This year, Hallmark blessed us with two Hanukkah films: “Hanukkah on the Rocks” and “Leah’s Perfect Gift.”
While both are focused on two different plots surrounding Hanukkah and family, it’s clear Hallmark attempted to give the Jews classic rom-coms this winter.
Whether these new additions to the Hanukkah movie lineup succeed in being good holiday movies is up for grabs. One thing’s for sure, though, both films struggle with the classic Hallmark traps. Neither “Hanukkah on the Rocks” nor “Leah’s Perfect Gift” remotely give off the vibe of their locations (Chicago and New York, respectively).
Let’s break down everything you should know about this year’s new Hallmark Hanukkah movies.
Light spoilers ahead.
Read more: The best Hanukkah movies and TV episodes to celebrate the Jewish Festival of Lights
“Hanukkah on the Rocks”
As a nostalgic television fan of both Stacy Farber (“Degrassi”) and Daren Kagasoff (“The Secret Life of an American Teenager”), I was thrilled to see them in a film together. Farber plays Tory, a lawyer who expects to make partner but is laid off just before Hanukkah amid a merger with another firm.
Trying to make herself useful, Tory attempts to find specific candles (the “Cohen Candles”) for her bubbe’s Hanukkah party when she runs into Jay (Kagasoff), who’s trying to do the same for his grandfather, Sam (Marc Summers). With one box left, Tory lets Jay take them, and while mindlessly following him outside, stumbles into Rocky’s Bar.
As it happens, Rocky’s bartender is going on vacation, so Tory agrees to step in just for one night, which in Hanukkah spirit, turns into eight. Along the way, she begins to bond with Jay, a doctor visiting to convince Sam to move closer to his family in Florida. As Jay and Tory struggle to figure out what their next steps will be, they discover how the magic of Hanukkah can transform everything.
Farber embodies Tory’s bubbliness and charisma, which makes her so magnetic to watch on screen. Her arc becomes a story about pivoting and letting the universe put you on a new path. When we first meet Tory, she is having brunch with bubbe, a weekly tradition where the duo sit and talk before Tory has to head to the office. But after being laid off, she finds herself almost always accompanied onscreen, whether with her sister, bubbe, Jay, or other members of the bar.
“It’s nice to be around nice people,” she tells her sister about working at Rocky’s.
Her relationship with bubbe is one with enough chemistry to keep oil lit for eight days. In a powerful scene where her grandmother asks about how long Tory has been unemployed. It’s emotional and vulnerable and it’s clear there is real love between the two of them. “Happy people don’t order bagels with strawberry cream cheese,” she tells Tory.
With Jay, it’s a slow burn romance that feels natural, especially as the two find themselves drawn together by common threads (they went to the same camp and bubbe and Sam’s wife used to play cards at the senior center together). Both Farber and Kagasoff seem to actually have some chemistry, and not just because their acting mimics that of their own teenage coming-of-age shows.
The bar in and of itself is one of the best part of the film. As Tory begins to enjoy bartending each night, we get some of the best drink ideas and titles, including the “Macabee mule,” a moscow mule with Manischewitz wine, the “gelty pleasure,” and the “bourbon shamash” (instead of smash). The montage sequences of the drinks being made are really entertaining to watch.
Read more: 5 festive Hanukkah cocktails you can make at home
After turning Rocky’s into “Hanukkah on the Rocks,” with Jay, Sam, and the other bartenders, each night serves up an amazing idea for a Hanukkah party (these seriously would be good in real life too). From “menorah matchmaking” to a “latke toss” (like a bean bag toss), and a game involving donut holes, it’s evident that the writer’s actually cared about Hanukkah, which is also brought to Tory’s and the other character’s own passion, excitement, and creativity for each night.
I was really impressed with this film for its focus on not only the romantic plot but on the care put into ensuring all the secondary characters within the bar were well-rounded and found a purpose within the Hanukkah season.
The bar serves as a place for people to put their dreams on pause and figure themselves out. For main bartender Lottie (Lauren Cochrane), it’s a place for her to take some space after a bad review killed off her gourmet restaurant. “One night could change how you see things,” Tory tells her, convincing her to give it another go. Amid “Hanukkah on the Rocky’s,” she tries again with a Hanukkah tasting menu for “Hanukkah happy hour,” featuring fried dill pickle spears with “everything bagel” ranch and challah bread pudding.
For bartender Stacy-Lynn (Verity Marks), she finds her stride doing marketing and social media for Rocky’s and is encouraged by Tory to give acting another go. For bar regular Anthony (Dan De Jaeger), he finally decides to type up the novel he’s been working on and go after Lottie.
And for Sam, it’s time to assess his legacy and convince Jay to stay as he plans to give the bar and building to him. “Hanukkah on the Rocks” also allows him to honor his late wife through candle lighting each night.
My only qualm was the lack of a dramatic need for Jay, who seems to only be there to convince Sam to come back. While he and Tory bond over keeping information from their families, his emotional conflict becomes moving back to Chicago as he questions his life in Florida.
This isn’t nearly as strong as Tory’s struggle and eventual closure of where to go next, and he becomes much more of a secondary character to everyone else. Even when tensions rise and he discovers Sam actually owns Rocky’s and Tory kept it from him, it feels like a last minute attempt to make Jay more interesting. Luckily, the romantic plot enables him to have some use, especially when Tory’s sister warns him that unless he has his life figured out and plans to stay, he can’t really date her.
While I did love the film and its use of each night of Hanukkah for structure and pacing, I felt like it sped up way too much towards the end, with the confrontations between Jay and his grandfather, Jay and Tory, and Tory and her parents. The drama is overloaded all at the same time, which makes each piece of closure feel sloppy and less developed.
When Jay and Tory do eventually apologize to one another, it’s after a long monologue where Sam tells them both to “eat some babka. Work it out,” which feels very forced. The film is very peaceful until this quick where the writers overloaded all the drama.
Watching everyone sing the prayers together while also teaching the non-Jews about what everything means allows Hanukkah to serve not only as a plot device but as a means for uniting everyone similarly to Christmas. I was impressed with how proudly Jewish the film is, as the bar becomes all about Hanukkah. Especially with Tory, who plays dreidel in her office when she is bored. It’s this creativity and Jewish pride that makes this film worth watching, especially if you too could use a drink this Hanukkah.
“Leah’s Perfect Gift”
In this film, Emily Arlook (“Grown-ish” and “Nobody Wants This”) plays Leah, a Jewish girl who gets invited to spend her first Christmas with her boyfriend’s family. As a Jew who did this last year with her (now ex) boyfriend, this was a bit triggering to watch. But nonetheless, I persevered to give you this review.
This is by far one of the most frustrating films to watch, Christmas movie or not. Despite this being a “Hanukkah movie,” it felt like Hallmark was trying to throw in too many Christmas traditions, from writing letters to Santa to matching pajamas to tree decorating to gingerbread house making (for the Christmas pageant of course) to even the snowman decorating.
Amid all of that, Leah’s awkwardness and discomfort is palpable, as she tries so hard to fit in, while seemingly being the only character to have her life together (she developed an app and really enjoys her work and now just wants to get engaged).
Meanwhile, her boyfriend Graham (Evan Roderick) and his sister Maddie (Sidney Quesnelle) both are hiding information from their family about their futures. Graham does not want to move home and work at the family’s bank and Maddie wants to start an artisanal pickle company in Brooklyn instead of getting her MBA. It’s as though they use Leah’s inability to fit in with the traditions as a buffer for them to not tell their families what is really going on, which, as their guest, is very rude behavior.
Graham lives in a WASP-y town in Connecticut, where his parents are obsessed with Christmas, much more than Leah had expected. Upon arrival, she attempts to join in on tree decorating, where she gives Graham’s mother Barbara (Barbara Niven) a terrarium ornament Barbara immediately swaps out.
In fact, this film is filled with various “mother-versus-girlfriend” scenes; in one scene, Leah tells a joke that offends Barbara, while another shows a contentious gingerbread house competition and an accidental snowball hit.
Simultaneously, Graham’s ex-girlfriend Julia (Maia Beresford) whom Barbara loves has also come home from the holidays and clashes with Leah when she accidentally breaks some of her vases at the town gift market.
I found myself constantly getting annoyed with Barbara as a character, as she never had a redeemable moment or quality. Plus, her craze for Christmas felt extremely over the top.
Niven’s performance feels very lackluster and her relationships with everyone in the film seem really fake (Graham and Maddie constantly roll their eyes at her traditions). It isn’t until the final moments of the film that she apologizes for her behavior but it’s brief and unclear to the audience why there is an immediate 180 (Julia also apologizes right after). It isn’t until a couple scenes later that we learn why: After hints about getting engaged all movie, Graham proposes and with her parents nearby.
“Leah’s Perfect Gift” features a heavy theme about being an outsider, as Leah tries desperately to get on Barbara’s good side and keep up with the Christmas Graham didn’t prepare her for.
As Jews, we know this too well during the Christmas season the ways we don’t fit in with those celebrating and that emphasis is a reminder that we will never truly ever be accepted.
In one scene, Maddie and Leah team up to build an ugly snowman, who they don’t realize will actually be on display with everyone else’s. “This one doesn’t fit in,” Barbara says.
This outsiderness and that emphasis on trying to get Christmas to be perfect metaphorically could be seen as how the Jewish people in the 19th century tried to assimilate in America and wrote various Christmas songs (including “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer”).
It is telling that in 2024 this message still needs to be shared, especially when Hallmark has multiple other Hanukkah movies. Perhaps it is Hallmark recognizing that they are trying to make films for everyone, as best exemplified when Barbara tells Leah, “you’re bringing something new and fresh to our family.”
Though one of the things “Leah’s Perfect Gift” gets right is the emphasis on food.
In one scene, Graham informs Leah of his mother’s awful cooking and the dinner shown is one with small portions. Later, when Leah’s parents arrive, they do Christmas at a Chinese restaurant, following one of her traditions as a newly blended family, with Barbara now trying to accept change.
It’s a reminder of the ways food unites us and how especially during the Hanukkah season, it’s a big part of the Jewish tradition.
