Tom Arnold dons a Santa suit for Hallmark Channel special
The comforting thing about a holiday-chestnut TV special is a viewer knows exactly where it's going to go. Surprises are fine under the Christmas tree, but nobody tunes in a seasonal TV special expecting chills and thrills.
In that, the new made-for-TV movie "Moonlight & Mistletoe" proves true to form when it premieres at 8 p.m. Saturday on the Hallmark Channel. Even the unconventional casting, putting none other than Tom Arnold in a Santa suit, only serves to emphasize the comforting predictability.
Arnold, best known as the former Mr. Roseanne Barr, is best put to use as a comic-relief sidekick, as in "True Lies" and "Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery." He's not much of an actor, but he's undeniably earnest, so he fits right in among the stiff, cardboard cast of the run-of-the-mill Hallmark production.
He's even named Nick; I kid you not.
Candace Cameron Bure, the former big sister of "Full House," is slightly better, and that's good because she's the actual star of the show as Holly, Nick's daughter. Nick has been running Santaville in the bucolic community of Chester, Vt., for years - long enough to have put Holly to work in the theme-park store from an early age.
"I worked for Santa so long that Christmas didn't have much magic for me anymore," Holly explains.
Skip ahead 15 years and she's moved away from home to Boston to become something of a Scrooge, the epitome of Christmas commercialism run amok. Christopher Wiehl's Peter, meanwhile, has traced the opposite course. Having met Holly at Santaville and been instantly charmed as a teen, when he was in the process of being left at boarding school over the holiday break by his jet-set parents, he has returned to Santaville to work as Nick's man Friday. When Nick suffers an injured leg in a sleigh mishap - again, would I kid about something like that? - it serves to bring Holly home and reunite the young couple.
Unfortunately, it also serves to lay bare the sorry financial state of Santaville, made all but obsolete in an age of TV, video games and the Internet. Nick, however, is in denial about the possibility of Santaville being shut down.
"Who's gonna do a thing like that to Santa?" he says, later adding, "Maybe it's easier to live in a world where wishes do come true."
Maybe it is, but when a studmuffin knight in shining armor comes riding in to broker a deal - and, not coincidentally, sweep Holly off her feet, right in front of Pete - perhaps that is just too good to be true.
If it's not obvious where this is going, trust me, it will be within moments of seeing it. Nick and Holly are going to have to address some old issues involving, of course, the missing mother. And they're going to have to beat a Christmas-Eve deadline to keep Santaville afloat, while the guy who turns out to be the villain all but curls his mustache (if only he had a mustache) and ties Holly to the train tracks. And of course both father and daughter find love, Nick with Barbara Niven's Ginny, the foxy waitress at the Santaville Inn.
Even so, for all its faults, I can't bring myself to dismiss "Moonlight & Mistletoe" entirely. It's cheesy, sure, and about as interesting as stringing popcorn, but people do still take comfort in that sort of mindless tradition. If it doesn't figure to become a classic, that's all right, because even in its premiere it feels like a holiday chestnut you've sat through many times before.
In the air
Remotely interesting: CBS and NBC kick off holiday programming with the 82nd annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City from 8 to 11 a.m. today on WBBM Channel 2 and WMAQ Channel 5. WGN Channel 9 airs Chicago's Thanksgiving Day Parade at the same time. ... Faith Hill performs holiday music on the "Soundstage" special "Joy to the World" at 7 p.m. today on WTTW Channel 11.
Jennifer Lyons has been promoted to assistant news director at Channel 9. She's been at the station 15 years and currently serves as executive producer of the morning newscast.
End of the dial: All-talk WLS 890-AM has re-signed morning hosts Don Wade & Roma. ... But Top 40-dance WBBM 96.3-FM has dropped Ed Volkman and Joe Bohannon, with a new morning show to be unveiled in January.
WBEZ 91.5-FM airs highlights from the 2008 Third Coast Festival from 9 to 11 a.m. today, rerun at 8 p.m. ... "Hambone's Blues Party" airs its annual Thanksgiving show dedicated to songs about food and drink at 10 p.m. today on WDCB 90.9-FM. My request: Amos Milburn's "Bad, Bad Whiskey."