She’s Making a List 2025 Movie Review
Hallmark Channel’s ‘Countdown to Christmas’ continues with the pairing of two of the network’s biggest stars in a story that actually believes in the magic of Christmas. Yes, Virginia, there really is a Santa Claus!
Falling on Santa’s Naughty or Nice list used to be a call made by Santa and his elves. But with the number of kids worldwide skyrocketing, Santa has outsourced the job to the Naughty or Nice Group, a consulting firm that has cornered the market on determining a child’s niceness thanks to an airtight formula. As a top inspector with the group, it’s Isabel’s (Lacey Chabert) job to make the tough calls, by assessing the children on her list and assigning a verdict. When she is tasked with evaluating a mischievous 11-year-old, Charlie Duncan, she expects a routine case. But things get complicated when Isabel unexpectedly falls for Charlie’s widowed father, Jason (Andrew Walker), and begins to question the rigid rules of her job. As Christmas approaches, Isabel must choose between following the holiday algorithm or following her heart.
She’s Making a List initially seems a little odd at first as Chabert’s Isabel keep breaking the fourth wall and speaking directly to the audience, describing her company and her work as if this is some type of industrial film. It finally drops that concept as the story progresses, thankfully, because it did break the flow of the story. But it does help set up the characters at the Naughty or Nice Group, including Isabel’s boss Rudolph — a complete male chauvenist who loves to mansplain things to Isabel while favoring her rival for an executive position, Giuseppe, her assistant Heidi, the aforementioned Giuseppe, and Fred, the keeper of the records who is easily bribed with real gingerbread. Once Isabel is tasked with reconsidering the case of Charlie, who has been on the Naughty List, she actually meets her match in the girl who sees through all of her disguises … yet somehow her father Jason does not. Every time he sees her, whether she’s posing as a parking enforcement agent, a power company employee or a window washer, he seems to feel he knows here but can’t quite put his finger on it. When she finally agrees to go on a date with him, she knows that there are more inspectors out in full force, so she can’t be seen fraternizing with an individual involved in her case, so she adopts the disguise of … eyeglasses, a cute ribbing to Superman’s Clark Kent disguise (which Isabel even tells Jason that was what she was going for).
Once Isabel and Jason begin to grow closer, the story really becomes more warm and engaging as Isabel still tries to determine exactly what Charlie’s story is because she seems to be continually doing naughty things, but Isabel learns that if she doesn’t look deeper she may be missing some important information. At one point she thinks Charlie is breaking into someone’s house but when she follows her in she discovers that Charlie is actually helping the woman who has been losing her eyesight. That also plays into an earlier incident in which Charlie, who loves to perform magic, is thought to be collecting $20 bills from her unsuspecting audience and keeping the money after making the bills ‘disappear’. As she gets even closer to Jason, she learns that after Charlie’s mom passed away, she was having a hard time and when he woke up on Christmas morning, he saw that Santa only left a lump of coal under the tree for her, and he had to run around the house repurposing and wrapping gifts for her, hoping she wouldn’t notice. That helped make sense for Isabel when Charlie told her she never got coal for Christmas. All of this information made Isabel realize that there is always more to the child’s behavior than what they see on the surface, and she is horrified when boss Rudolph reveals that moving forward the company will be using a computerized algorithm to determine who is Naughty and who is Nice. This leads her to take some drastic action to try to convince the Big Man himself that the system is flawed. But can she make a difference and save Christmas for millions of children currently deemed ‘Naughty’?
Joey DePaolo’s screenplay takes its time in really explaining the whole concept of the Naughty or Nice Group. It’s not clear initially that this company is a third party organization that has taken over the real Santa’s Naughty or Nice List from the elves. Yes, with a booming population, the Jolly Old Elf himself has had to outsource jobs. Once it is established that Santa is real (and is also the one who brings the gifts or coal, so that must be some burden lifted from the parents who don’t have to go out and spend a lot of money), it all begins to make a little more sense. Everything really begins to gel once the whole ‘talking to the camera’ stuff is dispatched, and we get to see Isabel finding herself falling for Jason while trying to determine Charlie’s status without giving anything away. It also allows the actors to become more engaged with their characters as their situation becomes more realistic, with relationships forming naturally. In the end, though, this is a world where everyone accepts that Santa is real … and why not?! Director Stacey N. Harding does a nice job of keeping the more fantastical elements balanced with the realistic, delivering a movie that really delivers the look and feel of a Christmas movie.
The cast is fantastic. Chabert seems to be having a lot of fun with this different type of character for her. She gets to sneak around and wear different disguises, always trying to be hopeful that the ‘naughty’ kids she’s investigating can turn things around and later realizing their behaviors are really dependent on a lot of factors that aren’t visible on the surface. She also has a natural chemistry with Andrew Walker, and she really connects well with Cadence Compton, who plays Charlie. Chabert can be funny when she needs to be, and she always exudes warmth without becoming overly sentimental. Walker also has such a natural charm to his performances, and this is no exception. He does the ‘meet cute’ with Isabel so well, and he just feels so connected to Charlie, making you feel this is a legit father-daughter connection. He and Chabert have great chemistry as well, and your heart really aches for him after she is called back to headquarters in the middle of their date, and he later tells Charlie that he doesn’t think Isabel is coming back. Compton is also just wonderful as Charlie, because she manages to play the character just the way Isabel sees her — a naughty kid up to no good, stealing money from kids, feeding a dog she shouldn’t be feeding and breaking into someone’s home. But there is always more to her story that Compton portrays which makes Charlie more complicated than she seems, and she also has fun pretending to be naughty when she catches on to Isabel (but she also goes out of her way to protect Isabel at one point when she is spying on them while posing as a window washer, misdirecting her father so he doesn’t see her peering through the window of the under construction pizza parlor). Charlie is also a bit jealous of her dad spending time with Isabel, and she does a nice job at playing sick to get him home early, and Isabel turns the tables and protects her, knowing it’s all an act, convincing Jason to just stay calm and check her temperature again in an hour — it was 105 when he got home, thanks to a heating pad — instead of rushing her to the hospital. All three work so well together that you can’t help but become invested in their story.
Steve Bacic plays Isabel’s boss Rudolph as, dare I say, a complete and total douchebag, a man who has built this company apparently to make himself feel important after having been slighted by Santa when he was a kid. Bacic is the boss from hell, and he handles the running gag of ‘have I ever told you why I started this company?’ so well, like he’s saying it to Isabel the first time, every time, he asks her. Louriza Tronco is very good as Isabel’s assistant Heidi, always sticking by Isabel no matter what, the first to warn her that everyone is wise to her relationship with Jason, and adopting her own disguise at the end to come to Isabel’s rescue. Alessandro Miro is comically over-the-top as very ‘Eee-talian’ Giuseppe, with one of his funniest moments coming as Rudolph is talking in his office with Isabel, and every time he mentions Giuseppe’s name, he pops in the office as if his ear had been pressed against the door awaiting his cue. Brahm Taylor is also good as the no-nonsense Fred, always trying to be a stickler for the rules but easily swayed with the promise of gingerbread. Dax Belanger plays the perfect Santa Claus, willing to listen to Isabel’s reasoning that there is more to judging children than what anyone can see on the surface. BJ Harrison has a nice moment as Wanda, the woman Charlie has been helping, speaking to Isbel from the heart as to how the girl has been a blessing in her life. Francisco Trujillo is pizza parlor owner Jimbo, and while his performance is very good he makes one questionable error when his restaurant opens — he rests the pizza paddle on the floor. In the real world, that would have the health department locking your doors. Why no one caught that, including the director, is baffling. Kurt Long also has a fun cameo as a Christmas tree lot Santa who is totally steamrolled by Charlie and her wish for world peace (and a white rabbit for her magic act), but who also has a little secret himself (that may be hinted at in a comment made by Isabel).
Overall, She’s Making a List starts out a little oddly with Isabel talking to the camera frequently, but once that is dropped and the relationships begin to develop, the story and the performances totally draw you in, and perhaps by the end you will believe Santa is real after all.
