The Christmas Charade

[00:00:02] Speaker A: Twas the heist before Christmas. We are the Spy Fi Guys. And this is the Christmas charade. Welcome to the Spy Fi guys. So I apologize to the universe for that. [00:00:17] Speaker B: Yes. Wow. [00:00:19] Speaker A: Justice for Denison. [00:00:22] Speaker B: Is it though? [00:00:23] Speaker A: I laughed and then I heated myself for laughing. Hello and welcome back to the Spy Fi guys where we cover spy fact, spy fiction and everything in between. I'm Zach. [00:00:40] Speaker B: And I'm Christian. [00:00:42] Speaker A: And today we are back with, I believe, our first ever Christmas movie. Just in time for the Christmas season. [00:00:49] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I thought this could be a fun thing. So we're doing not only our first Christmas movie, but definitely our first Hallmark movie and maybe our last because I don't know there's actually any other Hallmark Christmas spy movies. Although there are actually non Christmas Hallmark spy movies. [00:01:07] Speaker A: See, there you go. But I appreciate the intersection of them. For the past month or so I thought we were doing a movie called the Christmas Caper, which is a Hallmark movie called the Christmas Caper. [00:01:18] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:01:19] Speaker A: It has better ratings on IMDb than this one. [00:01:23] Speaker B: Is it a spy movie? Is it. Is it tangentially spy related? [00:01:29] Speaker A: I don't know. I'd have to look more into it. [00:01:31] Speaker B: I just saw maybe next year. [00:01:34] Speaker A: That's all I noticed. [00:01:36] Speaker B: So I gotta ask, what's your history with the Hallmark Christmas movies? [00:01:41] Speaker A: Well, being Jewish myself, I did celebrate Christmas, but only barely. [00:01:46] Speaker B: Okay. [00:01:46] Speaker A: But I like Christmas movies. I've been showing my wife Christmas movies. Earlier this week we watched It's a Wonderful Life for example. [00:01:54] Speaker B: Right. [00:01:54] Speaker A: Which mostly held up. So I haven't seen a lot of Hallmark movies. I did watch one Hanukkah one a couple years ago called Round and Round. [00:02:01] Speaker B: Oh, is it like the. It's like a Groundhog Day kind of thing? [00:02:06] Speaker A: Yes, it's a time loop movie until the woman, main character discovers love on Hanukkah. [00:02:12] Speaker B: So ravage. Hallmark Christmas movie follows a pattern though. It's always big city girl either moves back to her hometown or to a small town and breaks up with her big time lawyer boyfriend and goes and falls in love with someone local and helps solve the towns. Whatever. [00:02:33] Speaker A: So, Christian, I have a question because I'm not familiar with horror movies. Is that actually the formula or is it just the meme? [00:02:40] Speaker B: No, no, it is actually a formula. And it's spread out too. Not just to that well, and then how mark Hallmark, you know, corner the market. But that Netflix has also been going all in on Christmas movies too. They've come up with a whole bunch of series including their own connected universe of Hallmark movies. Mostly involving, like royalty. Like there's, you know, Christmas with a prince or the Christmas switch and which is like a Parent Trap kind or like a Prince and Popper kind of deal with two Vanessa Hudgens. And the third movie, they add a third Vanessa Hudgens. And there's an unrelated seem thought to be unrelated movie with Vanessa Hudgens called the Night Before Christmas, which turns out is also connected. So there's four Vanessa Hudgens that exist in this movie. In this movie. [00:03:26] Speaker A: Wow. Ambitious. [00:03:28] Speaker B: Yeah, right. But anyway, saw, I. I've been enjoying those. The like Hallmark or the Netflix Christmas movies. You know, the. I was, I was. I, you know, I wanted to do a Hallmark movie because I just thought it'd be fun. I was like, there's got to be a spy related one. And turns out there is. [00:03:47] Speaker A: There's one. About everything else, I admit I was intrigued because I have very little experience with Hallmark movies and their reputation certainly precedes them. [00:03:58] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:03:58] Speaker A: And I was curious to see what they were doing with spies. So I guess we'll discuss how I felt about them as we proceed through the movie. Yeah, sure. [00:04:06] Speaker B: Shall we get started then? [00:04:10] Speaker A: Plot synopsis. Okay, so as always, we have our poetry synopses for the Christmas charade. So first we have the haiku, a blind date goes bad. It is Christmas everywhere. Rachel is confused. All right, I forgot to mention, of course. Spoilers begin right here for our poetry synopsis. So here's the limerick. There once was an FBI grinch and a necklace he wanted to pinch. Whitney gave him a reason to be part of the season and her parents made it a cinch. [00:04:46] Speaker B: Pretty good. Pretty good. All right, thank you. [00:04:49] Speaker A: And then Here is the IMDb one. And someone on IMDb wrote an extremely long one. I will not read that. Here's the short one. Whitney is a cautious librarian raised by home security experts. Finds herself in a real life adventure when a blind date mix up leads her into an undercover FBI operation. Forced opposes the girlfriend of special agent Josh. She helps him track down an art thief targeting the heart of Christmas necklace at a Christmas Eve charity ball. As the stakes rise, Whitney must embrace her interaction hero to save the day and her family. Just in time for Christmas. [00:05:22] Speaker B: All right, all right. [00:05:24] Speaker A: You know, Christian, I think this is our first crime spy movie. [00:05:29] Speaker B: Okay, what do you mean by that exactly? [00:05:32] Speaker A: Well, so we've always had them on the list, but we've never actually done one. I mean, movies like the Departed where you have a cop spying on criminals posing as one of them. [00:05:45] Speaker B: Wrong. You know, Molly McGuire. [00:05:47] Speaker A: Okay. The Molly Maguires. Yeah, the Molly Requires are somewhere between criminals and terrorists and political activists. But I will give that to you. That's fair. [00:05:59] Speaker B: That one was, I think, our first, like, undercover movie. [00:06:05] Speaker A: Yeah, well, actually, wasn't the guy part of the Pinkertons? They're not an intelligence agency. They're definitely cops or something close enough to it. [00:06:14] Speaker B: Well, I would say that this movie has all the hallmarks of a spy movie, though. [00:06:18] Speaker A: Very impressive. [00:06:20] Speaker B: So we start with some intrigue. There's a glamorous woman entering a fancy mansion who meets a suave looking man in a white dinner jacket who my. My wife Carolyn was watching. She's like, wait, is that Pierce Brosnan? No, that's not. Pierce Bros. Didn't. [00:06:36] Speaker A: So this part actually felt like she was watching a soap opera. Just like the way they moved and was filmed. And I was like, is the whole movie going to be like this? But they suckered me. [00:06:46] Speaker B: Yep. Yep. So, you know, the woman gives the man, you know, a. Some sort of trinket that has a file or a, you know, a USB drive in it. There's a big chase, there's some spy action. And it turns out this is all just a movie that our main character, Whitney, is watching. Whitney is played by Rachel Scarston. Did you recognize her? [00:07:05] Speaker A: No. [00:07:06] Speaker B: Should I have? Yes. Well, if you remember the early 2000s show, Bird of Birds of Prey. [00:07:15] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't think I ever actually watched it. [00:07:18] Speaker B: I watched the whole thing. Yeah, she was our Black Canary character. Dinah. Yeah. Diana. Yeah. But she also does look like that in the CW universe in the Batwoman. [00:07:32] Speaker A: Now that I did watch, she's the. [00:07:34] Speaker B: She's Alice from Batwoman. [00:07:37] Speaker A: Really? Oh, my God, that's crazy. Nice job, Christian. [00:07:42] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. [00:07:42] Speaker A: So, yeah. So she's not just watching this movie. She's so into it, she, like, can't look away and is shoveling popcorn into her mouth. And I will say for the first time, and I'll try not to repeat it, her home looks like Christmas just got shotgunned all over the place. I think she has, like, four Christmas trees, eight wreaths, more stockings than you can count, and every location in this movie, except for the bathroom, is covered in Christmas decorations. That's why I made it into the haiku. [00:08:11] Speaker B: All right, all right. We found out she's a librarian. She's very single. Single, doesn't go on dates. And her best friend slash co worker is getting married and wants her to set her up with a friend of a friend. [00:08:24] Speaker A: Yes. Bechtel would weep for this. Movie because all they do is talk about men. When the two women get together, they're talking about nothing else. And they also talk quickly. Did you notice that? [00:08:36] Speaker B: It's very quick. [00:08:37] Speaker A: I think it's just the scenes with Rachel and Whitney. I had trouble following it. So, yeah, we. [00:08:44] Speaker B: We get a lot of dropped things here. We get. It's dropped that her parents used to run a, like, home security business, which will become important later, and that because of them, she's very, like, cautious and careful about everything. [00:09:00] Speaker A: Yeah. So I don't. How much does this character stuff work for you? [00:09:04] Speaker B: Some. [00:09:04] Speaker A: It's hard to judge this to the standards of a real movie because it's a Hallmark movie. [00:09:09] Speaker B: Sure. [00:09:09] Speaker A: Like, I don't know how critical I should be. So with the character stuff where they're trying to say that she's so repressed. Right. She's so scared of everything. She won't go skiing. She won't go on dates because she's afraid of, literally or figuratively, getting hurt. And they don't really follow through on it. But I appreciated what they were going for. [00:09:29] Speaker B: I mean, it gives you a baseline, at least for where we should expect this character to be. She's so suspicious that she doesn't want to give out her phone number. So instead, Rachel gives her the email address of the guy she's being set up with. It's Mark Loves Cats, 1922. Which is no, with. No. That's the username, but there's no domain name given. [00:09:53] Speaker A: Yeah, it's. Yeah, true. Good point, Christian. [00:09:55] Speaker B: You can assume it's probably Gmail, but whatever. So her parents come over and to remind her that they've got family game night on Christmas Eve. They're also trying to set her up with someone as well, but she does not want to be set up with whoever they're thinking of. So she decides to email Mark. [00:10:12] Speaker A: Right. [00:10:13] Speaker B: And then we cut over to FBI HQ in New York City. [00:10:18] Speaker A: Or is it. My wife watched this with me, and she said this set looks like a hotel. Yeah. It looks like they filmed it in, like, one of those business centers in a hotel. There's no FBI badges, which I feel like they need having watched the X Files. Right. So I know it's a Hallmark movie, but it's very, you know, it does look cheap. And we meet Agent Dawson, who I would describe him as smoldering, you know. [00:10:44] Speaker B: Who reminded me of Grant Ward from agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. [00:10:49] Speaker A: Grant Ward from agents of S.H.I. also. Hang on. I need to think about this. [00:10:54] Speaker B: That's who he looked like. To me, I kept saying, like, fake ward. [00:10:59] Speaker A: Yeah. He also reminds me of, like, mayhem from the Allstate commercials. He reminds me of something else more. [00:11:07] Speaker B: But I just can't think of it right now. Okay. [00:11:12] Speaker A: Yeah. So it's the stereotype where they're like, we're shutting down your undercover operation. Turn in your badge and gun because you haven't produced any results. He says, I'll get results. I just need a little more time before that. [00:11:23] Speaker B: We also get a little bit more, like, character development from him, if you want to call it that. There's a big holiday party, and he comes in late, and he's definitely nodded to the holiday spirit. And he's been undercover for how. Who knows how long? [00:11:38] Speaker A: Yes, that's true. And he also doesn't dress like an FBI agent. He dresses like he's, like. I want to say, somewhere between a biker and, like, a youth pastor. That little me. Maybe I'm not holiday spirit either. [00:11:51] Speaker B: Wow. [00:11:53] Speaker A: So did you also notice that his boss has a kind of a weird accent? [00:11:57] Speaker B: No, I didn't catch that. Okay. Okay. [00:12:00] Speaker A: It's, like, a very slight accent. So if you ever, for some reason, go back and watch it again, try to listen for it. [00:12:07] Speaker B: We find out that there's the rich guy who goes to parties, and when he does, things go missing. And the next target is called the Heart of Christmas, which just brought my mind the Heart of the Ocean from Titanic, which you still haven't seen, or have you? [00:12:24] Speaker A: No, I saw it. You can stop giving me a hard time about it. Yeah, I think I told you my opinion about it. Right. That I thought it was upsetting. [00:12:30] Speaker B: Right. [00:12:31] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Just too much depth. Sorry. I think I've become more sensitive in my old age. [00:12:38] Speaker B: Well, yeah, they're definitely calling back to the Heart of the Ocean, though, with the necklace called the Heart of Christmas. [00:12:43] Speaker A: The Heart of Christmas. [00:12:44] Speaker B: And it'll be on display at the mistletoe ball in New York City. And he has set up a lunch meeting with some of the suspects. The Batemans and the belt. You know, FBI boss says, all right, you can go, but you have to bring Agent Tanner as your cover girlfriend. [00:12:58] Speaker A: So when did you see this coming, Christian, of what was gonna happen? [00:13:02] Speaker B: As soon as she set up the date and as soon as Whitney set up a date. And as soon as they mentioned that he has to bring a girlfriend, I knew exactly what was gonna happen. [00:13:11] Speaker A: Okay. For me, I needed to see him wearing the green sweater before I figured it out. [00:13:17] Speaker B: Yeah. So Whitney is, you know, trying out outfits for the dates. And Rachel's making fun of her outfit, saying that it belongs in a World War II museum. [00:13:25] Speaker A: Yo, stop stealing all my favorite quotes. Rachel is the best character, though. She has the most personality. [00:13:30] Speaker B: All right, all right. Yeah. So Dawson gets a text from Agent Tanner, says to meet at the restaurant. Her cover name is Kelly. And then Agent Tanner and Whitney, you know, almost cross paths as they're going to the restaurant. I like here. They have some spy music mixed with Christmas music. [00:13:47] Speaker A: Yeah, I also think I may have seen too many movies, Christian, because when Agent Tanner gets intercepted by the carolers. Yeah, I thought it was some kind of spy thing. I thought they were gonna, like, abduct her or kill her or something. But instead it was all just a coincidence. Or was it? [00:14:04] Speaker B: Yeah. So Whitney and Dawson arrive at the same restaurant and she's. Whitney's looking for the green sweater and her real Dayton Mark bends down to pick up something off the floor at the exact moment where she's looking over the restaurant and sees Agent Dawson. And so big mix up, you know, not Rachel. It throws me off because her. You know, that her. Her friend's name is Rachel, but the actual actress's name is Rachel. So when you mentioned Rachel in your. Your poetry synopsis, I was a little. [00:14:36] Speaker A: Confused, just like Rachel was in the haiku. So, Christian, this is the best part of the movie in my life. [00:14:43] Speaker B: Okay. All right. [00:14:44] Speaker A: So I think the movie itself has generally pretty good writing, especially dialogue. It has a lot of clever dialogue. And this part where she's, like, really mad at her, and he's like, you're. You're late. And she said, well, sorry, I'm only a few minutes late. He's like, did you get the file? And she's like, you mean your profile? I thought, you know, and what was nice is that it didn't go on for too long. No, no, they didn't stretch out the misunderstanding over and over and over. [00:15:09] Speaker B: Yep. And she's about to leave when the Bateman's arrive. And Dawson says his cover name is Johnny, says, wait, please, give me a moment. And then he introduces. He introduces her as his girlfriend. She's very confused. And then, like, gets up to leave. And then Johnny goes over to talk to her, explains the whole situation, and they go back to the table and I. [00:15:30] Speaker A: Which I appreciate the recap for the audience members who aren't paying attention, even though we should already know this from the scene in FBI headquarters. [00:15:38] Speaker B: They talk, and Whitney actually manages to do well. She gets herself a job helping with the mistletoe ball. [00:15:44] Speaker A: Yeah, which is great. It's just lies piled on top of lies, which leads to her getting sucked in further. But I appreciate it because it explains why they don't just kick her to the curb and why she has to stay involved in the plot. [00:15:56] Speaker B: Yeah. So you have the debrief at FB FBI hq. The boss decides that Whitney will stay in the investigation because it's too valuable of an opportunity, but she needs to be a trait. So we have a training montage. [00:16:09] Speaker A: Well, hang on really quick. Before the training montage, I was amused that the boss, two scenes earlier was chewing out Agent Dawson for being a maverick, is now like, yeah, let's get a civilian in. Yeah, it's totally against the rules. What a hypocrite. [00:16:24] Speaker B: Yeah. So, training montage. So we have Johnny testing Whitney's, you know, backstory, memorization, her fighting skills, identify the stolen jewelry. We find out that Whitney actually knows. [00:16:35] Speaker A: Some martial arts, which never comes up later. [00:16:38] Speaker B: I was waiting for it, too. Yeah. Yeah. [00:16:41] Speaker A: So there's also a part where they go into Dawson's apartment and she says, oh, my gosh, you have no Christmas decorations. And he says, I'm not really into Christmas. She says, that's so sad. And I said to my wife, well, what if he's Jewish or otherwise not Christian? [00:16:56] Speaker B: Or maybe they would have, you know, not, you know, denominational decorations. [00:17:03] Speaker A: Maybe he's one of those Christian denominations that don't celebrate Christmas. Like Seventh Day Adventist or maybe. [00:17:08] Speaker B: I don't know. Yeah. [00:17:10] Speaker A: No, it's because he's broken inside that needs the healing hand of Whitney to save him. [00:17:15] Speaker B: So they go over to the Batemans. Whitney's doing her affirmations. Whitney goes to help the wife with Patty with planning, while Johnny is meeting with the husband, Lou, about business. [00:17:25] Speaker A: So. So I wanted to mention a little bit of spycraft. They teach her how to text while her phone's in her pocket. Very useful skill. And it is funny that she can't do it, but again, it never comes up later. No, she never uses it later. [00:17:41] Speaker B: Yeah. So Whitney actually manages to find out about the security arrangements for the necklace. And, you know, Johnny, as he's talking with Lou, you know, asks to use a restroom and tries to stick around a bit and is, like, about to press a button in the wine cellar that he looks like because he opened a secret dope panel or something, but he gets caught and makes excuse that, oh, I got lost. [00:18:02] Speaker A: There's some good tension with the bad. [00:18:04] Speaker B: Guy with the wine bottles. Yeah, yeah. And it's there Was a. Yeah, the music definitely helped the tension because there's the, like, all right, we'll pick out something. He picks up a bottle, and then Lou's like, no, you don't want that one. Really Dance you want. Here, you want this one. Wouldn't you love it? Mood changes all of a sudden. The music really helped with that. So it was a nice tense moment. [00:18:27] Speaker A: There's also some good in this part of the house where it has a bad. A bad guy, like a thug, like, lurking in the background of some shots. You know, it's like, again, kind of impressive for a Hallmark movie or even a Hollywood movie. They don't do that that often because they don't trust the audience not to see it. [00:18:42] Speaker B: Yeah. But, you know, they meet outside. Johnny says he didn't find anything out. And the whole time as they're talking, right outside the door, I'm wondering, like, what if they have, like, a ring camera or some sort of security camera? [00:18:57] Speaker A: I said the same thing. Yeah. Good thing they don't have a ring. Video doorbell or, like, they could have just heard him through the door. It's not like they were whispering or anything. So it's pretty funny. [00:19:06] Speaker B: And they go to. To the museum to meet with the museum director, Henry, who is skeptical about the whole thing. He doesn't want, you know, to ruin the fundraiser with, you know, guards and SWAT gear and something like that. But Johnny's like, no, no, we'll all be. We'll all be very subtle and discreet, and you won't even notice my men. [00:19:27] Speaker A: Then we have this whole long scene. [00:19:29] Speaker B: With the painting the Dahlia Dance, which. [00:19:32] Speaker A: Really just exists to give Whitney an idea to move the platform. [00:19:36] Speaker B: He does gives this whole backstory about the Dahlia Dance, which I'm not going to get to here, but turns out, according to, you know, Henry, that, you know, he spent a long time trying to curate it, but it's actually a fake. And that's where Whitney gets the idea to make a fake necklace and put a tracking device in it. And. But they'll need to do. But to do so, they will. They'll need to swap it at the vault before they can get it on display, which is when she reveals that she actually knows where it's being held and they need to go find a jeweler, and this part was ridiculous. [00:20:08] Speaker A: Could they use an FBI jeweler? Yeah, like, maybe one who knows how to put bugs in things. [00:20:14] Speaker B: No, no. They go to the jeweler who made Rachel's engagement ring and also happens to run a Christmas shop. And she's somehow able to create the perfect replica just from seeing a photograph with lab cultured gemstones in a few hours. [00:20:30] Speaker A: Okay, to be fair, Christian, I don't think she ever said the perfect replica. I think she just said a replica. [00:20:35] Speaker B: All right. [00:20:36] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:20:36] Speaker B: I mean, still, it looks. [00:20:38] Speaker A: It's not like the key from Mission Impossible, Dead Reckoning, are they? Like, a perfect reproduction of it. [00:20:43] Speaker B: All right, all right. [00:20:46] Speaker A: It is still pretty silly. [00:20:47] Speaker B: It's very silly. I do like the fact that, you know, after the. You know, they see it and see the perfect. Okay, I'm gonna call it a perfect replica. Good as it is. Come on. [00:20:58] Speaker A: Sure. Like, I mean, they only had the. [00:20:59] Speaker B: One prop, so, yeah, Johnny is like, you know what? I may come back to you later for other jobs. [00:21:04] Speaker A: Yeah. My note is, wow, this was very easily accomplished. Right. No tension. [00:21:09] Speaker B: But there's tension elsewhere because while she's, you know, waiting for the jeweler to finish, Whitney runs into Rachel. And then Johnny comes over and introduces himself as Whitney's boyfriend when Rachel has many questions. [00:21:24] Speaker A: Yeah, I think Whitney is getting caught in her own web of lies. [00:21:27] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. [00:21:29] Speaker A: Sorry, Rachel. [00:21:30] Speaker B: So Whitney adds some Christmas touches to Johnny's apartment with stuff that she presumably bought at the Christmas shop that they were in. And Johnny is in tactical gear. And they go over the schematics for the vault. They're going to enter through the vent shaft because of course they will, and ascend from. Descend from the ceiling. And then Whitney has set up a diversion with Christmas cookies. [00:21:51] Speaker A: So I have an observation here. Whitney is wearing an ugly Christmas sweater tucked in, but only in the front. It's called a French, like, new style. [00:22:00] Speaker B: It's not new. It's from the. I would say the mid 2000, mid to late 2000s or 2000s. It was a big thing. It was called the French tuck. And it's just the. Just the front tucked in. [00:22:13] Speaker A: And the fact that it's called French means it's okay. It doesn't look ridiculous. [00:22:18] Speaker B: Sure. Well. And I know this is not the origin of it, but at least my knowledge of it comes from. Was it the. The new version of Queer Eye? And one of the fashion guy was very much into that. The French tuck. And that's how I know of it. [00:22:36] Speaker A: I see. [00:22:37] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:22:37] Speaker A: By the way, I forgot to mention this, but the movie came out in 2024. This movie? [00:22:41] Speaker B: Yeah. So just last year. [00:22:42] Speaker A: So it's. I know we don't always share the year, but I thought it might be relevant this time. [00:22:46] Speaker B: Go. The drive to the warehouse Johnny goes in. Whitney's nervous. And as she's waiting for any news or for Johnny to come out, she gets a call from her parents who found out from. Heard from Rachel about her new boyfriend. [00:23:00] Speaker A: Yeah. Which is hilarious. It's also nice that she takes a call during the heist. Oh, my God. And they use Christmas cookies to divert the guards as well. [00:23:10] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:23:10] Speaker A: Which is very silly. [00:23:11] Speaker B: Yep. So as she's calling, she says, oh, I can't come to game night, you know, which is on Christmas Eve because they'll be at the jingle. The Jingle Ball or what is. Is it called the Jingle Ball? [00:23:22] Speaker A: Well, According to the IMDb summary, it was called Christmas Eve Charity Ball. It's probably called Jingle Ball. Yeah. [00:23:30] Speaker B: So instead they're gonna do it one day earlier, the next day on 23rd. And then as she's talking to her parents, she hears an alarm go off and goes to investigate. Also, she keeps calling for Josh. Did we know his name? Actual name was Josh. [00:23:46] Speaker A: Yeah, I did. [00:23:47] Speaker B: Okay. [00:23:47] Speaker A: I have that written down. They say that his name is Josh Dawson earlier. [00:23:51] Speaker B: Okay, I missed that. I just thought it was Johnny. So. [00:23:53] Speaker A: So I thought. I thought at this part he was gonna come running out of the building and then they were gonna be cheap out and not show anything of the actual heist. [00:24:01] Speaker B: I was worried about that too. [00:24:03] Speaker A: That's not the case. [00:24:04] Speaker B: I was worried they were Gonna Mission Impossible 3. This where we don't see the actual heist. [00:24:08] Speaker A: Wow, that's saying something. This is even better than Mission Impossible. [00:24:11] Speaker B: I never said that. I'm just. That still frustrates me to this day. But the fact that we actually got to see some of that in the final reckoning, improved Mission Impossible 3 from me. But that's neither here nor there. So instead we actually get. She's going through, and then she sees a rope and hears Johnny. I'm still gonna call him Johnny even though his name is Josh. Johnny was saying, you know, hold on to the rope. So she pulls him up and of course, classic. Gotta. It's a spy movie with a heist. Gotta have a vent. [00:24:38] Speaker A: How'd you feel about the Die Hard reference? [00:24:40] Speaker B: Here's my Christmas confession. I've never seen Die Hard. [00:24:44] Speaker A: Yeah, you should probably check it out. [00:24:45] Speaker B: I know. I. I think it's on my list. Yeah, so I didn't actually know that was a reference until she said that. [00:24:51] Speaker A: Oh, okay. Well, I'm glad she explained it in a very ham fisted manner. [00:24:54] Speaker B: So. So I'm, you know, I'm just like Johnny. Yep. Nope. Never seen Die Hard. So, I mean, on that level, it worked for me because I was, you know, I related to the other character. [00:25:05] Speaker A: There you go. [00:25:06] Speaker B: But yes, we have. Yeah, the distraction with the Christmas. Oh, well. But first we find out there's no. No place to tie off the rope. So someone's got to gonna lower the other person. Obviously it's not going to be, you know, Whitney pulling up Johnny's. It's got to be the other way around. [00:25:23] Speaker A: And how is Johnny going to do this if she wasn't there? [00:25:26] Speaker B: He would just climb up the rope if it was tied onto something. [00:25:30] Speaker A: Make it a little harder. [00:25:31] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. So they let. They send Whitney down. There's a distraction by Cookie which was pretty silly. Like, oh, they're all just going to turn this way because cookies. [00:25:41] Speaker A: Well, I mean, come on, it's a silly movie. Like, what do you want? [00:25:44] Speaker B: As right as she's about to make the swap, another alarm. Alarm goes off and everything is about to get locked down. So they abort and get out of there. And that raises the question of who set off the other alarm. We never really find out. [00:25:56] Speaker A: Well, yeah, because the first alarm is active and the other guards barely do anything. They're standing around eating Christmas cookies. That whole scene was pointless, though, because they don't get the necklace. [00:26:05] Speaker B: That whole scene is so they could have a scene in vents and, you know, have the descending from the ceiling bit. That's about it. [00:26:13] Speaker A: I feel like maybe they did a little bit of relationship stuff with the two leads, but, you know, if you can't have plot, you should at least have character. [00:26:22] Speaker B: Or we have, you know, action, kind of action spy action. So now here we go for character development. We have game night with Wheat, Whitney's parents. We find out that Johnny has never met a girlfriend's par family before. And it's brought up again that her parents worked for a home security company and the game they play is Christmas charades. [00:26:45] Speaker A: A couple of thoughts here. So Josh is wearing an ugly Christmas sweater. [00:26:48] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:26:49] Speaker A: So how do you feel about ugly Christmas sweaters? I feel like it's been played out. [00:26:54] Speaker B: Depends. I mean, I have a few and I enjoy them, but, you know, it's. It's fine. [00:27:01] Speaker A: I love holiday stuff. Yeah, I like Christmas stuff, but it's like, do you really need to wear an ugly Christmas sweater for every holiday party? I mean, really? [00:27:12] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. So I do like the bit though, because Johnny is with her dad and she's with her mom and you know, the mom gets Whitney's very quickly and. Okay, how long into Johnny's, you know, antics. Did you figure out what it was? [00:27:26] Speaker A: I wasn't trying to figure it out. I was more like cringing at how embarrassing he is at bad at charades, especially because we learned that his clue is Rudolph and he's wearing a reindeer sweater. Why didn't he just point at his own sweater? [00:27:40] Speaker B: Because you're supposed to act it out. You're not supposed to just point to something. [00:27:44] Speaker A: No, you're supposed to win. [00:27:46] Speaker B: I mean, I thought he actually did a pretty good. Like, it was like two seconds in. All right. He pointed nose. He did antlers, like, all right, I know what it is. And. And the dad did too, and was just letting him continue just to embarrass him. [00:27:58] Speaker A: Yeah. Embarrassed himself. [00:28:00] Speaker B: We get a montage of more of them playing the games, and then the dad has a heart to heart with Giannis. The story about how she found these kittens, but they couldn't keep them, and she got so attached to them and how she gets it really easily attached to things. And, you know, if you're not in this for real, just walk away. [00:28:19] Speaker A: Ooh, the guilt. Because he's not in it for real. It's all a Christmas charade. [00:28:24] Speaker B: So they get dressed in fancy clothes to go to the ball. There's that classic he's talking and then stops. Gets distracted by how, you know, how good she looks in the dress moments. [00:28:37] Speaker A: That's right. [00:28:38] Speaker B: And I. This is what bugged me. I saw she's adjusting his bow tie. Except it's a pre tied bow tie. It's not a hand tied bow tie. [00:28:48] Speaker A: Well, I don't think I could tell that just from looking at it. So it worked for me. [00:28:51] Speaker B: I definitely could. Yeah, it's. There's a stiffness to pre tied bow ties. It just doesn't look right. [00:28:58] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, of course, it's not a spy movie without a tuxedo in it and the female lead dressing in a sexy dress. So they recap the stakes and the plan for the audience again, which I appreciate. [00:29:10] Speaker B: And they add in some new nuances. They add in what their plan of how the cause of distraction is this time, which is to knock over the champagne tower and then they're gonna cut the power and swap the necklaces. [00:29:23] Speaker A: Yeah. So I have a note here where Whitney is feeling the pull of the secret world, as John Le Carre would describe it. Or he's like, if you're outside of the secret world, you just got to know what they're talking about. Whitney's got a taste of it. And she wants more. [00:29:39] Speaker B: Yep, Yep. So we get some nice spy music here. As we enter the ball, we see the Rio necklace on display. And then Whitney and Johnny meet the Batemans. And the Batemans have a. You know, Patty has a big speech introducing everything, and then surprises her by saying that with the former ballroom dancer is gonna have a dance, a tango with Johnny. [00:30:02] Speaker A: Yeah, because she said she was a ballroom dancer, which was sort of a lie, but sort of not because she said she took dance classes. [00:30:09] Speaker B: Yeah. And then this. This tango is straight out of True Lies. Have you seen True Lies? [00:30:14] Speaker A: No, I am not. [00:30:16] Speaker B: There's a big scene with the. [00:30:17] Speaker A: Whatever. I didn't give you a hard time about Die Hard. [00:30:19] Speaker B: So that was at all. Because, you know, that's a good movie. I'm not saying. Oh, you shouldn't. That was. That was not a hard job. Oh, okay. Something we should cover in the future, definitely. [00:30:29] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Well, it's a spy movie. [00:30:30] Speaker B: It is a spy movie. Yeah. But yeah, so. And right after the dance, we find out that Whitney's parents are there. [00:30:40] Speaker A: Yeah. So my wife had a funny comment. She said, this could be your dad easily. I said, what do you mean? And she said, like showing up randomly at a party that he wasn't invited to. And I was surprised that her dad didn't ask about, why did they introduce you as a professional dancer? But then we learn later why. [00:30:58] Speaker B: Why he's not that suspicious. But. Right, right. As they're talking, the power is killed and the necklace is stolen. And we could. And Johnny, you know, gets on his earpiece and said, that wasn't us, and someone else stole the necklace. And we see a suspicious looking guy in the back who runs. They get up onto the roof, Turns out the case he was holding was empty and he's just a decoy. And they look from the rooftop down and see the museum director, Henry, with a case, running. Running into a van. [00:31:27] Speaker A: Okay, so this. Things are looking up good. [00:31:29] Speaker B: There's another van with her parents that are getting apprehended. And now they're hostages. [00:31:35] Speaker A: Oh, my God, this is great. Our heroes are on top of the museum. The bad guys are getting away, and the parents are in danger. This is so exciting. My goodness. [00:31:45] Speaker B: And Johnny gets the rope that the gut that the decoy guy was gonna use to escape throws it onto an anchor point. And I was like, oh, this is exactly like the beginning of the. Where she paused in the movie that she was watching. [00:31:58] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah, good point. [00:32:00] Speaker B: And so she actually even repeats the line that they Say in the movie, you know, jump first, think later. [00:32:06] Speaker A: Mm. Yeah. Hold on tight. So they slide down, and Josh's or Johnny's hand must have been completely torn off right, by that rope. [00:32:15] Speaker B: Right. I mean, when you do that, you usually have something around that. [00:32:21] Speaker A: Your whole. [00:32:21] Speaker B: Your head. You hold your head on to. You don't. Yeah. You don't just have your bare hand, like. But. Yeah. So they rappel down very quickly, and their fall is cushioned by some, you know, Christmas inflatables in the front. And Whitney jumps in front of the van to stop it, and they open up the back and find that her parents have knocked out the guards who had captured them. [00:32:43] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, oh, my gosh. Something was all exciting was about to happen, and then surprise. The parents disarm the bad guys. And they don't just turn the bad guys, they disarm them off screen. Oh, I really turned on the movie because of that. [00:32:58] Speaker B: Well, you have to. You'd have to sacrifice something for the surprise of seeing that or something. Yeah. So we find out that her parents are former spy. Well, they used to work for the FBI in the art division. [00:33:15] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh. Everybody's part of the FBI. I wouldn't be surprised if Rachel was, too. [00:33:21] Speaker B: We find out that also. That her. Her mother is actually. Actually swapped the necklace. So the necklace that Henry, the museum director stolen is actually the fake with the tracking device in it. Rachel has it out with her parents about lying to her for her whole life and also being so overprotective with her life and, you know, ruining her life, basically. [00:33:41] Speaker A: Christian, how did you feel about this part? I felt like it was totally manufactured drama, and I did not like it. [00:33:46] Speaker B: I. I think, you know, what went a little over the top. But, you know, if you found out your parents were spy, your spies, your whole. And never told you about it, and also that that's the reason why they were always making you feel overprotected and, you know, never got your own confidence. Then. Yeah, I could see it. [00:34:06] Speaker A: My parents can't possibly be spies. They're not. [00:34:08] Speaker B: They're not cool enough. I know. I was about to say it. [00:34:12] Speaker A: Well, okay, like, some of it I understood, but the. The words where she's like, you guys expect me to be the perfect daughter. She says something about being the perfect daughter. I'm like, what? Where is that coming from? Everyone thinks I'm incompetent. She gets mad at Josh. He's like, you told your boss I can't do FBI stuff. Really? You don't say of course you can't do FBI stuff. [00:34:34] Speaker B: He even counters that, you know. Yes, but that's before I knew you was like, yeah, but even not, you know, 20 minutes ago you were telling me that, you know, I don't have to do this. And, you know, he makes the excuse. So I just didn't want to see you get hurt. [00:34:47] Speaker A: I mean, I think the movie would have worked perfectly fine without this. And if you need some drama, just have Josh being like, I'm not ready for a relationship. I'm not going to open up my heart. [00:34:57] Speaker B: I prefer this twist to just another one of those twists because that's like just so Hallmark. [00:35:05] Speaker A: Well, yeah, I mean, it's a Hallmark movie. The problem is you've seen too many of them and I haven't seen enough. So for me, it would feel new. [00:35:13] Speaker B: Yeah. But there was one part that actually got to me. We found out early in the mover movie that Johnny or Josh grew up in foster care. So. And during, you know, while they're arguing, Johnny says, you can't just cut them out their family. And Whitney says, what would you know about that? [00:35:33] Speaker A: Ouch. [00:35:35] Speaker B: But as she's storming off, Whitney was walking through the museum and finds out that the Dahlia dance is missing too. [00:35:42] Speaker A: Okay, so I like this. There's one more twist, one more reveal. [00:35:46] Speaker B: Yeah. And Whitney, meanwhile, Henry is getting interrogated by the FBI. And when they find that out, you know, Henry says, she is bold. And they're all like, she. [00:35:57] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:35:58] Speaker B: So Whitney goes over to Patty's house. She's like all packed up, says that she's going on a last minute trip to Aruba. We find out that she's actually the thief and that all of the other. The six other stolen artifacts had something to do with love. And she'd before mentioned before that she just loves love and that she's all about like these romantic stories. As Whitney is going to confront her, a bunch of thugs corner Whitney. And this is where I thought she was like, gonna show off her martial arts skills, but no. [00:36:28] Speaker A: Or yeah, like something. Like I was hoping something exciting was gonna happen. Somebody throw a punch, Somebody pull a gun. Like, I. I don't anything please use here. [00:36:37] Speaker B: Okay, I'm going to steal your bit. I'm going to rewrite the movie. [00:36:41] Speaker A: Okay, let's do it. Let's hear it. [00:36:43] Speaker B: All right, so we would find out. We would have a short fight sequence where she's holding. Holding Buff. Just barely. But also we find that the whole time while she was talking, she was texting in her pocket to Josh. [00:36:55] Speaker A: Oh, my God, I love it. Give this guy a screenplay. Yeah. Setups and payoffs. [00:37:02] Speaker B: And then we'll play. And then everything else plays off. You know, we'll see her, you know, all right, She's. And it'll play similarly to when they find out that her parents have apprehended, you know, the guys. We'll find, you know, Joshua burst in and see that Whitney is defeated or at least knocked out. Maybe not have three guys, maybe just two guys. I don't know. Something make it a little bit more believable, but. Yeah. So that's how I would rewrite that scene. But we do find that Whitney did this, did do something smart here. She recorded the entire conversation. So they can give that as proof to the FBI. [00:37:33] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:37:33] Speaker B: And then we have Christmas Day. Her parents come over to her house and they apologize to her for lying. They have a big hug. [00:37:42] Speaker A: Hang on really quick. They said, if it weren't for you, Patty, I. E. The wife would have gotten away with it. But I'm kind of like, gotten away with it. She was just sitting at home doing nothing before Whitney came up to her. [00:37:55] Speaker B: But she. She was about to leave for Aruba. [00:37:58] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, not. Not fast enough. [00:38:00] Speaker B: Yeah. And yeah. So Johnny's outside. She apologizes to him, gives him a Christmas present. It's the snow globe that brought up earlier. And he has something for her as well. The heart of Christmas replica. He specifically mentions you remove the tracker. And then she invites him to stay because he's not doing anything for Christmas. And then they kiss. And her parents are watching and they have a mention of we need to work on boundaries. And then I like the offline or the off screen line of Whitney saying, I'm thinking I should join up, join the FBI. And everyone says, what? And with that, our movie ends. [00:38:38] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's called the button. One final joke. Spy fact versus Spy fiction. [00:38:49] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:38:50] Speaker A: Okay, so now it is time for our spy fact versus fiction. You got anything, Chris? [00:38:54] Speaker B: I have one thing. Do you have anything? [00:38:56] Speaker A: I have one thing as well. Why don't you go first? [00:38:59] Speaker B: Hopefully it's not the same thing. So you're painting the Dahlia Dance. Okay, I did some googling on this. And so there's no actual one painting called the Dahlia Dance, which is as depicted with like a dancer with a bunch of dahlia paintings or, sorry, Dahlia flowers around her. What actually comes out more is just like dahlias themselves. [00:39:23] Speaker A: I always think of the Black Dahlia. [00:39:24] Speaker B: Yeah. So, yeah. So that the whole story about the Dahlia dance and, you know, the painter who got struck by lightning, and that whole thing is completely fictional, and there's no truth to that. All right, what have you got? [00:39:38] Speaker A: Okay, so I did a little Googling about undercover art heists, and I found a guy named Robert King Whitman. He was born 1955 in Tokyo, but he's a white American. Okay, this is all from Wikipedia. He's a highly decorated former FBI special agent who worked in the Philadelphia field Division from 1988 to 2008. And he was the top investigator and coordinator for cases involving art theft and art fraud. And he helped recover more than $300 million worth of stolen art and cultural properties. [00:40:11] Speaker B: Wow. Okay. [00:40:12] Speaker A: Yeah, so in one particular case, there was very little detail about it, Unfortunately. But in 2003, artworks, including a Rembrandt self portrait worth $42 million, were stolen from the Swedish National Museum. And then years later, Whitman went undercover posing as an authenticator for the Russian mob to buy the Rembrandt from a Bulgarian drug dealer who knew its location. The sting operation recovered the painting, and four men were arrested in a hotel in the Danish capital. The painting was recovered undamaged and in the frame. A couple other things about Whitman. In 2005, he's instrumental in the creation of the FBI's Rapid Deployment Art crime team, named the senior investigator. He also was instrumental in the recovery of colonial North Carolina's copy of the original Bill of rights in 2005. It had been stolen by a Union soldier in 1865. [00:41:04] Speaker B: Wow. [00:41:05] Speaker A: I thought that was interesting. But as far as I know, he did not find love on Christmas. Or at Christmas, I should say. Yeah, favorite quotes. All right, so now it is time for our favorite quotes. This movie, as I said, had some pretty good dialogue, so let's see what favorite quotes you got. [00:41:25] Speaker B: All right, I have a couple. I like a classic. You know, I work better alone. From Johnny or Josh. I also like from Agent Tanner. There are carolers everywhere. They cornered me. [00:41:37] Speaker A: They cornered me. Yeah, I thought that was good. [00:41:39] Speaker B: And then I did, like before I knew it was a. You know, a paraphrase from Die Hard. I liked, come join the FBI. Plan a party. It'll be fine. [00:41:50] Speaker A: Mm. Yes. Yes, it is. [00:41:52] Speaker B: All right, what do you got? [00:41:53] Speaker A: So I did love the email address where they kept repeating it. Rachel says you need to do something exciting for Christmas, and she says it's a Christmas themed game night. That is exciting. The part where they're meeting with the. The first date, the blind date, and she doesn't Know what to say. So she says to view that shellfish allergies develop in adulthood, and they all just stare at her. Let's not move this along too much. There's a line that I think should go in our cheesy line of reading contest. Someone says, word will not get out because this is a covert operation. [00:42:26] Speaker B: Oh, yes. Yeah. [00:42:28] Speaker A: Yeah. So I think. I think we can leave it there. There's a lot of good dialogue ratings. All right, so now it is time for our ratings. On a scale from 1 to 10 martinis, 1 being Avengers 1998 level bad, 10 being even better than Mission Impossible, Ghost Protocol, how would we rate the Christmas charade? [00:42:53] Speaker B: All right, Zach. [00:42:54] Speaker A: I feel like I usually go first. You want me to go first? [00:42:57] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:42:57] Speaker A: Okay. So again, it's hard to judge it. Like, do I judge the level of a hormone arc movie or a real movie? So we'll do the pros and cons. So the pros. The dialogue, on the whole, is pretty good. When they're trying to be funny. When they're trying to be dramatic and serious, not so much. I did chuckle a lot. It was very, like, wholesome, and the characters were likable enough. And I also appreciate that it was short. The cons, like, yeah, there's not a whole lot of spy action. The stuff with the parents being FBI agents and defeating the bad guys off camera really rubbed me the wrong way. Like, that was pretty bad. And we never found out what the deal with Rachel is like. The Rachel flatline didn't get resolved. A lot of stuff never got resolved. A lot of setups never paid off. But I am feeling generous. I'm in the holiday spirit, so I'm gonna give it a five out of ten. [00:43:50] Speaker B: All right. All right. I. I enjoyed this movie. And, I mean, it's not. I would. It's not the best of, you know, these Hallmark or Netflix Christmas movies that I've seen, but it is. I was entertained. I like that they did try to jam spy tropes in there. What they could, especially with, like, having a heist and, like, descending the ceiling and events and all that stuff, or a tuxedo scene and a dance. I would have liked a bit more spycraft if they had done anything like, you know, a brush past or something else like that. Some other things. Yeah. But I wasn't. I was entertained. It's as entertaining than some of the other movies we've covered. So I'm just give this a solid six. Six out of ten. Martinis. [00:44:35] Speaker A: Is that on, like, the Hallmark scale? [00:44:37] Speaker B: Or what's that? [00:44:38] Speaker A: Is that. Is that, like, relative to other Hallmark movies or in general? [00:44:42] Speaker B: Just in general. I mean, I think relative to other Hallmark movies be about the same. Like, there are some. I think it's the Christmas Prince I feel like is one. Or it's confusing because there's, like, almost every variation of, you know, something Christmas. And prince or princess is as, like, a title of a moose. I have to remember which one it is. I think it's the Christmas Prince where I watched it with Carolyn and ever. I thought I was predicting the movie because, like, oh, I know this is gonna be so silly. That's. I'm gonna be able to predict it every turn I thought it make. I thought it was gonna make. It made a massive left turn. Okay. So I was. And I was, you know, amused and surprised by that. This movie had a few left turns, but not as, you know, not like that one. I will say Carolyn did enjoy the twist of the parents being spies at the end. [00:45:28] Speaker A: Okay. You didn't see it coming then? [00:45:29] Speaker B: I did not. No, I did not, actually. I will. No. Once they mentioned. They kept mentioning the whole, you know, home security business, I was like, there's something here, isn't there? But it was. [00:45:42] Speaker A: I don't know. I. I was okay with that. It's like, parents are protective, you know, they're overprotective. It's totally normal. [00:45:49] Speaker B: But, yeah. But, yeah, I'd say overall, I had a fun time with it, and I'd watch it again, probably, if I wanted to show someone a Christmas spy movie that's not on Her Majesty. Secret Service. [00:46:00] Speaker A: Yeah. And if you want to do a Hallmark movie that's not about the woman from the small town, go. [00:46:04] Speaker B: Exactly. Yeah. It's different. Yeah. [00:46:06] Speaker A: Everything else you said, so cool. [00:46:08] Speaker B: Yeah. All right. [00:46:08] Speaker A: Anything else to say about the Christmas charade? Not the Christmas caper. [00:46:12] Speaker B: Well, now that I've got. I've got to look up the Christmas caper to see what that movie's about. [00:46:15] Speaker A: Thank you all for joining us. Have a good holiday season, and best of luck in 2026with everything. [00:46:22] Speaker B: Yeah, happy holidays, and thanks for listening. You know, we can't do this without all of our listeners, really, because otherwise we'd just be talking to ourselves. [00:46:31] Speaker A: Yeah, I do that too much. Anyway, so, yeah, you can find us on social media, the spy fi guys on Facebook, Bluesky, YouTube, and Instagram, as well as our merch [email protected] until next year. I'm Zach. [00:46:44] Speaker B: And I'm Christian. [00:46:45] Speaker A: And we are The Spy Fi Guys Signing Off Foreign. [00:46:53] Speaker B: Thank you for listening to the Spy Fi Guys. If you enjoyed our podcast please be sure to give us a five star rating on itunes. The theme song from this podcast is Mistake the getaway by Kevin McLeod from Incompetech.com licensed under Creative Commons by Attribution 3.0. Films, books and television shows reviewed by our podcast are are the intellectual property of their respective copyright holders and no infringement is intended. [00:47:19] Speaker A: This is a personal podcast. Any views, statements or opinions expressed in this podcast are personal and belong solely to the participants. They do not represent those of people, institutions or organizations that the participants may or may not be associated with in a professional or personal capacity. Unless explicitly stated, any views or opinions are not intended to mold any religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company or individual. [00:47:44] Speaker B: You can find our podcast on social media at the Spy Fi Guys on Facebook, Blue Sky, YouTube and Instagram.