Tonight's Movie: Baking All the Way (2022)

Yesterday may have been All Saints Day, but I was more than ready to kick off my Christmas movie viewing and did so last night with BAKING ALL THE WAY (2022).

BAKING ALL THE WAY aired on the Lifetime Channel last year.  It stars and was directed by Yannick Bisson, best known for TV's long-running MURDOCH MYSTERIES.

The movie is similarly themed to one of last year's Hallmark Channel movies, A CHRISTMAS COOKIE CATASTROPHE (2022), with both films featuring a widowed father raising a little girl while running a struggling bakery. Each film also focuses on a "mystery" recipe with old family ties.

Cory Lee plays famous cookbook author and restauranteur Julia Wilson, whose latest project features recipes from small businesses around the country.

Julia has been searching for the perfect gingerbread cookie while will remind her of a lost recipe from her childhood. She finds it in a submission from a bakery run by Kris Thompson (Bisson), with help from his mother Irene (Jayne Eastwood).

Julia visits the bakery in a small Wisconsin town and quickly finds herself swept up into the lives of Kris and his family, including his daughter Abi (Bianca Sas).

BAKING ALL THE WAY is what I think of as a "mid-range" Christmas TV-movie; it's not one I rank at the top of my list yet it still has quite a bit to recommend it.

The professionalism of the cast brings life to a familiar story, with Eastwood especially outstanding. She's very natural, giving her line readings unexpected spins, and she completely pulls off a thread of the story which otherwise might have been an unbelievable coincidence.

I also liked that any problems were resolved fairly quickly, keeping the movie light and positive Christmastime viewing.  It's a pleasant 85 minutes and very nice company spent with a likeable cast.

Colin Mochrie, Debra McGrath, Maria Syrgiannis, and Vas Saranga round out the cast.

The movie was filmed by Stephen Chandler Whitehead in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.

At this writing BAKING ALL THE WAY does not appear to have had a DVD release, but it can be rented for streaming on Amazon.

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