The movie for today's episode, Santa Buddies, came in via request from Jim Eltringham. It's part of the Air Bud Cinematic Universe. From IMDB: "When Puppy Paws (the fun-loving son of Santa Paws) gets bored, he finds Budderball on Santa's naughty list and figures he's just the dog to show him how to be an ordinary pup. When the magical Christmas Icicle starts to melt however, and the world begins to forget the true meaning of the season, it's up to Puppy Paws and his newfound Buddies to journey back to the North Pole and save Christmas." We discuss why Christopher Lloyd's dog catcher character hated dogs, why Richard Kind voiced the head dog-elf, and how bad George Wendt mailed in his role as Santa. A must-listen for all lovers of Christmas, dogs, or dogs who save Christmas.

Candace Cameron Bure stars in Christmas Detour, a film that asks, "How awful would it be to fall in love during a layover?" The answer? Pretty awful. Here's the description from IMDB: "An anxious bride-to-be throws in with a broken-hearted guy and a happily married couple for an emergency ride to NYC, learning about each other and themselves along the way." We go over the plot and talk about the disturbing trend of Hallmark female protagonists to ditch their committed relationships the second they feel a "spark" with some stranger.

In today's episode we review another classic: National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, which we were able to catch on the big screen at our local theater. We talk about that with a little debate over whether or not egg nog is actually good (Elizabeth says yes; Mike says only when mixed with an adult beverage).

We take a break from our slew of made for TV Christmas movies to review a big budget blockbuster everyone's familiar with: Ron Howard's The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, starring the legendary Jim Carrey. We talk about how distubring we found the costume designs for the Who's and Grinch and also dive a little bit into the age old debate over whether or not Die Hard is a Christmas movie.

Mike one time tweeted, "You could call any Hallmark movie "I Need a Husband By Christmas" and you'd pretty much nail it." The 2011 Hallmark movie Holiday Engagement falls in line with that. The IMDB description: "Afraid to admit she was just dumped, a woman hires an actor to play her lawyer-boyfriend during a 4-day Thanksgiving weekend at her parents' house." I know what you're thinking: isn't this technically a Thanksgiving movie? Well, you're probably not thinking that, but in case you are, rest assured it spans from Thanksgiving all the way up to Christmas. It qualifies. Oh, it also has Shelley Long and the guy from National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation who comes into Clark's office when Clark is looking at the model of the pool and says, "Have a really...merry...Christmas."

Despite the title, the mixup in the 2013 Hallmark channel movie A Very Merry Mixup isn't really that merry. It's actually pretty stupid. From IMDB: "Alice Chapman is a beautiful woman who recently became engaged to go-getter businessman Will Mitchum. When she travels to meet her future in-laws for the first time before Christmas, chaos ensues as she loses contact with Will, runs into who she believes to be Will's brother, and starts the holiday celebrations with the wrong family. But is this just a silly mix up, or is it fate for Alice?" To save you the trouble of actually having to watch this: it's fate for Alice. You probably knew that though, unless you're 5.

Merry Kissmas is an obnoxious title for a movie and the movie itself lives up to that promise. From IMDB: "Unwinding her relationship from a controlling choreographer, Kayla happens to take an elevator ride with lonesome caterer Dustin. The lift stalls, and spontaneously, magical kisses follow. Soon the choreographer makes nice, and Dustin retreats. Kayla becomes confused as to which man to love." We discuss the choreographer who looks like a cross between Robert Downey Jr. and Ryan Gosling (Gosling Downey Jr.), why these dumb Christmas movies have "flour throwing while making cookies" scenes, and much more.

Rachel Boston is back! After starring in the subject of yesterday's review, Christmas Crush, she also starred in the 2015 Hallmark Channel movie Ice Sculpture Christmas. Here's the description from IMDB: "Callie, an aspiring chef, with her childhood friend David, enters Callie into a club's annual Christmas ice sculpting competition against her boss. Callie's passions for cooking and ice sculpting are met with romance and Christmas spirit." Why would a country club have an annual ice scuplting contest, you ask? Would any community really have many ice scupltors, much less one? These are all questions not answered by the movie, but we do speculate on them in the review.

Amy's back to help us review Christmas Crush, a 2012 made for TV movie also known as Holiday High School Reunion. It's a Hallmark movie starring Hallmark Christmas movie legend Rachel Boston. Boston also headlines another Christmas classic known as Ice Sculpture Christmas (review forthcoming). This one is about a girl who goes home for the holidays to her high school's ten year reunion (scheduled near Christmas for some reason) trying to win back her ex-boyfriend. Also for some reason she and her Glee Club teammates agree to perform multiple musical numbers at the reunion, even though that's not what reunions are.

The setups for Christmas movies don't get much more convoluted than the one for 2011's TV movie Dear Santa. A spoiled rich woman gets a vague ultimatum from her parents to "make something of her life" before Christmas, otherwise they'll cancel her credit cards. Does she get a job? Go straight to volunteer work? Nope! She finds a little girl's letter to Santa asking him to find a wife for her widowed father. and tries to win him over. Oh and also the guy owns a soup kitchen, which she starts working at. She then tries to marry the father. Surely that's exactly what her parents had in mind! Wouldn't she pretty much have satisfied the request once she went to work at the soup kitchen?