When it comes to choosing movies to review, I have discussed before how I work with a rotation of streaming services.  I try to alternate between them for each film, never picking from the same one twice in a row.  As for Christmas time, not all of them have the same selection.  Some are more limited.  For instance, Apple TV+ has a smaller selection, whereas Netflix has a bunch of their own, plus seemingly every Hallmark flick ever made on the subject.  The others fall somewhere on the spectrum between the two.  As I sat down to write about Christmas on the Farm (2021), which came from Disney+ (technically Hulu), I realized that I should change the sequencing between different sub-genres of Holiday offerings.  The baseline, outside of the obvious name (if not real practice) of Christmas, is that the overwhelming majority are romantic comedies, or just plain comedies if you like.  With this, you have ones based on popular Christmas carols, others are Christmas origin stories, and today’s category, a Christmas at some specific location.  It is meant to give the viewer a sense of the traditions in whatever purportedly exotic locale that may be foreign to your own.  Sadly, this one does an awful job of discussing these traits, and despite its title, is more of a basic rom-com.

The place where this Christmas on the Farm takes place is Australia, though the holiday has nothing to do with the beginning.  Instead, we start with the death of Clementine (Lynn Gilmartin), owner of Fig Tree Farm.  Her daughter, Emmy (Poppy Montgomery), lives on the other side of the globe in New York as a struggling author.  Once she hears the news of her mother’s death, she travels to the Land Down Under.  The two people tending the land she has inherited are their close family friends, David (Hugh Sheridan) and Miles (Nicholas Brown).  It is David that gives her the even harder news: that unless some funds are raised fast, they will lose her heritage.  This means really bearing down on her craft.  The problem is that she cannot think of anything good to publish.  All she has is Clementine’s diary of the time she spent at Fig Tree, which contains impressions of Emmy as a child (Molly Belle Wright).  She shows the journal to her agent, Leslie (Carie Kawa), who eventually comes up with the idea of shopping that around to publishers.  In the meantime, Emmy decides to go on a date, going to a bar to meet up with a guy.  While there, she instead encounters Jack London (Darren McMullen).  He is the playboy son of Ellison London (Jeanette Cronin), who is owner and president of the publishing company that bears his name.  Growing tired of his antics, mom tells her offspring that he needs to find a good manuscript to print or look for a new job, essentially.  Later that night is when he encounters Emmy, and they end up having an adult sleepover.  Not once is it mentioned that she is an author.  It is not long after this fling that Clementine’s journal comes across Jack’s desk, and he loves it.  Leslie is able to negotiate a million-dollar contract, but there is a catch that she fails to mention over the phone.  Ellison and Jack want to come to Fig Tree farm to see everything written in the book about for themselves before they make an official offer.  In other words, they believe that Emmy is her mother.  She flies back to the Land Down Under ahead of the Londons’ arrival in order to try and familiarize herself with how to run a farm, and find a husband and a daughter as is spoken of in the book.  This goes as well as you would expect for people telling such an enormous lie, and it is complicated by a few factors.  Aside from her being clueless about agricultural chores, David and Miles are in a homosexual relationship, and Emmy asks Miles to be her pretend husband.  There is also the lack of a child, though this is later solved when Violet (Asmara Feik) turns up on the spread.  She is one of nine children from a nearby homestead, and thus will not be missed by her parents while she plays the role of a loving daughter during the holiday.  Violet is no fool, and gets rewarded handsomely for her efforts.  If you are wondering how Jack could mistake Emmy’s identity, David and Miles had her die her hair to look like Clementine.  I suppose that Jack is used to one-night stands because he does not recognize Emmy at first.  As such, they continue to fumble around the farm, Jack increasingly noticing that she knows nothing about the work and what is really going on with David and Miles.  A further complication is added to this situation when Avalon (Demi Harman) arrives unannounced and claiming to be Jack’s boyfriend.  Despite his fervent insistence that this is not the case, it halts Emmy’s decision to revealing all to Jack.  Telling the truth is also made harder when he talks about the big plans he has for Clementine, still thinking that she is Emmy.  Finally, on Christmas day, Avalon shows a social media post of Emmy and Jack dancing together in a bar.  Between that and the hangover cure she had introduced him to, he finally sees he is being misled and goes to leave.  With some encouragement from David and Miles, as well as them driving the car to catch up with the Londons, she eventually chases them down.  Her apology is enough to win over not only him, but also to convince Ellison that she is worthy of being published, regardless of her lies.  Emmy and Jack kiss and the end credits roll.

By the time we get to those end credits, I had long realized that Christmas on the Farm has little to do with the title holiday.  It is also a messy film to analyze as a practicing Catholic.  I do not love the promiscuity, regardless of the sexuality as is displayed on both sides.  The lying is not great, which should be obvious.  This is typically done for comedic reasons in this type of production, but how funny is it to be misled?  Of course, had she told the truth, she would have saved herself a great deal of trouble, but then there would have been no movie.  There is one last bit that caught my Catholic attention, and it is a small thing but increasingly important in modern society.  When Clementine dies, Emmy has what she refers to as a “celebration of life.”  I noted this because fairly recently I listened to an episode in The Catechism in a Year podcast wherein Father Mike Schmitz highlights that the Catholic Church has a different view on these matters, specifically referencing the kinds of ceremonies that Emmy has for her mother.  It may seem like a technicality, but it should not necessarily be the life that is celebrated.  Instead, we Catholics call them funerals, which has become a scary word that we do not seem to like to confront.  Our funerals remember the individual, but instead focus on the hoped for eternal life for that individual.  We pray for them, hoping to speed their journey along to Heaven.  That is of infinitely more importance than having a party for anything a person has done, good or bad.  Please understand that I do not mean to diminish Emmy’s sorrow over her mom’s passing.  Even if it is almost completely botched, she should be complimented for getting Clementine’s words out to the public.  In doing so, she honors her mother, and there is value in that, if not the rest of the movie.

If you are looking for a seasonally themed film, Christmas on the Farm is not the one I would recommend to you.  I am not even sure I could suggest it as a romantic comedy.  It has some material I could do without, and it has way too many Australian stereotypes in it that have the feel of being done purposely to make fun of Americans.  This one is a pass.