Need a little Christmas? Try these movies featuring Laura Bell Bundy

The past few years, Laura Bell Bundy has been on something of a holiday roll.

If you have followed the Tony Award nominated Lexington Catholic graduate, you know she loves Christmas and Christmas music. But she hasn’t had any Christmas movies on her resume, until 2015. That’s when she starred as Holly Claus in the Lifetime movie “Becoming Santa.” Since then, she has made two Christmas movies for the Up network (Spectrum Ch. 820).

So, you could spend the better part of an afternoon or evening on an LBB Christmas movie mini-marathon, as all three are On Demand on Spectrum — one of the beautiful things about Up movies On Demand is they don’t make you sit through commercials, like other networks — and on Amazon video.

Or you could just wait for them to come on. Up is actually showing her two for the network back-to-back Friday afternoon and Saturday night.

Here’s a look at the trio:

“The Christmas Calendar” (2017): Laura Bell is Emily, a New York City attorney who has moved back home to take over her late grandmother’s bakery. One day, a mysterious Christmas calendar in the form of a dollhouse arrives, and opening the door on each day brings a note from what appears to be a secret admirer, with the promise the identity will be revealed on Christmas Eve.

The mystery enchants the town, and the noon reading of the latest clue becomes a daily civic event.

Meanwhile, Emily finds herself in competition with the national chain grocery that has moved in across the street with its hunky French baker, Gerrard (Brendon Zub). Really, Bundy and Zub can barely contain their chemistry, and the story’s bad guys are about as threatening as a barking Chihuahua.

The mystery isn’t as much what will happen, but how we’re going to get there in this charming little tale. Also, give the movie points for a bit more authentic, though still fanciful, portrayal of an American small town. Hallmark movies seem to take place in burgs that are only found in the idyllic worlds of Hallmark movies. It shows on Up at 9 p.m. Dec. 20, 1 p.m. Dec. 22 and 7 p.m. Dec. 23. It is also available On Demand on Spectrum or you can rent or buy it through Amazon.

“Season’s Greetings” (2016): My first question tuning this in was, how is this not on Hallmark? (Maybe it got too close the actual inner workings of the greeting card world, Hallmark? Hmmm.) Bundy is Darcy, one of the lead writers at the Hallmark-esque Harrington House of Cards. But lovable old Mr. Harrington, who founded the company writing a card for the woman who would become his wife of many decades, is retiring and handing the company to his grandson, a Silicon Valley management wiz with little appreciation for the sentimental greeting card industry or Darcy’s rule-bending, irreverent ways.

But the minute Darcy and Will, the grandson, meet on the elevator, we know where this is going. Darcy enters the movie as a single woman in danger of acquiring one too many cats. (I need to stop here to mention, I have been covering Bundy since her senior musical at LexCath, and I am not ready for her to start getting crazy cat lady roles. She’s only 36, people.)

But despite seriously crossing each other several times, it is obvious they are going to find ways to understand each other and get together before the two hours are up. It shows at 3 p.m. Dec. 22, 9 p.m. Dec. 23 and 5 p.m. Dec. 24 on Up. It is also available On Demand and through Amazon.

“Becoming Santa” (2015). Bundy entered the TV Christmas movie game playing no less than the daughter of Santa and Mrs. Claus, working as a big city vet and dating an aspiring toymaker who is very trusting and misses a lot of clues to her actual identity until he is in the North Pole. That’s when things get serious. If he is the one for Holly, he needs to be ready to take over the family business. Is he worthy and willing to wear the red suit?

This is the least Hallmark-y movie of the trio, and probably the best for kiddos with its far-fetched story and broad humor. The fun thing for Gen Xers is that Santa and Mrs. Claus are played by Michael Gross and Meredith Baxter, who we all remember as the parents from “Family Ties,” the series that made Michael J. Fox a star. It shows at 1 p.m. Dec. 23 on Lifetime and is available On Demand and through Amazon video.

This story was originally published December 22, 2017 at 7:06 AM with the headline "Need a little Christmas? Try these movies featuring Laura Bell Bundy."