On the Red Ball To Natchez
EVERYTIME A BELL RINGS – directed by Maclain Nelson – (some spoilers) ⁓
Maizy and Nora
Ali Liebert tweeted on 20 November: “spoiler alert! in #EveryTimeABellRings, Nora gets the girl!! Never thought i’d see the day that i’d be playing a lesbian in a #HallmarkChristmasMovie. This is progress and i’m proud to be a part of it. Also, @lyndiegreenwood is a dream.”
The title makes the movie seem related to Frank Capra’s IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE, but there is really no connection to that. It’s an engaging Christmas story nonetheless, and it opens with a flashback to 1996 with younger versions of three sisters: Charlotte, Emily, and Nora (played by Mary Laine, Claire Taranto, and Harper Grace Herrin respectively.). The three are in the midst of a scavenger hunt to find a bell using clues hidden by their (adoptive) father.
Charlotte (Erin Cahill) on a build site in Peru
The hunt is an annual family tradition that stopped when their father died, but when Charlotte and Emily return home in 2021 they discover that their dad has posthumously left them one last set of clues. (Once they find the bell and ring it, whatever they secretly wish for is supposed to come true, and that probably worked most of the time. Their family was wealthy enough that the girls would probably get anything material that they wished for; however, until this year, Charlotte’s annual wish, which was always the same, never did come true.)
Mary Laine, Claire Taranto and Harper Grace Herrin make their TV debuts as younger versions of the Daniels sisters.
That wish is why Charlotte (Erin Cahill) is really coming home. She has finally gotten contact information for her birth mother (and is reluctant to tell her adoptive family about that). Because she travels the world building medical facilities for a living, present-day Charlotte is single and has not had a permanent address in 20 years. On arriving in Natchez for Christmas, Charlotte is greeted by a guitar-playing Liam (Wes Brown), her best childhood friend with whom she has not been in contact for two decades. Liam is also unattached, and the two have similar occupations. Seeing Liam is another reason Charlotte might have decided to return home, because she has her birth mother’s contact information mailed to herself c/o Liam’s address in Natchez, and there must be other people in her home town that she knows well enough for that.
The present-day Daniels sisters analyzing one of their scavenger hunt clues
Nora (Ali Liebert) tried opening a board game café, but that failed, causing her to move back home to help with the family business. (She is building it a website.) Nora is also single. Her most recent relationship was with someone named Vanessa, who (everyone agrees) was very needy, and whom we do not get to meet. That entanglement ended some six months previously. Nora soon meets Maizy (Lyndie Greenwood), an artist from New Orleans who is in town visiting her mother for the holidays. The two decide (initially) to hang out, which apparently involves less commitment than dating. (Liam and Charlotte must be dating, because they get to kiss a lot more than do Maizy and Nora.)
Paul and Emily
Emily (Brittany Ishibashi) also decides to join the family for Christmas. She and her husband Paul (Ryan Sands), a pastry chef who owns his own bakery, fly to Natchez from San Francisco. Emily is a workaholic whose startup has recently been “acquired” by some unnamed corporate entity. Paul talked Emily into going to the reunion, primarily because he wants to have children. “I’d love for our kids to have aunts they can call when they’re annoyed with us,” he tells her. Emily is going along with the having kids thing for the time being but she is not at all sure about it. She put a Christmas tree up in their apartment, so she was definitely uncertain about going to Natchez.
The girls’ mother Donna (Dee Wallace) spends (it seems) most of her time running the family business. What she gets up to when her daughters are not in town en masse is something we do not find out.
Liam (Wes Brown) greets Charlotte with music as she gets off the bus in Natchez.
The sisters sing “Natchez Christmas Eve” accompanied on the guitar by Liam. (Wes Brown, who plays Liam, wrote the song specifically for the film. Brown told Rebecca Angel Baer of Southern Living: “When I was writing the song, the song started off as this big, Southern song. And then I was like let’s make it closer to the Mississippi area. And then [I wanted to] write it from the character, I was like if we’re going to do everything completely Natchez, then the song should stay Natchez as well.” The song (sung by Brown) can be streamed on Spotify.