This Hallmark Hanukkah film is a minor miracle
‘Hanukkah on the Rocks’ is not purely for the goyishe gaze
Stacey Farber and Daren Kagasoff in Hanukkah on the Rocks. Courtesy of Hallmark
By PJ Grisar December 16, 2024
If the fine people at the Hallmark Channel know one thing, it’s the business of seasonal retail, and, at a crucial, meet-cute moment in its latest Hanukkah rom-com, Hanukkah on the Rocks, it skewers its competitors.
At a Party City-esque business called “The Party Store,” our overworked lawyer protagonist, Tori (Stacey Farber) models what she jokingly calls “the traditional Hanukkah tiara.” Jay (Daren Kagasoff), a Florida radiologist who has returned to his hometown of Chicago, dons a pair of novelty glasses crowned with its own set of candles, quipping that they must have been designed by Elton John Berkowitz.
It’s kitschy, self-aware fun, with a sly commentary on the reality of Jewish American life, as Tori laments that such items are “always relegated to the end caps.” The movie gets it.
Now, I had my fears. The opening moments, crammed with expeditiously clumsy exposition, recalled the infamous Philadelphia Trump ad at a Jewish deli, as Tori meets her grandmother for “Bubby Breakfast,” and Bubby (Marina Stephenson Kerr) grouses that some woman she knows resents her for not setting Tori up with her “putz grandson of hers.”
My doubts lingered as Tori, staring up at her imposing corporate building, entered only to be buried with manila folders on her desk, falling asleep on one and awaking to news that her firm (Wackowotz Schwartz Greenberg & Goldblatt — the punchline for which is that it reads like a shtetl census) would merge with another, leaving her unemployed. I also marveled that Tori kept a menorah on her desk and seemed to exclusively drink coffee from a dreidel mug.
But then, the world of Hanukkah on the Rocks isn’t the end caps. It exists in an ecosystem of Jewish Chicago with a vibrant JCC, deli and possibly a day school. That, of course, and the more gentile territory of a bar called Rocky’s, which, over eight nights, will draw a crowd by transforming into a Hanukkah-themed bar (“Hanukkah on the Rocks”) complete with signature cocktails like the Bourbon Shamash and Gelty Pleasure mixed up by the newly unemployed Tori and menorah lightings with the proper blessings for each evening. This pop-up seems inspired by the viral Maccabee Bar that started in Boston, and many of the libations seem similar.
The film, directed by Séan Geraughty and penned by Julie Sherman Wolfe, who also wrote Hallmark’s Hanukkah on Rye, going from rye bread to whiskey, heaps up the Yiddish and references to Jewish snacks via Jay’s grandfather Sam (Marc Summers, the erstwhile host of Nickelodeon’s Double Dare, who, at one point, “double dares” Tori to continue tending bar after the regular bartender skips town for Cabo.)
But though Sam offers some platitudes about light in the darkness to the non-Jewish patrons and employees of the bar — each, like the cast of Billy Joel’s “Piano Man,” frustrated creatives who will realize their ambitions through the magic of Manischewitz-infused Moscow Mules (we gagged) — the overall proceedings are not nearly as didactic as one might expect.
After Jay and Tori meet, each reaching for the last box of a special Hanukkah candle made by a brand called Cohen’s (don’t worry, they hadn’t heard there was such a thing as superior Hanukkah candles either), they develop a sweet chemistry, aided by Jay’s easy rapport with her young nephew and their shared roots at Jewish summer camp (Camp Shalom, because we’re operating on the nose here).
One senses that the film is not catering to the goyishe gaze. The flick avoids the traditional pitfalls of Hallmark, which has historically tried to paint the Festival of Lights as just Jewish Christmas or approach it by way of a gentile protagonist forced to learn about this alien tradition for her love interest. (Leah’s Perfect Gift, also on Hallmark, features an interfaith relationship, with a title character who is Jewish but loves Christmas a la Irving Berlin.)
All due caveats: This is still a Hallmark affair, and you can anticipate virtually every beat and, given that subtlety is never what people come in for, you’re bound to find stereotypes.
But in the end, Tori and Jay’s parents, supportive of their legal and medical careers, want them to be happy. Sam refuses to move to a Florida retirement community and, in a moment likely to sail over the heads of many gentiles, there is even a nod to the dreidel and its message of Nes Gadol Hayah Sham.
A Hallmark Hanukkah movie that gets even most things right is its own minor miracle. It happened here — not at the end caps.
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