"Love's a risk, but it's the one thing that makes life worth living."
Hello everyone!
How crazy is that?!
I have no idea where the time has gone, but I'll say this: it obviously had a VERY good time, all things considered.
There's only about ten days left before the year turns as well, and I'm over here thinking to myself how and where.
But me maudlin will certainly not make this blog post write itself now, will it?
I've decided to finish off my Christmas movie marathon with the segment of Hallmark that I tend to enjoy more than Countdown to Christmas, which is Miracles of Christmas.
I don't know, the mysteries seem to get me!
And Long Lost Christmas might not have fired on all cylinders, but it definitely fired on some.
Links to previous related posts can be found at the bottom of the page, as per usual.
Long Lost Christmas stars Taylor Cole as interior designer Hayley, who gets a good chunk of her popularity from expertly using social media. She established her business two years ago at the encouragement of her father, who unfortunately passed away about six months before the movie's beginning.
Her mom Patricia has definitely been struggling, and as Hayley tries to cheer her up, she discovers a memory box in which there's a photo of her mom with a young boy named Gordon.
Turns out, there's a brother out there somewhere, but he was seven years older than Patricia and aged out of the group home they were in, having never been adopted, then just never came back for her. For all she knows, he could be dead as she hasn't heard from him since.
Hayley, who's just been given a project in a model house that promises MASSIVE exposure for her in future, is a little more stubborn than that, however, and tracks down a Gordon to Silver Valley, Colorado, where this guy owns a cabin-making and renting company.
She's determined to see for herself whether or not he might be her long lost uncle, so she pretends that she wants to rent a cabin for a reunion in the hopes of getting to know him a little better.
He obviously doesn't just give out his life story to anyone, though, so she's left instead to connect with Jake (Benjamin Ayres) and Gordon's daughter Brianna, a talented furniture designer whom Hayley decides to partner up with for her project, while she's at it.
Considering she keeps striking out with Gordon you'd think she'd pack up and leave, but there seems to always be something for her to stick around for, whether it's a Christmas festival, star-gazing with Jake, or just getting the blueprints from Brianna while she's at it.
And through this all, she and Jake UNDENIABLY share an attraction that doesn't quite pan out the way they might have planned, though Gordon gently encourages Jake to open his heart again, after having had it broken the other time he'd gone all-in for a relationship, moving to Chicago, and having it all implode around him.
The biggest blow to Hayley, however, is when Gordon tells her he has no siblings, effectively crushing her chances at him being her uncle, so she pulls the plug on whatever this is starting to be with Jake, even though she then sticks around for just a tiny bit longer.
Good thing, too, because she's with Gordon when he has a low blood pressure event and needs an ambulance, then to help Jake and Brianna stage the fundraiser at Jake's self-made cabin since the model one is kinda ... drowning, with the heating off and pipes frozen and all that jazz.
Things might have even ended really well if not for the fact Hayley somehow missed the reason for the fundraiser, which is for the group hope that her mom was at, revealing that Gordon IS actually her long-lost uncle. Indescribably angry because he'd outright denied even having a sister, she doesn't let him try and guilt-trip her for not telling her story to him straight, but says the bigger lie is probably him just deciding he had no other family whatsoever.
Then she leaves; but while this is all going on, Hayley's mom Patricia has been on a healing path all of her own, slowly integrating back into society and finding a place with volunteers reading to orphaned children, which eventually leads to an actual paid position.
It also leads to Hayley and Patricia finding Gordon, Brianna and Jake on their front step after Brianna gently confronts her father on the issue, just as eager as Hayley to surround herself with more family. Gordon apologizes to Patricia, and the two reveal they'd both been writing Christmas cards to one another every year, but never sent them.
And while that's all going on, Jake and Hayley FINALLY settle their own stormy waters and accept there's something going on between them that both want to explore further, and on that happy note of family lost and found, the movie ends.
It's a lovely story of discovery and the trials and tribulations that actual family can and does obviously put you through, though I will admit I wasn't as enamored with it as the previous two I watched, possibly because the whole, ditzy-klutzy additions to the love story felt incredibly forced to me, and unnecessary while they were at it.
Also, who in their right mind decided that in the most romantic setting of the entire movie, when Benjamin whispers to Taylor to come closer, his next words would be she has a dirty hat on her head?!
Listen, that ain't it, chief LOL.
BUT the movie DOES develop into a good one, I'll give it that, and Grant Vlahovic kills it as Gordon if you ask me. I think if there had been a bit more emphasis on the lost family storyline rather than the awkward love story one, I might have enjoyed it a lot more, but I can't say I hated it either. Overall, it was an okay movie, but not one I'd reach for again.
Enjoyable, however, and vastly entertaining at times!
xx
*images and video not mine
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