Once upon a long time ago, when there were relatively few of them, I used to review a Hallmark or Lifetime holiday movie or two, but in 2024, when the channels have added 44 new films between them, it’s become pointless. Anyway, you can practically write them in your own mind. Except as a form of hypnotic relaxation, even watching seems beside the point.
Once in a while, however, something stands out; my interest, personal as much as professional, is piqued. And so we come to Hallmark’s rare Jewish-themed “Hanukkah on the Rocks,” a pleasant, frictionless story from screenwriter Julie Sherman Wolfe (author also of this year’s Hallmark movie “Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story”) premiering Friday, and, sure, this is because I am Jewish myself (of the atheistic variety, but no less Jewish for that) and interested to see what this machine makes of my people.
We are in Chicago, which is to say, Canada. Tory (Stacey Farber, from “Virgin River”) is a corporate lawyer who loses her job in a merger, a job she has already decided she hates, even though she’d hoped to make partner; up to that point, she’s been the model of the Hallmark workaholic working woman, running out on breakfast with her grandmother, Bubby (Marina Stephenson Kerr), the minute her phone pings.
Jay (Daren Kagasoff) is a radiologist, back in the Windy City from Florida, sent by his parents to convince his grandfather, Sam (Marc Summers), to join them in the Sunshine State — because he’s, you know, older, and once fell down. (Sam is otherwise the picture of vigorous health.) Jay and Tory meet cute over a box of Hanukkah candles — she dispatched to buy them by her grandmother, he by his grandfather — a supposedly superior brand of which there is only one box left in all Chicago.
Even though the box says it contains 42 candles, enough for seven Hanukkahs, the filmmakers trust you have not noticed that and instead go with the idea that there is just enough for one. And so when Tory and Jay split the candles between them — after she follows him to the bar where Sam hangs out (and which he lives over) to ask for half — some sort of miraculous intervention, or less than miraculous plot twist, will be necessary to make it through the holiday. “I have no doubt we have enough candles for all eight nights,” says Sam, “just like the oil in the Hanukkah story.” You can look that up if you don’t know it.
Rocky’s is the bar, so friendly it makes “Cheers” look like “The Iceman Cometh.” Tory, a redheaded ray of sunshine, makes it even cheerier. Having demonstrated how to make an old-fashioned after the usual bartender suddenly runs off to Cabo, she’s enlisted as a temporary replacement and, like the oil in the story, one night turns into many. During this week and a day, she will transform Rocky’s into a Hanukkah haven; invent drinks with names like “bourbon shamash” (that’s the candle that lights the other candles on the menorah), which is an old-fashioned with a jelly doughnut hole garnish, and a “gelty pleasure,” served with chocolate Hanukkah coins; and encourage people to become their best selves. She, of course, will also become her best self.
Along with Sam, the bar is stocked with Lottie (Lauren Cochrane), who seems to run the place and provides its gourmet-level chow; Stacy-Lynn (Verity Marks), a waitress about to audition for Second City; and Anthony (Dan De Jaeger), a former accountant writing a novel on cocktail napkins who has a crush on Lottie, which he inexpertly expresses. Outside the confines of this hamish “historic lounge,” as Sam likes to call it, besides Bubby, are Tory’s sister, Becca (Cora Matheson), whom she does not see enough, and Becca’s son Parker (Braden Blair), who does not even recognize Tory when she makes a very rare visit. Her parents will show up as well, and if I can find their names, I will tell you who played them.
“Everybody gather round,” says Sam, about to light the menorah on Hanukkah night one. “What if we’re not Jewish?” asks Anthony. “Everybody means everybody,” Sam replies. “The menorah is a symbol of hope — who doesn’t need that?” (Latke bean bag toss and Hanukkah trivia to follow.) Along with the greeting-card homilies (“You just need to follow your heart; the rest will take care of itself”), the film is a carnival of Jewish signifiers (mah-jongg, Hebrew school, summer camp, dreidels) and Yiddishisms: schmendrick, punim, putz, bubbala, mensch, gornisht, schlep, beshert, tsuris, chutzpah, altercocker, mishigas. I mean, it’s nice to hear.
And food, of course, because you’ve got to eat. (“Aren’t you eating?” Tory’s mom asks her.) No figgy pudding or, God forbid, baked ham, but black-and-white cookies, lox and bagels, brisket, latkes, babka and kichel. Lottie, who is not Jewish, cooks up Manischewitz-braised short ribs with a horseradish sauce, fried dill pickle spears with everything bagel ranch dressing (if I heard that right), challah bread pudding with vanilla glaze. Says grandpa Sam, “Food has always brought generations together and I’m glad we’re doing that here too.”
On some level, this does seem intended for the Jewish Hallmark fan who would like to see something closer to home — many of us, of course, do enjoy a good Christmas movie, by which I mean that essentially secular, pop-cultural holiday about trees and presents and that man in the red suit. That is common property. (We wrote your best Christmas songs, after all: “White Christmas,” “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” “The Christmas Song” — the one about chestnuts roasting on an open fire — “Santa Baby,” “Silver Bells,” “Santa Claus Is Back in Town”; I could go on.)
Will it work the other way around? In what is perhaps a sidelong reference to the film itself, when Hanukkah on the Rocks takes off — for so Rocky’s has been temporarily named — Stacy declares, “Everyone’s saying they’ve seen this kind of thing for Christmas, but never for Hanukkah. It’s already all over Instagram!”
There is precious little conflict — little, perhaps, even for a Hallmark movie. The main predicaments are that Tory is avoiding telling her parents she lost her job, which of course she will, and that Jay imagines he’s going back to Florida, which is obviously not going to happen. There is one artificial, pro forma flare-up between the nascent couple, which lasts about 15 seconds before apologies are proffered, but their only real problem is that the script won’t let them kiss until the end of the film, a foregone conclusion this sentence will do nothing to spoil.
And there is that question of the candles, but if you think that’s a serious question, you have not been listening. The obviousness is a feature, not a bug.
