226 - Christmas in Rockwell

Your Stupid Minds

Your Stupid Minds FINALLY gets into the holiday spirit with, what else, a Hallmark-style Christmas movie with a wrestler! It’s the free agent holiday movie starring WWE’s Trish Status, 2022’s Christmas in Rockwell.

Alyssa (Stratus) is a former child actress turned grown up actress who made it big at 12 years old with Holly’s Puppy Christmas (or something similarly titled, I don’t want to go back and look it up). She travels to Rockwell, Nowheredaho (but really it’s in Canada), her home town that she hasn’t been to since she left as a child for the bright lights of Los Angeles.

Her goal is to fulfill her Christmas list, doing all the holiday things she missed out on as a child and are part and parcel for these types of movies: Go ice skating, sit on Santa’s lap, hang out in a hotel lobby for a while. The only problem? It’s the 25th anniversary of Christmas Holly’s Puppies, and she doesn’t want anyone (especially the press) to know she’s in town.

She immediately has a meet cute with the obligatory bland single 30-something hunk Jake (Stephen Huszar). Jake runs an arthouse movie theater with his mom Juniper (Sheila McCarthy) and her secret lover Morty (Roy Lewis). The theater is failing because mom insists on only showing obscure ancient arthouse films that no one’s heard of and do not exist. Other than that Jake is a complete blank slate, a man without a past, who speaks only in vague aphorisms. If he existed anywhere outside of a made-for-streaming Christmas movie he would be an amnesia patient or serial killer.

Short story short: The press find out Alyssa is in town and the Puppy Holly Christmas superfans lose their minds. She blames Jake but he obviously didn’t spill the beans because he is incapable of independent thought or action. Will they reconcile and smooch? Yes. Is there any wrestling in this movie? No.