‘Reporting for Christmas’ review: Hulu movie made in Long Grove offers lovely sights, routine story

The made-for-home-viewing holiday movie is like those cookies your aunt makes every year, the ones with the festive shapes and the sprinkles, and she’s going to want that plate back when you’re done: They’re not necessarily the GREATEST cookies, but there’s something warm and comforting and sweet about them. You shouldn’t feel guilty for snuggling into the sofa and enjoying them.

 Once again this season, we’ll be getting dozens of new holiday movies, with titles such as “Joyeux Noel” and “Flipping For Christmas” and “Checkin’ It Twice” and “Six Degrees of Santa” and I’m particularly looking forward to “Single and Ready to Jingle.” One of the first is the Hulu original movie “Reporting for Christmas,” which serves as an advertisement of sorts for lovely Historic Downtown Long Grove, repurposed here as the fictional town of Brunswick, Iowa. As for the movie’s premise, I can’t do better than the publicity materials:

 “When an idealistic reporter is assigned a puff piece about a Christmas toy manufacturer over the holidays, a charming toymaker inspires her to search her heart to find true happiness.”

Off we go!

“Reporting for Christmas” kicks off with some drone shots of Chicago at the holidays, as intrepid reporter-producer Mary Romero (Tamara Feldman) is putting the finishing touches on a piece about the city finalizing a major works project. As Mary puts it, “Now that the decades-in-the-making … plan is officially online, 12 million gallons of stormwater will be diverted from municipal sewers into the quarry. This should make homeowners accustomed to flooding very happy. Mary Romero, WZCH, Chicago.”

All right, so you don’t have to say “Chicago” when you’re reporting from Chicago for a Chicago TV station, but never mind that, Mary has bigger issues. Mary’s bottom line-oriented boss, the crusty Hank Dean (hey, it’s D.B. Sweeney, that’s always a good thing), is shipping Mary off to Brunswick to placate Johnson Toys, “one of our biggest advertisers,” with a story about the 40th anniversary of the Mistletoads, some frankly sad-looking, frog-themed plush toys that were all the rage back in the day.

“So, it’s a shameless puff piece,” says Mary, who reluctantly agrees to the assignment with a caveat: “If I do this, I get complete creative control.” Uh-oh, you can see where this is going. As Mary arrives in Brunswick to spend the first of many days working on a piece that will run for all of 90 seconds, she grumbles, “Eat your heart out, Diane Sawyer,” but is soon charmed by this bucolic town, which basically looks like the inside of a snow globe.

Arriving at Johnson Toys, “Where Christmas is Made,” Mary meets one Blake Johnson (Matt Trudeau), the third-generation scion of the family, who is so good-looking he looks like a police sketch of a Handsome Suspect.

Blake is reluctant to participate in the piece. He doesn’t believe Mary will tell the real story of Johnson Toys. Mary is persistent. Blake is restoring his late grandfather’s barn. What a guy. Mary finds him charming. Blake asks Mary questions such as, “What does Mary Romero do when she’s not speaking truth to power?” All the houses in Brunswick look like they were decorated by a movie production team.

Mary is “Reporting for Christmas,” but is it possible Mary is about to become the centerpiece of her own story, the story of her life???

It’s all rendered in quite competent fashion, with the actors turning in fine work and the screenplay taking us exactly where we expect it to go. There’s nothing exceptional about “Reporting for Christmas,” but we weren’t really expecting that, were we?