Review of Hallmark's "A Dance in the Snow" (Expanded)

Hallmark is doing what no Christmas movie has done before, featuring an openly autistic character

image via Freepik

Authors Note: I apologize that this week’s newsletter is so late and that it is on the same subject as my Medium post today; however this contains more content than my Medium post does.

I’m not sure I’m the person to be reviewing this Hallmark movie, as I am not a Hallmark movie kind of person. However, I write about autism representation in media, so tag along if you want to know about this film with an autistic character.

I don’t usually love Hallmark films because they are not complex enough to hold my attention as an autistic person who also has ADHD.

I need a different kind of Christmas film, but this film has an autistic character, so I wanted to get the word out for folks who do love this type of warm, fuzzy, low-stakes holiday film.

I can see the appeal. They are not films that will stress one out during the stressful holiday season. They probably provide a lot of comfort,  so I am not going to bash them, but instead will just go on record as saying that this film was not my cup of tea.

This particular Hallmark Christmas film focuses on a mother and daughter, Melanie and Jenny. Melanie owns a non-profit for autistic teens and her daughter Jenny is an autistic teenager.

Let’s jump into what the film gets right. Right off the bat, I am so relieved to know that this film does not mention behavioral treatments and does not promote masking.

That is so refreshing and healthy for autistics and helpful for allistics to see modeled for them. It is a film, that helps to promote the concept that autistic people are enough and to be celebrated as we are.

The mother has a romance with Jenny’s schoolteacher and, of course, this romance takes precedence in the film. Having the focus not be solely on the daughter is actually refreshing as she gets to just “be”.

I am glad Jenny is not seen as a burden and is instead celebrated for being different. She has friends and her friendships are healthy ones.

She even has a B plot romance which is handled with delicacy even though the male autistic love interest does stereotypically have trains as a special interest.

Since Jenny doesn’t want to go to her high school winter dance because of her bad sensory experience the year before, the mom and Jenny separately come up with dual ideas to create a low-sensory, “silent” winter dance.

Early on in the film, the mother voices my thoughts on autistic representations in entertainment media, by sharing about people’s perceptions of her daughter’s autism.

She says her daughter is usually either viewed as someone to expect nothing from or people expect her to be a savant.

This is so true of the narrow portrayal of autistic characters in TV and cinema, and it’s a true experience of people’s expectations of autistic people in real life.

Interestingly, these stereotypes about real autistic people are brought about, in part, by entertainment and news media portrayals of autistic people. This is why this film is important even if it is a bit of fluff.

A lot of people love the fluff and might learn something along the way.

For the most part, I was pleased with how Jenny’s autistic traits were touched upon. She gets overwhelmed by the flashback, neurotypical style dance at the beginning of the show, especially by the noise and the snow that is dropped.

She openly stims by stereotypically rocking(but I do it all the time myself — at home), vocal stimming, and flapping her hands when excited.

Jenny exhibits inconsistent eye contact, a flat affect, and a monotone way of speaking (more on that later).

Getting back to a brief look at the plot, Jenny has such a bad sensory experience at her school’s winter dance that she does not want to go back the next year and this propels the story forward into the main crux of this film

Since Jenny doesn’t want to go to this dance, the mom and Jenny separately come up with dual ideas to create a low-sensory, “silent” winter dance where everyone wears headphones to be able to control the volume of the music to which they are dancing.

These Hallmark films where they decide to orchestrate last-minute events always call to mind the “let’s do it ourselves and stage a musical in a barn” types of films from the 1930’s. I half expected Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney to show up.

There is plenty of that magical thinking type of storytelling where selling poems for ten dollars is something average people will buy for charity.

In my experience, few people read poetry anymore and ten dollars is a lot of money to pay for said poems in this economy. But in these films, no one ever lacks money.

I really appreciated that they mentioned how there are few resources for autistic teens and adults and that is why the mother opened up a center for autistic teenagers.

Most of my criticisms of this film largely have to do with the overall criticisms I have with most Hallmark movies. They are often too generic and idyllic, and people act too nice and accommodating.

However, early on I already had a complaint about the language around autism that was used in the film because the mother’s colleague made the mistake of calling autistic teens “neurodiverse” rather than “neurodivergent”.

This change may have stemmed from the allistic writer’s misunderstanding of the difference in the terms or it may have been a choice because most people have heard of diversity.

“Neurodivergent” may not be a word that would mean much to most allistics. Diversity is something most people understand whether they care about it or not.

I was also annoyed that the characters kept saying that the kids are “on the spectrum” when many of us autistics do not like this term because it “others” us.

I can't tell if the autistic actor’s acting is amateur or if she was just presenting a different presentation of autism.

Her monotone way of speaking seems like a stereotypical choice of the allistic author (I wish the author had been autistic) as later in the film, “Jenny” appears to drop the monotone.

In questioning this choice or the inconsistency of it, I do not mean to diminish autistic people who speak in a monotone.

I can appreciate autistic characters that are different from me. They do not have to act just like me for me to relate and appreciate the representation.

I am also glad that they showed that the daughter has good emotional intelligence. So often we are portrayed as never understanding emotions because people think we lack empathy.

Every autistic person is different. Some of us can figure out other people’s emotions and our own and some of us struggle with that.

For the most part, I think the representation is good in this film even though it is a bit of a boring film with low stakes and at times, not many stakes at all.

There are some sweet moments with the mother’s main romance and with her daughter and the young man she has a relationship with.

It is also great to see that the mom and daughter have such a close relationship where the mom respects her daughter's physical boundaries and does not take her daughter’s monotropism, bluntness, and physical distance personally.

Even though the mom is a very accommodating person, she does not seem to know that we usually do not like it when people lob too many questions at us. Unsurprisingly this overloads Jenny.

On the other hand, allistics, not knowing what our experiences of being autistic are like by not having the same type of brain, often forget and do things like this. It’s human.

For the most part, I think the representation is good in this film even though it is a bit of a boring film with low stakes and at times, not many stakes at all.

I guess there is also a character arc for the daughter with past trauma. On the surface, it may seem like Jenny’s phobia of snow may seem inconsequential.

However, autistic brains are hyper-connected and we develop trauma much more easily as a result of these differences.

There are, of course, the third-act conflicts with the couples which could be solved easily if people just communicated directly in these romances.

It is weird that the autistic teens have a conflict and do not communicate directly to resolve their issues right away. But, as autistics, we do not always know how to navigate conflict because, for us, conflict usually ends up with us being abandoned.

Finally, 15 minutes to the end, there is acrimony between the mom and her daughter. It would have been more realistic to see more minor conflicts along the way, but these films are not about realism but the warm fuzzies they can provide.

I was a bit disappointed that there was very little demonstration of bullying of Jenny as this is realistic, but things are always idyllic in these films.

It isn’t a bad thing to model good and healthier behavior to allistics when it comes to how to treat autistics, though.

It was weird to me that there was no mention of the word or concept of a meltdown but it was instead implied. Although it is sometimes good to have a film where we are not kicking out windows in over-the-top, violent meltdowns all the time.

I found it to be problematic that we had the dual tropes of the mom being viewed as a saint for loving her autistic daughter and the daughter being treated like she is innocent and pure despite being a teenager with romantic needs and challenging life goals.

But she does have a romance so that is progress. So many people are under the mistaken impression that few if any autistic people have romantic relationships.

This is a Hallmark Christmas movie so we can overlook some of these issues and appreciate that we were considered at all (for now).

That is refreshing for Hallmark. I may be making assumptions because I don’t watch many of their Christmas movies.

A criticism I have that is not autism-related is that there is a cheesy pretend-we-are-in-a-foreign-country trope toward the end that was such a stereotypical romance film moment that I experienced secondhand embarrassment for the actors.

I have to say it was also satisfying to watch a holiday Hallmark film that feels less like a Christmas story and more like a film set at Christmas because it is about a winter dance and less about the magic of Christmas.

Sensory-wise, as an autistic person, I did find the sound of the actors’ speech so annoying because so much of the allistic actors’ dialogue is presented in a weird, ASMR-like whisper.

I hate that type of breathy ASMR so I had some serious sensory icks while watching.

Do all of these Hallmark films use this type of vocal approach to lull one into a theta state? It did not work for me.

As a whole, I found it refreshing to see a different take on some of us. It’s great to have different representations of how people’s autism presents.

However, I admit that sometimes I long for more characters whose traits are less obvious because so many people think that people like me (although I still have a lot of traits that are noticeable) can’t be autistic.

But that is just my issue and has no bearing on whether the film is a good representation or not.

Overall, taking into account the genre that I was watching, I give the film an A- for its autistic representation. I am so excited to see more autistic characters making it into films and played by autistic actors.

Our time portraying ourselves on screen is overdue.I

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*This Christmas movie is available to stream on Peacock, Hallmark+, Philo, or Frndly TV and you can catch it for free on YouTube if you act fast (that’s what I did).