Danica Mckellar plays Christina, a department store manager extraordinaire. She is loyal, hardworking, tough yet popular with the staff and #1 in sales. Victoria is the owner of the store who is making the rounds of the locations and announcing that she is taking the store international and will open a branch of McDougal's in Paris. In addition to being the best store manager on the face of the earth, Christina's dream has always been to return to Paris where she once lived. She even speaks fluent French. So you would think she was a lock, for the Paris transfer, right? Wrong. Despite all of Christina's overwhelming qualifications, Victoria announces that the store manager who creates the best Christmas display will get the job! Whether they want it or not, I guess. Somewhat paradoxically, she is also worried about ambitious Christina's work/life balance because she doesn't have fun or a family. She is too busy working her fingers to the bone for McDougal's department store! Luckily, that part is being taken care of, because she is falling for a divorced single father who used to work for McDougal's before Christina fired him for spilling white paint on her black dress. Unfortunately, Christina is drawing a blank as to what to do for a boffo Christmas display, even after re-hiring the single dad who is also an artist. And Victoria is really turning the screws on her. The woman is a nightmare.
Danica McKellar does her usual thing, which is not always a plus. The child is whiny and spoiled. The actor has a strong resume, so, as usual with unintentionally annoying child performances, I blame the director. David Haydn-Jones is a non-entity as the love interest, and Deirdre Hall is mean and foolish in treating her excellent manager so harshly and unreasonably ("I expect this window display to be the best window display in the history of time and the universe!" or words to that effect.) She gets her comeuppance for not just doing the smart thing and offering the job to Danica right off the bat. Because by the time she finally stops toying with her, Danica has learned the true meaning of Christmas and want to stay home and be a wife to the struggling artist and a Mommy to his son.
