A Sugar & Spice Holiday (2020 Lifetime)

A Sugar & Spice Holiday (2020 Lifetime)

Cast: Jacky Lai, Tony Giroux, Tzi Ma

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Synopsis (via Lifetime)

A rising young architect, Suzy, returns to her hometown in Maine for Christmas and finds herself competing in the local gingerbread bake-off alongside an old high school classmate, Billy, while also trying to win a big promotion at work.

Thoughts

A young girl builds a gingerbread house with her Nema while they talk about baking to give people a sweet life. Then they wish on a gingerbread man, and grandma wishes for her granddaughter to be happy.

Flash forward to the little girl who is all grown up. Her name is Suzy, and she works in an office. Suzy compares her co-workers to baked goods, which might be rude. She is up for a promotion and brings her boss cookies. The wrong move; she is vegan and on a cleanse. Marshall, a rival up for the same promotion, pops in with diet-approved treats. They must have proposals in by New Year’s Eve.

Suzy goes home for the holidays and learns of a local town bake off that an old flame Billy needs help with. Suzy hasn’t baked since Nema passed away. Her brother, Wayne, and sister in law encourage her to give Billy another chance. Suzy dreams of her Nema, who gives her advice and encourages her too. Suzy meets Billy the next day.

Billy shows Suzy the bakery kitchen and her co-workers. (Which include High School bully/popular girl, Caitlin and Staveors.) This movie is obsessed with high school for some reason. They all are working together to save the town center by winning the bake-off.

At a town Christmas festival, Suzy takes her niece and nephew shopping and runs into Billy. They all get into a snowball fight.

The first round of baking happens, and some of the other teams are super rude! To celebrate making the next round, Suzy sings karaoke, which she hates doing. It starts off awkward, and Billy tries to make it less so by dancing. That doesn’t work; he is more embarrassing than she is. Just as Suzy is starting to let go and have fun, her deadline is bumped up for the work proposal.

The stress starts getting to Suzy with the bake-off and work responsibilities. In the second round of baking, Suzy’s rolling pin cracks, and she is heartbroken. She accidentally puts too much salt in one of the bread offerings, and they are eliminated.

Billy tries to cheer Suzy up by recreating the Christmas dance that he blew her off at. Since Suzy is stuck in high school drama, she thinks it is sweet. They dance under the mirrorball. Then they share a meal with Suzy’s family.

Suzy’s nephew unplugs her computer, and the laptop dies before the changes are saved on her big proposal. She almost has a meltdown, but her mother gives her a pep talk. She has to stay up late and work all the next day. She takes a break to meet up with Billy (dressed as Santa, but still oddly hot?) to deliver toys to kids.

The new couple gets into an argument when Suzy submits some toy designs on Billy’s behalf without his consent. He feels like she thinks he isn’t good enough and doesn’t want to be one of his projects. To add insult to injury, Marshal gets the promotion over her.

Suzy cries because she has let everyone down and feels like a failure. Her father tells her that they are not proud of her because of her achievements; they just want her to be happy.

One of the teams drops out of the bake-off, and the team is reassembled. They bake their vision of the perfect Christmas, which is, of course, a gingerbread house. Their house is the community center that they are trying to save. It isn’t very Christmasy, but it looks like a nice building! They win and save the community center.

Billy and Suzy plan their life together and kiss by the Christmas tree… oh, and everyone is watching them quietly. Not creepy at all. They are sugar and spice, according to the cookie voiceover.

Side Note

Minority Report: All Asian cast!

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Overall rating

🎄🎄🎄 (3 Christmas Trees)

🍷🍷🍷 (3 glasses of wine required.)