The National Tree [2009]

This movie was selected purely on the fact that the premise is so incredibly strange and, honestly, dumb that we decided it had to be watched. Here we have a bona fide Hallmark film about a "seventeen year old" kid who enters a contest to have his tree evaluated to be the new "national tree" after the old one was struck by lighting. What this means is that the tree his parents planted for him when he was born will be uprooted and replanted on the White House lawn. Why does this matter at all? Mostly for dead mom and father-son bonding reasons. 

The son, named Rock because a rock needed to be moved for this tree to be planted, is a vlogger on the most 2002 website possible where he's got a few international friends and an online girlfriend. After winning the contest, his curmudgeon dad decides they should take the tree himself, being really salty about the removal of the tree in general but never actually expressing his feelings to his son. They are traveling with a woman connected to a toy company sponsoring the move, who has an sir-not-appearing-in-this-film fiance and totally isn't going to be set up with the dad by the end of the film. On the cross country travel they encounter tens of people excited about the tree because I guess not much happens in those towns at all, the son maneuvers the tree through a fire, they meet up with grandma, and they meet up with the son's online girlfriend who stows away with the tree and nearly freezes to death. Once they finally make it to DC, they get the bad news: the tree is going to be cut and put in a stand, not planted. The son is ambivalent but the dad is shook by his callousness. The son has a turn around and cuffs himself to the tree, riling up the crowd, and the tree is planted.

This movie is pretty wild. The acting is funny, both from the clearly 25-year-old son trying to act childish and the dad who is just mad about everything. There are some strange camera moments to punctuate this. And again, the premise itself is so weird that it frequently becomes comical how important this tree is. Sarah asked a good question at one point: Who is this movie for? It's light on the romance and even light on the Christmas cheer and nationalism given the premise. It seems like the target audience might just be old people who want clean entertainment and who want to live in a simple time where a guy carting a tree across the US is actually worthwhile news. We wouldn't watch it again, but it was definitely worth the one time.

Spoon Rating: 5