10 best Hallmark movies of all time, ranked
The Hallmark Channel has a reputation for churning out cloyingly sweet movies with little regard for taste. For the most part, this reputation is deserved. We’ve all seen skits poking fun at the Hallmark “formula,” where a girl from the big city moves back to her middle-of-nowhere small town just in time to save the local Christmas festival and fall in love with the hot single dad who runs the town’s inn.
In my opinion, Hallmark movies are like chocolates you picked up during a routine grocery shopping trip at your local supermarket. The bright packaging and the large box—the films’ marketing materials and the Hallmark Channel, respectively—caught your eye, and even though you’d been disappointed by the same chocolates many times before, you caved. Still, every so often, you find one chocolate that makes the whole purchase worthwhile. Here are 10 Hallmark movies worth the watch, ranked from good to best.
10. Savoring Paris (2024)
Bethany Joy Lenz plays Ella, a woman who becomes disenchanted with her job in the corporate office of a sandwich chain after she’s passed up for a promotion she was sure she’d get. The company then insults her via sandwich—it makes sense when you watch it, trust me—and Ella decides to take a two-week vacation in Paris, the city that taught her to love cheese, to recover.
When she arrives, Ella finds the city is not as idyllic as she remembers. Still, like many a Hallmark heroine, she sets out to get a new lease on life, pursue her passions (mostly cheese), and perhaps find a lover or two. This is a fun watch, especially because I also fantasize about running away to Europe for an extended period. It would rank higher, but I find one of the male leads aggravating and Ella’s indecisiveness about him even more so.
9. My One & Only (2019)
My One & Only stars Pascale Hutton as Stephanie, a city girl from LA, who is roped into starring in a Bachelorette-type show called The One. She pairs up with fellow contestant and city boy Oliver, and while he’s nice enough, she finds herself wanting to know more about Alex (Sam Page), the owner of the Wyoming ranch the show uses for filming.
Yes, you can probably already predict where this is going, but isn’t that why we love Hallmark movies?
8. Sarah, Plain and Tall (1991)
Based on Patricia MacLachlan’s children’s book, Sarah, Plain and Tall tells the story of a woman who leaves her home in Maine for Kansas after seeing a widower’s newspaper ad for a new wife to help him manage his two children and their farm. Both the movie and the novel explore themes of grief, love, and what it means to be a family.
The film struggles to adapt the 60-page book into a full-length film, but the strong performances by the two leads (Glenn Close and Christopher Walken) and the child actors keep it from becoming boring.
7. Take Me Back for Christmas (2023)
Renee (Vanessa Lengies, of Glee and Stick It fame) makes gift baskets for a living, while her hot husband Aaron (Corey Sevier) is a pastry chef. If this was an episode of HGTV’s House Hunters, the two would be in the market for a $2 million three-bedroom home with jobs like that, but in Hallmark-land, they’re struggling to make ends meet.
Their financial trouble inspires Renee to make a Christmas wish for a different life, and she wakes up the next morning as the CEO of her own meal delivery company, complete with a CEO-chic haircut to match. When she realizes Aaron is not a part of this “perfect” life, Renee vows to win him back.
6. Love Comes Softly (2003)
Love Comes Softly stars Katherine Heigl as Marty Claridge, a young wife who moves out west with her husband Aaron for the promise of a bright future. That promise is tragically cut short when Aaron dies in an accident, leaving Marty a widow with a baby on the way.
When widower Clark Davis offers marriage as a solution and a way to give his daughter Missie a mother (Were these kinds of marriages genuinely as common as this and Sarah, Plain and Tall lead us to believe?) Marty reluctantly accepts. Of course, this is a Hallmark movie, so Marty and Clark’s chances of finding love and a new lease on life are 100%, and I eat that up every time.
5. An Unexpected Christmas (2021)
Emily and Jamie, played by Hallmark veterans Bethany Joy Lenz and Tyler Hynes, broke up just before the holidays, but a chance meeting in a train station reveals Jamie’s family has no idea the two called it quits. Even worse, they think Emily is coming home to visit! Jamie convinces Emily that they must keep their breakup a secret from his family (obviously), and the two continue the charade while staying at his family’s extremely plaid home.
Will faking their relationship rekindle their spark? If it didn’t, would this movie rank this high?
4. The Love Letter (1998)
Based on the short story of the same name by Jack Finney, The Love Letter follows two lovestruck pen pals whose love transcends the laws of time. Scott Corrigan (Campbell Scott) buys an antique desk, only to find a secret compartment with a letter inside written by Elizabeth (Jennifer Jason Leigh).
Addressed to “Dearest,” the letter expresses Elizabeth’s hope to meet her true love and her fears of marrying a man she does not love. Touched, Scott decides to write back, and the two are shocked to discover they can actually communicate via letter. This is an impressive, at times weepy, romance, and I would rank it higher if not for how bad I feel for Scott’s fiancée.
3. Ghosts of Christmas Always (2022)
Christmas movies are Hallmark’s bread and butter, so it comes as no surprise the final entries on this list all take place during the holidays. Ghosts of Christmas Always is a spin on Charles Dickens’s classic A Christmas Carol, where the three ghosts haunt Peter Baron, a Scrooge’s son (Ian Harding of Pretty Little Liars) instead.
It soon becomes apparent that kindhearted Peter is not his father, which means the ghosts of Christmas are haunting the wrong man. The connection between Peter and Katherine, the Ghost of Christmas Present (Kim Matula), proves that their meeting was no mistake. As improbable as their romance should be, I couldn’t help but root for them.
2. Christmas with Holly (2012)
Based on Lisa Kleypas’ book Christmas Eve at Friday Harbor, Christmas with Holly is often forgotten when discussing great Hallmark films, but not today! Mark Nagle (Sean Faris) becomes his niece Holly’s legal guardian after her mother dies in a car accident. When Holly stops speaking after the accident, Mark moves the two of them from bustling Seattle to sleepy Friday Harbor, where his brothers run a vineyard. There, the two meet fellow newcomer Maggie Conway (Eloise Mumford) and strike up a bond, helping them heal in the process.
The romance is nice, but I appreciate Christmas with Holly for its depiction of familial love. Watching the brothers learn how to be the best caretakers for Holly despite the suddenness of the situation is endearing and leads to some funny moments.
1. A Biltmore Christmas (2023)
This film combines two of my favorite Hallmark plots—Christmas and historical romance—and the result is a fantastic holiday classic for the modern era. Filmed on location at the Biltmore in North Carolina, the movie follows screenwriter Lucy (Bethany Joy Lenz), who is tasked with remaking the fictional Christmas classic His Merry Wife! but thinks the film’s happy ending isn’t realistic in the present day.
Things take a turn when Lucy flips an hourglass and finds herself back in 1947 during the original production, flirting with the film’s Cary Grant-like lead, Jake Huston (Kristoffer Polaha). Huston tragically passed away the year after the film’s release, and Lucy can’t live in the past forever. Will her remake get its own happy ending, or are those a thing of the past? Who’s to say? What I do know is that you’ll swoon over Huston’s great Transatlantic accent.
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