“Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story,” Hallmark’s snow-packed Swiftie-bait about two people looking to score, was at times about fruitcake as much as football, which was appropriate for this oddly sweet and sometimes confounding confection of a film. But unlike fruitcake, this is what the people want.
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It’s low-stakes syrup that blankets this short stack of a love story — in this case, between Chiefs fan Alana (Hunter King) and Derrick (Tyler Hynes), director of fan engagement for the team — that is why they keep making these holiday tales that draw their pathos from the same TJ Maxx home decor signs that hang in your aunt’s bathroom.
Does the movie have anything to do with Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce, the two humans whose courtship has made people outside of Kansas City care about Kansas City and football? Barely. Kelce’s mom makes a cameo and delivers one wink-nod quip. Other than that, this story belongs to us, the viewers who order their movies like they order their fast food say, “Yes, I’ll take extra cheese.”
Our story begins with Alana, who has a history with Kansas City and with the Chiefs that goes back literal generations: Her parents met because their families had season tickets and were seated next to each other growing up. Soon Alana will inherit her family’s Chiefs-themed store, sitting on an especially cute street lined with small stores, including one operated by a do-gooder of a woman who bakes an apparently vile fruitcake for the ungrateful family every year.
Derrick moved around a lot as a kid, including a stint living in Paris, but at one point tells Alana that he has never put down roots anywhere. She politely does not mention that he sounds extremely Canadian.
They meet each other because Derrick has been rightfully maligned by his co-workers for not getting to know the fanbase well enough since moving into town and is encouraged to go connect with The People. If Derrick’s co-workers are basically telling him that he’s bad at his job, it goes over his head and he decides to go eat some Kansas City BBQ.
The restaurant he selects is his grandparents’ and features a lovely lady whom viewers see as Donna Kelce, mother of Chiefs tight end Travis and former Philadelphia Eagle Jason. Alana’s family makes all the arrangements for a meet-cute and other things to encourage romance, but Donna cautions, “Don’t force it, ladies. Just let it happen. Trust me on this one.”
We see you, Donna.
“They’re very cute,” Derrick tells Alana at one point of her heavy-handed family.
“So are otters until they rip your face off,” she replies. (Let’s watch that movie next.)
The family loves Derrick and even lets him in on a piece of their family lore: The Chiefs have made the Super Bowl every year that someone from her family wears a magical vintage Chiefs winter hat during the Christmas Day football game. The hat was given to her grandpa years ago by a bell-ringing Santa Clause as a thanks for his generous charitable donation. It went missing for a period of time until it came back to their family. The years it was gone, the Chiefs never made the Super Bowl. When it was returned? Well, you know.
Derrick’s dead heart doesn’t believe the story, and it almost costs him the girl. When he expresses his doubt, Alana’s family bids him farewell from the store, offering him their rejected fruitcake as a parting gift.
Enter fate. Not long after, Derrick’s back on their doorstep because he’s been tasked with interviewing one of the finalists for the Chiefs Fan of the Year contest – Alana’s family.
Other finalists include the family of an influencer pet named “Catrick Mahomes” and a family whose Christmas home decorations would be worn by Taylor Swift to a Chiefs game if they were adorned to a vintage jacket.
Derrick asks Alana to come along with him to the staff Christmas party as their family’s representative, as all the finalists will be there. During the Christmas party, he takes her out of sight before the grand presentation of …an empty stadium. Now, something inside me feels that had the Beast brought Belle here instead of showing her his massive library, his enchanted servants would have remained sleeping in wardrobes. Fortunately, however, Derrick finds an Alana who likes it, and they share a kiss.
Derrick doesn’t exactly have the hardest time selling that Alana’s family — who say “Chiefs” instead of “cheese” when they take pictures — are the biggest fans of all, and the movie doesn’t waste too much time making you wonder: They win the contest.
The real twist is that this happens with half of this movie still left.
Apparently aware of their own flimsy premise, the directors cut to a new source of tension when the hat disappears. Yes, the romance turns into a heist movie.
Alana breaks the news of the burgled beanie to her family on Christmas Eve Eve Eve and though shocked, they are not without hope that everything will work out in the end.
They are all further distracted because Derrick comes to their non-holiday holiday dinner with a big gift: a pair of seats from the original Chiefs stadium. And they’re not just any seats. They’re the ones Alana’s grandparents used to sit in.
I’m not gonna lie; I cried.
Later on, Derrick and Alana almost get into a little fight because Derrick accused her of having “more faith in a hat than in me.” Even if she did, she did meet you like four days ago, Derrick.
They made up soon enough to be able to celebrate with the Chiefs Kingdom on the big Christmas Day game, for which Derrick planned a surprise. Even though the hat is still missing, he’s had the team provide hats that look like Alana’s family’s vintage hat for the whole crowd. The cheap, quickly produced imitation hats move Alana to tears. She doesn’t ask how the team managed to have 76,000 hats produced in mere days because I’m guessing it would have ruined the moment. Merry Christmas, labor laws.
The magic is further preserved when Santa, the same Santa who gave her grandpa the hat many decades ago, returns the hat to Alana. So Christmas and love is saved by Jerry from “ER.”
Did Santa steal the hat so he could get himself relevant again? Was Derrick sewing the hats all by himself? Was Catrick Mahomes robbed in that Fan of the Year competition? So many questions. But as a great poet once wrote, “Honestly, who are we to fight the alchemy?”