“Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story” is a bubbling burst of sports-tinged cheer, and that was the point

CNN
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“Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story,” Hallmark’s snowy Swiftie-bait about two people looking for a goal, was at times as much about fruitcake as it was about football, which suited this strangely sweet and sometimes confusing movie confection. But unlike fruitcake, it’s what people want.

The cheap syrup that covers up this little love story — in this case between Chiefs fan Alana (Hunter King) and Derrick (Tyler Hynes), the team’s director of fan engagement — is the reason they keep telling these Christmas stories who draw their pathos from the same TJ Maxx home decor signs hanging in your aunt’s bathroom.

Does the film have anything to do with Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce, the two people whose endorsements made people outside of Kansas City interested in Kansas City and football? Barely. Kelce’s mother makes a cameo and makes a tongue-in-cheek joke. Otherwise, this story belongs to us, the viewers who order their movies the way they order their fast food, saying, “Yeah, I’ll have extra cheese.”

Our story begins with Alana, who has a history with Kansas City and the Chiefs that literally goes back generations: her parents met because their families had season tickets and sat next to each other as a child. Soon, Alana will take over her family’s Chiefs-themed store, located on a charming street lined with other small businesses, including one run by a well-meaning woman who makes a seemingly rotten fruitcake for the ungrateful family every year bakes.

Derrick moved around a lot as a child, including living in Paris for a time, but at some point he tells Alana that he hasn’t put down roots anywhere. She politely doesn’t mention that he sounds extremely Canadian.

They meet because Derrick is rightly vilified by his colleagues for not getting to know the fan base well enough since moving to the city, and is encouraged to get in touch with The People. When Derrick’s coworkers basically tell him he’s bad at his job, it goes over his head and he decides to eat Kansas City BBQ.

The establishment he chooses is owned by Alana’s grandparents and employs a nice woman known to viewers as Donna Kelce, mother of Chiefs tight end Travis and former Philadelphia Eagle Jason. While Alana’s family is there, they immediately arrange a meet-and-greet and other romantic events, but Donna advises, “Don’t force it, ladies. Just let it happen. Trust me on this one.”

See you, Donna.

“They’re very sweet,” Derrick tells Alana at one point of her awkward family.

“That goes for otters too, until they rip your face off,” she replies. (Let’s watch this movie next.)

The family loves Derrick and even lets him in on a part of their family history: every Super Bowl, the Chiefs arranged for someone in their family to wear a magical vintage Chiefs winter hat during the Christmas Day football game. The hat was given to her grandfather years ago by a ringing Santa Claus as a thank you for his generous donation. It remained missing for a while until it returned to her family. In the years it was over, the Chiefs never made it to the Super Bowl. When was it returned? Well, you know.

Derrick’s dead heart doesn’t believe the story and it almost costs him the girl. When he expresses his doubts, Alana’s family says goodbye to the shop and offers him the rejected fruit cake as a farewell gift.

Enter Destiny. It’s not long before Derrick is back on their doorstep, tasked with checking on one of the finalists for the Chiefs Fan of the Year competition – Alana’s family.

Other finalists include the family of an influencer pet named “Catrick Mahomes” and a family whose Christmas decorations Taylor Swift would wear to a Chiefs game if accessorized with a vintage jacket.

Derrick invites Alana to represent the family at the employee Christmas party where all the finalists will be introduced. While she’s there, he kidnaps her for a surprise and covers her eyes before the big reveal of an empty stadium. Something tells me that if the Beast showed Belle this instead of his massive library, his cursed employees would still be sleeping in closets. But luckily for Derrick, Alana loves it and they kiss.

Derrick doesn’t exactly have a hard time conveying that Alana’s family – who say “chiefs” instead of “cheese” when taking photos – are the biggest fans of all, and the film doesn’t waste too much time wondering: They win the competition .

The real twist is that this happens with half the movie left.

Seemingly realizing their own thin premise, the filmmakers turn to a new source of suspense when the hat goes missing. Yes, the love story turns into a heist film.

Alana breaks the news of the stolen hat to her family on Christmas Eve, and although she is shocked, they are not without hope that everything will work out in the end.

They’re all even more distracted because Derrick comes to their holiday dinner with a big gift: two seats from the original Chiefs stadium. And they’re not just any seats. They are the seats where Alana’s grandparents sat.

I won’t lie; I cried.

Derrick and Alana later briefly argue when Derrick accuses her of having “more trust in a hat than in me.” Even if she did, she met you like four days ago, Derrick.

They overcome their argument in time to celebrate with the Chiefs Kingdom at the big Christmas game, where Derrick has arranged a surprise. Even though the hat is still missing, he has asked the team to provide hats for the whole crowd that look like Alana’s family’s vintage hat. The cheap, quickly made imitation hats move Alana to tears. She doesn’t ask how the team managed to produce 76,000 hats in just a few days, because I suspect that would have ruined the moment. Merry Christmas, labor laws.

The magic is further preserved when Santa Claus (played by Abraham Benrubi), the same one who gave the hat to her grandfather many decades ago, returns the hat to Alana. So Christmas and love are saved by Jerry from “ER”.

Did Santa steal the hat to become relevant again? Did Derrick sew the hats himself? Was Catrick Mahomes robbed in the Fan of the Year contest? So many questions. But as a great poet once wrote, “Frankly, who are we to fight alchemy?”