Stream It Or Skip It: ‘A World Record Christmas’ on Hallmark Movies Now, Where Jingle Bells Make Way For Jenga Bells

Hallmark’s A World Record Christmas makes its streaming debut on Hallmark Movies Now a week before its linear premiere on Hallmark Movies & Mysteries. The film stars Hallmark mainstay Nikki DeLoach as the mother of an autistic teen (Aias Dalman) who sets out to break a world record for Christmas. The holiday family drama is inspired by the real-life story of world record holder Auldin Maxwell, a 15-year-old who continues to outdo himself and break new Guinness records in stacking Jenga blocks. Does A World Record Christmas measure up to the true tale, or is this movie full of holes?

A WORLD RECORD CHRISTMAS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Nikki DeLoach (Curious Caterer) plays Marissa, the mother of an autistic son named Charlie (Under the Banner of Heaven’s Aias Dalman) who wants one thing for Christmas: he wants to break a world record. He comes by this idea honestly, as his hometown of Brookswood is known for breaking a Guinness world record every year — on Christmas Eve, of course. What else would families have to do on Christmas Eve?

As for which record Charlie plans to shatter, he decides to take on the Guinness world record for stacking Jenga blocks — and Charlie gets to work with the help of his mom, her husband Eric (Five More Minutes: Moments Like These’s Lucas Byant), his best friend Amy (A Fabled Holiday’s Daphne Hoskins), and the entire town. That works out well, because he’s gotta get nearly 2,000 Jenga blocks to practice with from somewhere!

All hope and joy aside, Marissa starts to suspect that Charlie has other goals in mind besides just breaking a world record. She finds out that Charlie is convinced that this is the way to reconnect with his estranged and absentee biological father (Matt Hamilton). On top of that, Charlie’s starting to have certain feelings towards his best friend Amy. Stacking Jenga blocks is nothing, but dealing with potential rejection from two people he cares about? That’s the hard part.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Well, there’s last year’s Record Breaking Christmas, a by the numbers romance that seemingly didn’t have the okay from Guinness that A World Record Christmas definitely has (and makes sure you know it). This movie also is not a romance. This is an emotional holiday drama, the kind that Hallmark Movies & Mysteries does well — like One December Night or Holly & Ivy.

Performance Worth Watching: Kudos to Nikki DeLoach and Lucas Bryant for going well beyond what is normally required for Hallmark movie leads and creating a solid partnership that feels both live-in and romantic. Their chemistry felt so effortless that I actually had to check and make sure that this wasn’t a sequel or part of a longer franchise. Nope, these two are just that natural!

Memorable Dialogue: Charlie, looking at a shelf of books on autism, shares one of the reasons he wants to break a world record with Eric: “All of these are about me. I just wanted to be in a book that wasn’t in the psychology section.” Charlie and Eric’s dynamic as son and mom’s husband is one of the best parts of the movie, and again, a way more nuanced relationship than we usually see in Hallmark movies.

A Holiday Tradition: This town is obsessed with breaking world records, so much so that the townspeople forego all other Christmas Eve commitments to come together and try to wrap the most presents in an hour.

Does the Title Make Any Sense?: It’s going to take 12 days for me to get over the missed opportunity to name this movie Jenga Bells.

Our Take: It would be so easy for A World Record Christmas to veer into maudlin or melodramatic territory, as those are two melodies that the holidays know how to play well (see: The Christmas Shoes Conundrum, which is a theory I just made up but is very real). This is, for all intents and purposes, the Hallmark movie equivalent of one of those greeting cards that has a whole lot of cursive writing on it instead of a goofy cartoon of a dad on a golf course. You know it’s going to make you feel things — and A World Record Christmas is going to make you feel things.

The great news is, it’s going to make you feel good, and it’s going to do so via a cast of characters who behave in such a grounded, realistic way that it’s alarmingly disarming. This is a holiday drama where people care about other people, no one keeps secrets long past their their expiration date, no one gets uncharacteristically jealous of anyone else, and there are no wrenches thrown into the plot with 10 minutes on the clock just so we can watch our leads overcome an implausible misunderstanding. And more specific to the plot of A World Record Christmas, Charlie’s autism is not treated like a problem to be solved or an obstacle to be overcome. Nikki DeLoach gets zero tearful monologues about how hard it is for Charlie, herself, her family, etc. She’s a mom, Charlie is her son, Eric is her husband, and they want to win a world record!

Christmas has long been home to movies about “issues,” ones hinging on tolerance or forgiveness or charity or what have you. There is good that can come from preachiness and boiling down complicated issues to incredibly black and white plots in the interest of raising awareness — but there’s also, you know, Google. And instead of making a movie about a kid with autism for an audience of people not on the spectrum, A World Record Christmas feels like a movie made for everyone — including those on the spectrum, who have a character — one defined by his bad jokes and love of board games as anything else — played by an autistic actor. It’s just lovely to see.

Our Call: STREAM IT. A World Record Christmas is a smart family film that’s as delightful as it is dramatic.