'Tis the Season for Setups

Lexi is a meticulous professional party planner who is more comfortable with checklists, budgets, and contingency plans than with spontaneous fun. During Christmas shopping with her adventurous mother June and seventeen-year-old daughter Piper, Lexi worries that she is always the restrictive parent while her ex-husband Richard gets credit for exciting trips. Piper is especially disappointed that Richard is stranded overseas and Lexi cannot take her on their annual ski trip. June, who has just returned from an alarming safari involving escaped cheetahs, encourages Lexi to loosen up and spend more time with her family. June then reveals that her old college friend Dan Thompson owns a ski lodge in Sun Creek and needs an event planner for its fiftieth-anniversary Christmas party. Lexi initially resists because of the short notice and her existing Fluff Ball commitments, but she accepts the lucrative job after Piper points out that it is an opportunity to earn money and make Christmas memories. At the lodge, Lexi meets Dan and his son Ridge, an impulsive former professional snowboarder who now works at the family business. Lexi and Ridge immediately clash when he mistakes her for a nervous snowboarding student and calls her buttoned-up, while she criticizes his distractibility and unconventional ideas for the lodge. Lexi and Ridge are forced to work together when the lodge's party room proves shabby and unsuitable. Their collaboration gradually becomes easier as they create festive decorations, shop at the Christmas market, solve a holiday escape room, take a sleigh ride, and become trapped waist-deep in a snowbank. They also open up about their families: Ridge explains his history of reckless career choices and his desire to reconnect with his controlling father, while Lexi admits she wishes she could be more free-spirited and connect with Piper the way June does. Piper and Ridge bond over snowboarding, and Lexi begins to rediscover fun through skiing and dancing with her daughter. While Lexi and Ridge decide to secretly set June and Dan up, they eventually learn that the older couple has already been dating for about a year. June and Dan reconnected through social media after decades apart and deliberately engineered the Sun Creek assignment because they believed Lexi and Ridge would balance each other. The revelation leaves both younger adults feeling manipulated, particularly after Ridge admits that he genuinely likes Lexi and she panics over whether their attraction is real or merely the result of the setup. Lexi also feels guilty that she has spent so much of Piper's childhood prioritizing work and responsibility over shared experiences. The central conflict intensifies when a snowstorm closes the mountain pass and prevents Rachael and the rest of Lexi's regular catering crew from reaching the lodge. Without her normal backup plans, Lexi initially shuts everyone out, but Ridge recruits snowboarders and local workers to help. Lexi delegates effectively, embraces the lodge's unconventional resources, and transforms the dreary party room into a successful Christmas celebration. During the party, Lexi and June reconcile over their different ideas of fun and responsibility, while Ridge and Dan apologize to one another and acknowledge that Dan's micromanagement comes from grief and fear of losing control. Dan announces that he is semi-retiring and entrusting the lodge to Ridge so he can travel the world with June. He later proposes to June, who happily accepts, while Lexi gives Piper a new snowboard and June gives her new boots. Piper encourages Lexi not to run from the possibility of happiness with Ridge, and Lexi realizes that her daughter has noticed how relaxed and joyful she becomes around him. On Christmas Day, Ridge invites Lexi to a private ski lesson, and the two acknowledge that they have learned from each other before racing down the mountain together.