Stream It Or Skip It: ‘My Christmas Guide’ on Hallmark Movies & Mysteries, Where A Guide Dog Might Lead Two Lonely Hearts To Romance

Hallmark’s third week of original holiday movies kicked off with My Christmas Guide, the second romance movie centered around a lovable guide dog. But while Guiding Emily entertained us with the guide dog’s inner monologue, My Christmas Guide tells a much more grounded tail — I mean tale. See what I did there? That’s all the levity you’re going to get from My Christmas Guide, because this movie is an emotional experience.

MY CHRISTMAS GUIDE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Amber Marshall (Heartland) plays Peyton, the owner of Best Friend Guide Dogs and a passionate advocate for the difference that canines can make in the lives of the sight impaired. Her most recent graduate, a very good dog named Max, is ready for a partner — and she finds a candidate in Trevor (You’s Ben Mehl). Trevor is a single dad and classic literature professor who is adjusting to his recent loss of sight. Ignoring the fact that his students love him, the university is concerned about Trevor’s ability to navigate all of the ongoing construction around the English building. They say it’s out of concern for his well-being, but a slapdash set up in front of the building leaves Trevor with no warning and causes him to run head-first into a metal pipe. The university’s suggestion: put Trevor on a leave of absence for a semester.

Enter: Max… and Peyton! Trevor’s daughter Annie (When Hope Calls’ Ava Weiss) is all for her dad having a guide dog, and it’s a nice bonus if he finds a new girlfriend too. But things are all business between Peyton and Trevor at first, as she guides him in how to guide a guide dog. But guide dog lessons lead to her helping Trevor and Annie decorate their Christmas tree and staying over for dinner. Things are going great except for one very douche-y thing: Peyton’s boyfriend Chad (Justin Nurse).

Chad, to put it bluntly, sucks. He bails on Peyton’s company Christmas party and meeting her dad to play golf in Florida with his best buds, one of whom is nicknamed Chainsaw. Peyton needs to ditch this loser and get with Trevor, but will she ever realize that Chad — I reiterate — sucks? And Trevor didn’t even want a guide dog. Is he even open to finding love again after his ex-wife left him — and presumably their daughter! — for someone else? Things are about to get heavy.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Plenty of beats will remind you of Guiding Emily, Hallmark’s other guide dog movie from two months ago. Guiding Emily even has a deadbeat boyfriend in it. While Guiding Emily was definitely dramatic, it did alleviate tension by cutting to a dog’s inner monologue. My Christmas Guide has no such valve, thus allowing the tension to increase dramatically. That’s why My Christmas Guide actually feels more in line with holiday romantic dramas of the 1940s. It’s quiet, patient, and concerned with character introspection… human introspection.

Performance Worth Watching: Ben Mehl really knocks it out of the park as Trevor. Mehl, who is himself legally blind, plays Trevor with both a vulnerable kindness and — I mean this as a compliment — Frasier Crane-levels of articulateness and self-righteousness. Trevor feels unlike any Hallmark hunk we’ve ever had, primarily because he has a brainy profession and doesn’t exactly brood, smolder, or rakishly flirt with our leading lady. Trevor’s a different kind of leading man, and Mehl is fantastic in the part.

Memorable Dialogue: Okay, as dramatic as this movie is, there is a moment where Peyton calls her idiot boyfriend and says, “I saw some pictures that Chainsaw posted.”

A Holiday Tradition: Peyton has an appreciation for the classics since her dad read A Christmas Carol to her every year when she was a kid. Trevor’s daughter Annie loves the sound of that, but backtracks and says she likes her tradition of rewatching Elf every year.

Does the Title Make Any Sense?: My Christmas Guide is about as generic as it gets and could easily be the title for a movie about a tour guide at 30 Rock who falls in love with a Rockette. If Hallmark wanted to commit to a guide dog franchise, this could have been called Guiding Trevor after Guiding Emily — or maybe Guiding Peyton, since our girl needed to be directed far, far away from Chad.

Our Take: Well, My Christmas Guide got to me. You never know what you’re going to get with a holiday movie on Hallmark Movies & Mysteries. You want romance with some laughs or outright guffaws? You watch Hallmark’s Countdown to Christmas. If you want movies ranging from a terminally ill QVC host to Bruce Campbell with Alzheimer’s to a woman adopting the kids of her dead neighbor, you put on Hallmark Movies & Mysteries’ Miracles of Christmas lineup and hold on.

To be clear, My Christmas Guide is way more merrily insidious than the ones I mentioned above. It starts off feeling more instructional than emotional as unfamiliar audience members learn more about how guide dogs interact with their person. The movie even lulls you a bit; Amber Marshall’s performance is maybe the most subdued of any Hallmark lead this year. She’s not plucky, quippy, or feisty, which are the lanes our leading ladies usually stay in. I even blame composer Russ Howard III for his jazzy, Vince Guaraldi-esque score. My Christmas Guide has a slow build until — Hark! You will feel it.

My Christmas Guide spends an hour deftly setting up stakes that we don’t even know were stakes until it’s suddenly pulling at them, threatening to uproot them. There’s a lot of patient character work that you only realize was character work right as the script is making big, emotional moves. It’s the kind of uplifting gut punch that you get from great holiday movies, like George Bailey feeling the euphoria of being alive again or Michael Caine strutting through town, feeling gratitude for the first time in his life and expressing it to animal puppets. My Christmas Guide absolutely had no right to make me feel things, but it absolutely did.

Our Call: STREAM IT. My notes on My Christmas Guide conclude with a satisfied “hell yeah.”