Hallmark
Rating: 🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄
Description: When ambitious freelance reporter Avery Clark (Fonseca) returns to Chicago to spend Christmas with her mom (Woods) and new stepdad (Payton), she’s hoping for a little holiday downtime before her next assignment. Instead, she lands a feel-good story profiling Darlene Donnelly (Mason), a beloved Chicago Bears superfan about to celebrate an incredible milestone – attending her 500th game. There’s just one catch: Avery knows next to nothing about football or Chicago. Enter Darlene’s handsome grandson Matt (Buckley), a Chicago firefighter and die-hard Bears fan who, with a little gentle nudging from Darlene, agrees to show Avery what being part of Bears Nation is all about. As Avery follows Darlene’s remarkable story through cherished game-day traditions, festive Chicago adventures and memories of a love story that began at a stadium, she starts to understand that football is about much more than what happens on the field. And as sparks fly between Avery and Matt, this Christmas may just convince a woman who’s always on the move that sometimes the greatest adventure is finding a place, and someone, that feels like home. Starring Lyndsy Fonseca, Robert Buckley, Marsha Mason, Barbara Alyn Woods and Khary Payton.
Overall Review: Full disclosure, Chicago is my favorite city in the world, and I’m a Bears fan. So Hallmark could have given me two hours of someone quietly drinking hot chocolate in Lincoln Park while wearing a Bears jersey and I probably would have still given it three trees. Consider that your official warning about my objectivity.
But Holiday Touchdown: A Bears Love Story genuinely earned its five trees.
I went into this one fully prepared to pick apart generic sets masquerading as Chicago. You know the drill: a few establishing shots of the skyline, a strategically placed deep-dish pizza, and then 90 minutes filmed somewhere that looks suspiciously like suburban Canada. Instead, Hallmark actually delivered. The movie made great use of Chicago itself, weaving in the little details that make the city feel like Chicago rather than just another interchangeable Christmas movie backdrop.
The chemistry between the leads was excellent, and the supporting cast brought personality and warmth to make the whole thing feel like an ensemble rather than two people falling in love while everyone else conveniently disappears.
Even better, the appearances by current Bears players, coaches, and franchise legends felt like natural parts of the story. They weren’t just awkward cameos where someone wanders into a scene, says a line, and waits for the audience to recognize them. The plot actually gave them a reason to be there, which is a surprisingly high bar for this kind of movie.
Was I predisposed to love a Christmas movie set in Chicago and built around the Bears? Absolutely. But even accounting for my shameless bias, this was a genuinely fantastic holiday movie.
Bear Down.
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