Corny Christmas Caper Goes Well With Cookies

What's a thief to do when a big heist gets bungled, the cops are on her tail and her partner runs off with her share of the loot? In The Christmas Caper, a made-for-TV movie written by April Blair and directed by David Winkler, she decides now might be a good time to rekindle her relationship with her niece and nephew back in her hometown. Kate Dove (Shannen Doherty) has a strained relationship with her sister Savannah (Sonya Salomaa), so at first it doesn't even occur to Savannah to give her sis a call when a tropical trip is extended due to bad weather and her kids are in need of a babysitter for the next few days. When she finally calls, it's as a last resort, and the timing is perfect for a gal who really needs a hideout.

You can tell that Christmas Caper was made for television. Its production values are crummy, especially during the laughable storm sequences, and the plot is pretty silly. The most menacing character is Clive (Conrad Coates), Kate's former partner; he's more of a hard-core criminal than her or her gentle department store buddy Duffy (Michael Northey), who is a consistent source of comic relief. Still, even Clive is pretty tame, particularly when he crashes a neighborhood Christmas party she agrees to host so she can play Grinch in her neighbors' empty houses.

Kate returns to her hometown with every intention of continuing her life of crime, but she finds her priorities beginning to change as she starts bonding with her nephew Parker (Josh Hayden) and niece Annie (Natasha Calis). Parker seems bound and determined to be a juvenile delinquent, and Kate sees a lot of herself in him. He even pulls some of the same pranks she did when she was his age. Annie, on the other hand, is a Little Miss Perfect like Savannah, and initially that really gets on Kate's nerves, but eventually her personality is a gateway into understanding her sister.

Not only does Kate come to genuinely care about Parker and Annie, she finds that her high school sweetheart, Hank (Ty Olsson), who just happens to be the sheriff, is still in town and still smitten with her. As they begin to resurrect their relationship, Kate has to do some hard thinking about the life she has chosen for herself.

Doherty and Olsson are probably the strongest members of the cast, though Northey is the most entertaining. Calis is a tad on the shrill side, but Hayden is winning as a lovable scamp. Stefanie von Pfetten, as a goody-two-shoes neighbor named Holly whose life isn't as perfect as it seems, is a little over the top, but Salomaa is worse, and David Lewis, who plays Savannah's husband, is even cheesier. Some of the plot elements are scarcely believable. When my friend and I watched it, we often found ourselves laughing for the wrong reasons. But, as one would expect from ABC Family, it's a family film innocuous enough to make a good accompaniment to tree-trimming or cookie baking if you happen upon it while channel surfing this December.