Move Over, Hallmark. Christmas Jars is Already This Year's Most Heartwarming Holiday Tearjerker

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Submitted by RJ Carter on Sun, 11/03/2019 - 21:59

Over the past several years, the broadcast bands get more and more flooded with sentimental holiday romance films. From Hallmark to Lifetime, from the occasional theatrical release to the annually repeated standards, the plethora of yuletide romance flicks are thick enough to drown in your own pile of tissues. They blend into each other, become predictable. Often you can recognize the plot from another movie and see they've merely changed the names, or the career, or made the single mom with a too-cute son a single dad with a precocious daughter. So it takes a lot for a new Christmas feature to stand out from the pack.

CHRISTMAS JARS, from Director Jonathan Wright, does more than stand out -- it stands apart, wasting no time at all in grabbing the viewer by the heart and squeezing.

When we first meet Hope, she's an infant, abandoned in a diner with a note. Over the span of a few moments, we watch her be taken in by the waitress and raised through several milestones of childhood, until in her young adulthood her mother passes; which catches us up to where Hope (JENI ROSS) is today -- working for a city website waiting for her big break to become a full-time writer. When she becomes aware of a mysterious cycle of gifting where jars of cash are left anonymously on people's doorsteps during the holidays, she is given the greenlight by her editor, Lyle (DOUG MURRAY), to investigate the events and find out who's behind these random acts of kindness. He sees an opportunity here for the feel-good Christmas story he feels the site needs.

Her search leads her to a family business, led by patriarch Adam Maxwell (RON LEA) and his wife Lauren (ZERHA LEVERMAN). She finds the story she is looking for, but also finds herself falling for their son, Ian (MARKIAN TARASIUK). Torn between her career and her love for this family, Hope's web of deceit may cause her to lose both. But fate has a third option in mind, as all the threads of this story come neatly together.

Based on the novel by JASON F. WRIGHT, and elaborating on a real trend, CHRISTMAS JARS is playing in select theaters around the country for one night only on November 4, 2019, as a special presentation from Fathom Events. (Click here to see if a theater near you is participating.) This is a must-see holiday film that will inspire and uplift audiences, and gets our highest endorsement.