Hallmark seems to be upping its game with its Chanukah- (that’s how I spell it) themed TV movies. I sort of enjoyed last year’s entry, ROUND AND ROUND. It was certainly better than its predecessor from 2022, the poorly conceived HANUKKAH ON RYE. Even so, I decided last year that I was going to write a Chanukah-themed screenplay and pitch it to Hallmark. Early in January I got to work on my future Emmy Award winner, titled 22 CANDLES. It’s about a young female lawyer and a young male dentist, both of whom are so wrapped up in their careers that they find themselves in a supermarket in some snowy northeast American city on the first night of Chanukah fighting over the last box of candles. They agree to split the box between them, hence the story’s title because there are 44 candles in a box (2+3+4…+9). I’m still writing it but I may have a problem now because Hallmark’s latest seasonal hat tip to Jewish inclusivity, HANUKKAH ON THE ROCKS, is remarkably similar to my story.

In HANUKKAH ON THE ROCKS, Tory (Stacey Farber, TV’s SUPERMAN & LOIS) is an overworked lawyer in Chicago hoping to be made partner in the new year. When a corporate merger leaves her unemployed, Tory decides to keep the news from her parents and bubby (Marina Stephenson Kerr, VIOLENT NIGHT) at least until after the holidays. With time now on her hands, she heads off to a local party supplies store to pick up a box of Chanukah candles for her grandmother but, wouldn’t you know, there’s only one box left and she has to fight over it with a handsome guy (Daren Kagasoff, THE SECRET LIFE OF THE AMERICAN TEENAGER). Ceding all but two candles to the guy, Tory heads off to Rocky’s, a nearby watering hole in the city’s historic Old Town neighbourhood. As fate would have it, the bartender announces that she’s taking off to Cabo with her boyfriend leaving the bar’s owner, Lottie (Hallmark regular Lauren Cochrane), high and dry for the holidays. Fortunately, Tory used to tend bar and she agrees to step in just for one night. At the bar is the usual assortment of interesting characters – a puppy dog of a guy who is writing the next great American novel, a waitress who wants to be an actress, and a friendly old man who has a penchant for nibbling on the bar’s stash of maraschino cherries. Lottie, herself, is a chef. As Tory is getting to know everyone there, who walks in but the handsome guy. It turns out that he’s the old man’s grandson, Jay, who is visiting his grandfather, Sam (Marc Summers), from Florida hoping to convince the old man to move down there. With Chanukah starting, Lottie decides to turn Rocky’s into a Chanukah-themed bar and everyone pitches in to make it the place for Chicagoans to be for eight nights. Tory, meanwhile, struggles with what she wants to do with her law career while Jay struggles with his own career as a radiologist.

I’ll say this much for HANUKKAH ON THE ROCKS – it’s completely on brand. If you love Hallmark movies, then you’re going to love this one too. It ticks all the boxes and the acting is reasonably good. The story doesn’t make a lot of sense with the bar leaning so heavily into Chanukah unless Chicago is much more of a multicultural pluralistic society than I had thought but it all comes together in the story’s final act. One of my bones of contention with both the Hallmark and the Netflix Chanukah-themed films has always been how they handle the prayers that are said when lighting the candles. In HANUKKAH ON THE ROCKS they get it right and the cast’s pronunciation is good. Farber, Kagasoff and Summers clearly all went to Hebrew school as kids. (Summers, apparently, had once considered a career as a rabbi.)

No one should be going into any Hallmark seasonal movie, Chanukah-themed or otherwise, expecting a strong cinematic experience but if you’re looking for 90-odd minutes of mindless fluff to put you into the Chanukah spirit, you can do a lot worse than HANUKKAH ON THE ROCKS.

HANUKKAH ON THE ROCKS is streaming now on the Hallmark Channel. Happy Chanukah!

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