Rating: 🎄🎄🎄
Premiere Date: November 30, 2025
Description: After a knee injury threatens to cut her career short, Staff Sergeant Kelly Brandt (Fish) returns home in low spirits for the holidays. Her family tries to help by encouraging her to lead her hometown team in the annual Christmas Cup against the rival town. It takes a lot of work, but Kelly organizes her team and gets them as competition-ready as she can with the help of Fire Captain Quinn Stokley (Rosenbaum). Sparks begin to fly with Quinn, and through the whole process, Kelly is reminded of how much she loves to lead, but her heart still hopes she will be cleared to return to serve. Kelly ultimately receives the call she has been waiting for; however, it’s not what she expects. With the Marines needing her to report to the Hawaiian base on the day of the competition, Kelly soon realizes there is more than one way to serve a community. Starring Rhiannon Fish and Ben Rosenbaum.
Chemistry: Fish and Rosenbaum are Hallmark pros, so they were able to pull off believable chemistry. However, the supporting cast was lacking. We had an overzealous brother that just came off as a bit much, and the kid actor in this one wasn’t quite cutting it.
Plot: The plot was fun. I love a good competition, though this one was less focused on the actual competing and more on the buildup to it.
Design: It was the standard Hallmark look, though at one point I did get confused by the wide stock footage they used to establish the location. I also wasn’t convinced that a fire department serving two towns would be using a firetruck that looked like it had come straight from the 1950s.
Overall: It was fine. It was a solid watch that I enjoyed for an hour and a half, but I probably won’t watch it again.
Best Enjoyed With: A partner you can play highly competitive tic tac toe with on commercial breaks.
Holiday Movie Wrap 