"Wouldn't it be nice if we could turn back the clock and do it all over again?"
Hello everyone!
I've no idea.
I feel like occasionally it seems to roll by super slowly, but then you blink and you miss like, half a month or something.
Or maybe it's just me. Is it just me, or is it anybody else?
Anyway, that aside, it's time to watch one of my favourite Christmas movies to come out of the Hallmark lineup this year, if not THE favourite thus far. And I'll be honest and say that I clipped and pared down my list until it was a manageable ten or so, because boy oh boy, did I not have the time.
This one, however, hits all the right spots somehow.
And how appropriate that we take a look at it now, since Next Stop, Christmas, is literally the next stop for us all?
All aboard!
Angie (Lyndsy Fonseca) is a neurosurgeon in New York, working tirelessly and for VERY long hours, so long in fact that she isn't going home to Christmas, no matter that her mother and sister both practically beg to have her there. She demurs, saying she's on call, randomly running into her old best friend, Ben (Chandler Massey, who I feel like I've seen before), who is in corporate law and ALSO in Manhattan, but they haven't spoken so how would she know, right?
Anyway, headed home for the night, she gets to the subway station and runs into none other than Christopher Lloyd, he of Back to the Future fame, and you just KNOW there will be shenanigans.
And there are, because Angie falls asleep, and wakes up on a train TEN YEARS IN THE PAST, with her ex Tyler (who goes on to become a famous sports reporter), headed home to spend Christmas with her family.
Naturally, the whole scene is initially hysterically funny as she tries to convince everybody she's from the future, until the conductor (Lloyd) tells her that the Christmas train is taking her where she needs to go.
This seems to be home in 2011, a time she recalls as her favourite Christmas ever, when her father was still there, not having divorced her mother, and her sister and her husband were apparently happy with their son, Henrik.
They're all excited to see and meet Tyler, who, in all honesty, already looks like a sleazy douche to me, and spends most of the movie on his phone or trying to convince Angie that it's 'just family' and they'll understand if they jet off together right before Christmas. Dude.
The important part here, however, is that she once again reunites with Ben, who is the only person she tells about what's happened to her (and who believes her after she saves him from almost choking on a gumdrop, something she warns him about, he doesn't take seriously, and then it happens anyway). It also turns out she makes periodic stops with the conductor to see whether or not her ticket has materialized in full yet, as she only has half the print for the return, and can't go back until it's full.
So, Angie and Ben deduce that she has to fix something that happened ten years ago that she didn't know about then, and it's interesting how her perspective changes as she undertakes this mission, because her memory turns out to be faulty, or, well, very boxed in: she remembers it as the best Christmas ever, but no one else thought of it that way, and looks like our heroine is a very self-centered one, to boot.
But she takes to it with gusto, trying to make things right and figuring things out when she notices them, thinking it's one thing, then the other when the first doesn't work out: aka, she thinks that she has to help her parents fix their marriage that seems pretty broken, which she ends up doing by recreating the very first Christmas ball they ever went to (and where they met!), hosted by a local lady everybody calls their aunt.
The ticket doesn't fix itself though, so brainstorming with Ben, she figures it might be because she said no to Tyler that day when he proposed and - even though she can already see they would NOT work out - she says yes this time around, even setting Ben up with a fake girlfriend so Tyler wouldn't feel jealous of the connection she and Ben share.
Poor Ben though. Forever friendzoned, and Massey plays that adorable, head-over-heels bestie who just wants the heroine to be happy so he isn't pushing his own emotions onto her SO well.
Anyway, naturally this doesn't work out, neither the fake Ben girlfriend (who, it turns out, has family in the city with a corporate law firm, even though Ben's always wanted to go into family law), nor Angie and Tyler, since Tyler is so into what HE wants and what ANGIE would have to compromise so HIS career could take off.
He does take off, alone, while she remains and has a heart-to-heart with her sister, who,as it happens, is having trouble with getting pregnant again, and the strain is showing in her own marriage. The two finally reconnect - the sisters, I mean - and Angie assures her that there are other ways, like adoption (thinking of the future she comes from in which her sister is actually in the process of adopting a baby girl).
The whole family then heads over to the tree lighting ceremony, when the ticket finally reappears and Angie realizes it wasn't just one thing out of the Christmas past, but the ENTIRE THING, and also a lesson to her about what's important, and what can always wait a little bit.
She then learns her sister took a declaration of love from Ben out of a box she'd gotten for Christmas, thinking it would complicate things with Tyler, so Angie calls Ben to tell him she loves him, too, but has to go back to her time, and he JUST misses the train, though they promise to meet up ten years since.
And they do - late, because Angie gets called in on a last-minute surgery, but unlike Tyler who would have hightailed it out of there, Ben waits for her, and because she'd changed the past, the memories are slow to flood in for our Angie who, it turns out, has been dating Ben for the past ten years, and he proposes then and there. Her parents are still together, and her sister and her brother-in-law have adopted a beautiful baby girl, thanks to Ben, who is in family law.
So together, they head on home for Christmas - and Angie tells him to NOT let her fall asleep on the train while they're at it.
In the background, the conductor, who is having his shoes shined, breaks the fourth wall and winks, as the movie ends.
MAN I loved this one! Like really, really loved it. Fonseca was adorable in her role as Angie and believable in the hysterics to get back to 2021, but also the realistic approach once she had to figure things out. Massey worked really well as her best friend-turned-boyfriend, and honorary mentions should go to Lloyd and Lea Thompson, who plays Angie's mother, and reunites with her Back to the Future co-star again.
The only thing I will say is that I felt it fit more into Miracles of Christmas rather than Countdown to Christmas, but hey it aired, so I'm not complaining!
If you're looking for a feel-good, occasional laugh-out-loud kind of movie with charming stars and a fairly believable story (sans going back in time, that is), then look no further, because this is it.
10/10 would recommend!
xx
*images and video not mine
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