The Christmas Quest (2024)

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Keywords

Hallmark movies, Christmas Quest, Lacey Chabert, holiday cheer, treasure hunting, romance, movie review, character dynamics, adventure, festive films

Summary

In this episode, Nick and Leslie dive into the Hallmark movie 'The Christmas Quest,' discussing its charming animation, character dynamics, and the adventure of treasure hunting in Iceland. They explore themes of love, relationships, and the film's overall execution, sharing their thoughts on the characters and the plot's development. Despite their initial excitement, they express disappointment in the film's delivery and conclude with their ratings.

Chain Assembly (Nick Ribera) (00:00.286)
Nick and Leslie, Nick and Leslie, talking holiday cheer. Hallmark movies, cozy nights, and a festive review today. Hey, grab a seat and a sweet treat, cozy up push play. Movie cheers, what you'll hear this Hallmark movie day. Okay, what's the next one? Do you want to switch seats to pretend we're later in the day? Okay, next is the Christmas quest. The Christmas quest. Not believing Christmas?

We already did that. you. All right. Christmas Quest. Welcome to our latest episode. This one premiered Saturday, November 30th. Yep. New cup of coffee in my hand. Yeah. And we are discussing The Christmas Quest. A Lacey Shebert no, but Saturday. I thought we watched this last night. We stayed up for it. We did. And today is Monday. You said Saturday. you're right. We did watch it live. Right. I'm sorry. Premiered on Sunday, December 1st.

Chain Assembly (Nick Ribera) (01:04.11)
I'm putting together an expedition to find centuries of lost treasure. Welcome to Christmas in Iceland. Embark on a quest. I am finding this treasure. Should we be talking about this in the open? Under the Northern Lights. A light in the darkness will show the way. And discover a love more precious than any treasure. There's just one thing I need from you first. The clue written in your journal. We did not come all this way to give up. The Christmas Quest. Only on Hallmark Channel.

The Christmas Quest starring Lacey Shabair. We have such characters as Stephanie, Chase, Victor Grimes, and Kalota. So right off the bat, I say this had adorable animation in the beginning. yes, very adorable. It's really cute, like little Icelandic characters. guess there's a... Telling about the 11 lads. The 11 lads, or the 12 lads. 11 lads of the Nordic Christmas.

So Lacey Chabert is the daughter of a... Archaeologist. Archaeologist. Explorer. She's also an explorer, archaeologist, she is... Professor. A professor teaching in... It's just funny seeing her behind a podium being a professor. I don't know why that's so funny to me. Because I picture her in Mean Girls, and her Mean Girls character being a professor. Anyways, so...

This super wealthy guy comes into the lecture hall the lecture hall and then he meets her in her office He's like what if I told you I had the key to find the missing treasure of blah blah blah the treasure that supposedly her mom's been looking for of Yules Vanier I think I wrote it down and then like there's the Rosetta stone of it to figure out the rest of the translation because they don't it's that Ancient ruins. Yeah that they can't translate it properly

Treasure hiding throughout Iceland. Yeah, I wonder if it's a real I meant to look that up So she says my god, yes, let's totally go find it It was the last thing my mom was looking for and he's like I got all the money in the world to give you so let's go find that Christmas horn Yep, and she's like well first off we need to visit someone who can read these ancient ruins happens to be So how did they get the horn the horn was first?

Chain Assembly (Nick Ribera) (03:27.47)
She got it on her own. it just smashed back to her in a cave finding a Yeah, I'm not gonna lie. I was a little bit confused about that. I'm like, I didn't fall asleep. I think I bent down to pet a dog and I'm like, all of a sudden she has this Christmas horn. So I miss something. And then she's like, I can't read it. These are ancient ruins. But I do know someone who can. Let's go find my ex husband. And this is when we get to meet Chase. Who is working at a Christmas tree lot just in this season to help his parents out. He is a 44 year old man.

And he's like, well, I got to get back to work unless someone buys out the whole lot. Haulin' the Christmas tree. And then Victor Grimes is like, do you take check? Do you take check? Which I was trying to figure out who Victor Grimes was as well, the actor that played him, because he looked very familiar. Yeah, British dude. And it's like, whenever there's an old wealthy British dude, you know they're going to become the villain at the end of the story. He's like mid-50s. Yeah. Maybe 60. Anyway. So.

Then they go off to Iceland and they're basically following a series of clues like this lad is into this thing so you gotta figure out this one's a spoon, liquor, one steals your socks, one's a peeping tom, one's a peeping tom, one's a candle dipper. So there's like 11 occupations that they do and then they have a little friend who is a cat. Yeah. So there's also this other

woman, treasure hunter who seems to be on their tail. that is Kalota. they end up, was the Yule Horn of Demer Borger. So there was back in the days of, Napster, we would just download random math, random ass goth stuff. I would always look up the DJ sets at my local goth club. Cause I wasn't old enough to go there yet.

They'd post them online. And then I would like download the songs from Napster or Morpheus or Kazaa, whatever it was, that were on the DJ set. And I remember one of them was a band called Dímur de Borgo. And so in my mind, ingrained in my hand, in my mind, is me writing down on one of those mixed CDs I made, Dímur de Borgo, live. Totally unnecessary bit of information now, but. All right.

Chain Assembly (Nick Ribera) (05:52.366)
I thought it was hilarious. Just like they tried so hard to make this like a globe trotting mystery of adventure. To begin with, if you are an archaeologist, if you are an explorer, you need permits to do that in countries, let alone if you are not, you know, obviously not keeping the items, you know, let's not get to the British and all what they stole and everything like that. The British Museum is just a treasure trove of things that they stole. Unfortunately, none of it is like theirs, but

Even if you're going to donate said item to a museum, you need to have a permit to work with them and everything like that. You can't just willy nilly two days before you're leaving for this 11 day adventure go off. You're working this months ahead of time, even sometimes a year to get approval. Anyway, Hallmark Magic, you instantly get approval. None of this is illegal. What I found really funny too was

They're like, right behind this rock, there's a lever. And the camera just shows the rock. So they're just reaching me at a rock. she's like, I found the lever. And then some of the ancient ruins that they were looking for only happened to be covered with dust or a little bit of soil. And so the prop department got stretched really thin in moments, such as making a door with inlay designs on it or making a horn. But then they're like, we'll just pretend that lever's behind a rock so we don't have to show the lever.

So I was, yeah, and they get stuck looking for one of the clues and that's how they meet the girl that they thought was also another treasure hunter because word got out that like the Christmas horn was found. So they knew that all the treasure hunters in the world will be looking for the rest of the clues now. So that's how they ran into her. She did help them out by passing a rope, but they did have to sacrifice all the things that they found that were within her.

adventure book of her mothers or whatever. So there is that element. But then it's just very quick montage of them finding the rest of the items, which I just what's, know, obviously we wanted a little bit more of a national treasures vibe to it. We wanted to hear the limericks, hear the rhymes, hear. Sorry, I started thinking of cool runnings.

Chain Assembly (Nick Ribera) (08:14.574)
It's bobsled time. It's bobsled time. So we wanted to hear those things more than your issue with your ex and how you were just too adventurous and for not being able to join. Good for him in regards to like, I shouldn't have left you. I should have joined you on your adventures. Yeah, good for him so that she doesn't have to change what she wants to do.

for you since you're clearly doing so well at the Christmas tree lot. It's a very convoluted setup that like... We had high hopes for this film and it kind of shot low. It was weird. Plus you could tell they did shoot in Iceland in the winter because almost everything is in the dark. Yeah, everything. I'm sorry, Kabad. But it is kind of weird that like they were together for seven years, married for five of those. They got divorced, yet now they're falling in love again.

And it's like, think seven Well, she said she never stopped loving him. But it seems like seven years is long enough to know whether or not that's a good fit for your life. Or in our seven years.

Chain Assembly (Nick Ribera) (09:22.414)
Yeah. If anyone's just listening, we just did our secret handshake. So it's just, don't like, Hallmark, I don't like the idea of a divorced couple getting back together. And this is the second time we've seen that this season. There was another movie where like the dad who was all depressed and stuff. Why is it that it's always the man who's depressed? I guess these movies are made for women. And women want to know that the men that they left are missing.

Right, because she was like, you know, I still love him. That's why I left him because he wasn't happy. I wanted to see him happy. Like, OK, whatever. You don't need an excuse if you don't want to be with him. If he was pulling, if he was dragging you down, you don't need to be with him. But either way, the music was beautiful. The music was was it felt very Edward Scissorhands. I appreciated that. And there was a wonderful galaxy. Gala. Yeah. So they had to find this the last piece. It was a door that was in a museum, but it was not on display.

But this door was in the supplies closet with all the rest of the same exact material. Which is the blanket chucked over. Just a blanket chucked No environmental control, just a little lock right behind it. And so they, after the fifth door that they looked under for a sheet, they found the door. But clearly made out of styrofoam. Lacey Cheverd's fingers are so light. But also you're telling me that they had to move this little swinging door.

And while said museum people were moving museum door, they didn't notice this little other door that moved so easily that there was this weird candlestick thing behind it. was a despite that cheesiness, it was a fun gala scene where like they had to dress up all nice. I think it was weird that their wealthy benefactor couldn't get them tickets to the gala. They had to like sneak in. They weren't with him anymore.

Remember they split up. I thought they had left him. gosh. Is it after I am I'm blanking right now. Yeah it was after because they're like we have the final thing. that's right because they went through the plan with them. Yeah that's right. That's right. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. And then they've run into this delightful old Icelandic. Yeah they met earlier because they found a cat. Remember the cat was the the friend of the old lads. It was weird like that couple's

Chain Assembly (Nick Ribera) (11:46.894)
could have been totally taken out of the movie. couple had a nice house. And they could have spent more time on the montage than finding all those. never explained why that couple was at the gala. No, And how they knew the high-up people. Yeah, guess they're like, Iceland has 20 people in it, I don't know. we've, so we love Lacey Shebert, you know? So I don't want to talk bad about her. But I feel like maybe an adventure movie was not...

her best suit. can't really picture her doing other things other than standing, sitting and walking slowly. Yeah, you said, like seeing her behind a podium, her, was... her hold a rope was very disjointed. a... When you have like an exposed shoulder and holding a rope or just, you know, having her...

I don't know. It's just that type of role I don't think was for her, but I cannot put another actor in that role. Lacey Spear, love you. You're great. You looked cute. I liked your outfit for you. all Hallmark actors that I can think of recently, the one that I would have really liked in that scene was the one who starred in the Christmas run, Jingle Bell run. yeah, she was good. She would have been fun, yeah.

or the one who was in the first house flipping movie. With the brown hair. So what are we reading this? We gotta talk about the final treasure. Which was, yeah, I remember what the final treasure was. my god, the final treasure! It was a room full of Christmas garlands, candles, lights. Candles were lit. Yeah, plugged in Christmas lights. A record player.

Now, I don't know what year these brothers were supposed to be from, but I thought it was a Viking treasure. And it looks like they were just constantly stealing people's Christmas treasures and having it as their own. But there is some magical element to it because the door slammed right behind them whenever they realized that her mother had already found the treasure. I thought that was really sweet.

Chain Assembly (Nick Ribera) (13:56.044)
It was sweet. for once there was something in Hallmark that had weight, which was the compass hanging from her neck compared to all the cups. Shout out to her friend, Oli, who was dressed up as one of the lads in their village. He was a good little companion to have throughout. The pub scenes were cute that they were in as well. I did really like at the end when Lacey Shebert realizes that her mother actually did find the treasure. And when she found the treasure.

she realized that it was better to spend time with her daughter than it was to go on adventures. Yeah, that was the treasure. I thought that was sweet. Yeah. As childless people, I don't understand it. Yeah. I mean, if that's what you find fun, keep doing it. But it was sweet. someone that also enjoys it. That's why you things in common. So I was overall disappointed by this movie. Yes. Yes. Yes. We were unfortunately disappointed, as you heard in our previous podcast. We were excited to watch it.

but it was a little meh. Yeah, writing I gave it a four, acting four, directing five, chemistry I'll meet her four. I thought they were just barely cute together. Yeah, she's much cuter than him. Yeah, he's good. But anyway, it's a middle of the road for me. It will not make a top third, but you if you want it on the background. And apologies for doing these out of order again. But tonight we're going to watch yesterday's movie, The Finish Line, and we'll have that.

Maybe I should say I'm not looking forward to that at all. Yeah. Yeah, that's how we felt about To have into holiday. We were not looking forward to that and we ended up loving it. So yeah finish line All right. Well, thank you all so much. See you in a few hours. Happy Christmas.