Podcast in a Pear Tree: Christmas Movie Reviews · Aaron Lee Harvey, Danielle Espino, Samantha Gifford

Let the Pop Culture References Sleigh Ride In

·24 min·5 clips

The episode opens with Aaron Lee, Samantha, and Danielle saying hello and noting that Danielle has been traveling. They explain a new format that skips a single movie and instead runs through what they have been watching, including the October titles still on their minds and what happened over the weekend. The first stop is Great American Christmas. Tales of Christmas gets a rough response, with the hosts saying it is absolutely terrible and that Great American Christmas has, at best, been okay so far. They do give the movie credit for cute puppies, kittens, and bunnies. That animal streak ties into the film's pro-pet-adoption angle, which one host likes a lot. After that, the talk shifts to a spy movie. One host likes that a lead character who is a librarian is not turned into a stereotype, and she points out that Rachel Skarsten played the opposite sort of part in The Royal Nanny and Christmas Island. Here, Skarsten is the every person thrown into the spy world. The performance gets praise for being quirky and for the little physical choices with her fingers. The group keeps noticing how much the movie feels like True Lies. That comparison becomes very obvious by the end, when the movie lands on a tango just like Jamie Lee Curtis and Arnold Schwarzenegger. The ending also brings an unexpected turn that one host likes. She says it kept her awake on the plane. Samantha has not seen that one yet. She has watched Scouting for Christmas with Tamara Mowry, which she calls pretty cute. She thinks Mowry could have been given a better film. Even so, she likes the divorced single mom character and the lead guy, whom she describes as a normie kind of cutie and a baker. A Kismet Christmas comes up as part of that reaction, since she remembers liking the actor there a few years ago. The episode ends by looking ahead to more holiday viewing, including at least one music-oriented movie and a Lifetime romance that sounds spicy enough to earn a spice rating.

As heard by us

A loose holiday catch-up that still lands its jokes, gripes, and oddball movie details.

Podcast in a Pear Tree loosens up here and spends most of its time on what the panel has been watching. It starts with a hard swing at Great American Christmas and a miserable-sounding Tales of Christmas, then shifts into a spy-leaning holiday movie that gives Rachel Skarsten…

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Why you'd press play

You want holiday-movie chatter with cute animals, a spy-flavored detour, and a tango payoff.

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