Holiday Touchdown: A Bills Love Story: Movie Review

An adorable romance but not the best production.

Last year, Hallmark had a Kansas City Chiefs holiday love story. I didn’t see it, but I’ve learned that it was extremely successful and was their most-watched movie of the Christmas season by a lot. Unsurprisingly, they’ve added a new movie to that series with Buffalo up this year. Holiday Touchdown: A Bills Love Story just pours on the holiday romance with special guests: past and present Buffalo Bills players, and the city of Buffalo.		2025 Directed by: Dustin Rikert Screenplay by: Vanessa Marano, Danielle Morrow Starring: Holland Roden, Matthew Daddario
Two families who live next door to each other absolutely love the Buffalo Bills. Their houses are decorated in Bills merch, every game is watched with at least one in person where they take an annual photo at the stadium. What’s different this year is that Morgan and Gabe, the youngest of the two clans, who grew up as best friends, are both finally back home and are both single. The long-running joke throughout the movie is that Gabe has been in love with Morgan his entire life and every single person except Morgan knows it. It’s a decent running joke because even Santa and the Bills players know it. The second plot has Gabe and Morgan teaming up to track down her Uncle Tommy’s old flame and anonymous gift-giver. That plot works solely because it keeps Gabe and Morgan together. They are adorable together and the whole will-they/won’t-they is handled quite humourously. Additional props go to the actor who plays Santa who keeps popping up wherever Morgan and Gabe are and delivers his lines perfectly (unfortunately Hallmark credits are such that I couldn’t find the name of the actor). The casting of the families goes a bit over-board in the New York accent department. The extremeness in all of the supporting family members is just ratcheted up to an insane degree and get annoying quickly despite being under-written. Also noticeable, most of the family scenes are filmed indoors, where each scene has soap opera lighting and sitcom camera editing. I usually find Hallmark does a good job putting together a decent production despite limited budgets. It’s unfortunate that one of their biggest movies of the season has some of their poorest production moments. All of their money must have gone towards getting the Buffalo Bills involvement and shooting on location in Buffalo – the outdoor scenes, especially the evening scenes between Morgan and Gabe, are quite lovely and realistic. Hallmark movies that feature a real setting to the plot are usually their best offerings and this is no different. Gabe works for the company building the Buffalo Bills’ new stadium (which is real, they are currently working on a new stadium); and Morgan is a doctor who works at the children’s hospital (and again, this is real, the actual children’s hospital in Buffalo was used for location and inspiration). The plot involving Uncle Tommy gets wrapped up in a cloying way, but the overall romantic journey between Morgan and Gabe is cute and adorable.