and Maggie refuses to listen to anything Jack has to say. They show up to the livestream the next day without having talked. Things go badly until Jack gets over his fear of commitment and publicly declares his love for Maggie, even singing her a song he wrote. Maggie returns Jack’s feelings, and they kiss at the stroke of midnight. One year later, Jack proposes to Maggie at their favorite sledding hill, and it’s happily ever after for our lovers.

Although I knew exactly how the movie would go, I actually found Midnight at the Magnolia more palatable than the majority of the other Christmas movies I watched. I think it’s because, yes, it’s cheesy and predictable, but it’s cheesy in the same way that dad jokes are cheesy, not cheesy in a “trying too hard to be inspirational” way. Natalie Hall and Evan Williams work pretty well together, and their characters being longtime best friends also gives their relationship some basis. They’ve known each other for more than a week and have spent lots of time together, so it’s not a true love in three days situation. [And now I want someone to make a movie about what happens after all these romcoms end, when the city girl returning to her small town hometown is now unemployed because she’s just quit her job for a guy, and they both realize they know almost nothing about each other.]

My final rankings for this year’s movies: A Castle for Christmas and Midnight at the Magnolia tie for least offensive, Falling for Christmas edges out The Knight Before Christmas solely because of Ralph dragging Tad through the Colorado wilderness, and Christmas with a Prince wins this year’s title of worst Christmas movie for being both not very good and filled with questionable medical practices. That’s it for this year; maybe I’ll be back next year with another batch of (in my opinion) bad holiday movies.