"When you're truly meant for someone, it's never too late to get it right."
Hello everyone!
I think I've picked really good ones thus far this year, if I'm being honest.
And I've noticed, for my part, that I seem to have outgrown the old, girl goes home to small town for Christmas and meets her ex there again to rediscover the magic, trope.
Or maybe I just haven't found a good one with that this year yet.
Either way, tonight's movie choice is another really spectacular one, and it's actually part of Miracles of Christmas, which is the second programming batch that Hallmark usually puts out every year leading up to the holidays.
I picked it because of it's leading man, I'll admit, but it turns out the entire thing is really quite beautiful.
Time for Him to come Home for Christmas has a mouthful of a name, but I can assure you that it's really quite lovely.
Time for Him to come Home for Christmas starts when Josh goes to save Lizzie from a corporate party she's attending on her mother's behest (as it's her mom's company); he knows she's not really one for those, so he takes her back home with him to his family's Christmas party, not telling her that their other best friend, Andrew, is also there.
Then the movie switches to three years later just after we learn that Josh and Lizzie had gotten a job offer from the New York Times, but it's obvious that Lizzie is not, in fact, in NYC, Josh is MIA, and when we get a good look at her desk at her mom's company (where she now seems to be working), we see she plans to attend a memorial for Andrew.
Oh, snap.
We don't actually know what happened right off the bat, but we do know that someone mixes up a phone number and leaves a voice mail with Lizzie that's meant for someone named Madelyn, whom he obviously loves quite a bit, or still loves one should say, as it's been three years and there are signs he may have made a mistake back then.
The message reawakens something inside Lizzie and she goes to the hotel from where it was delivered, not that they're helpful, but she does run into Josh while she's there, who's also in town for the holidays, but things are VERY stilted between them.
They have another run-in while she continues investigating the message and goes to the sweets shop the man mentions in it, when the duo finally partner up again so that they can get through the list she's got faster. With no luck, Josh asks to hear the message properly (he's only read it thus far) and hears a jingle in the background which they then try to run down.
Josh's mother, who he takes Lizzie back to so they can decorate some cookies together, says there's a man who owns a music store in town who could help them, but it feels like even he's stumped for a moment, which sends the duo down ANOTHER avenue, that maybe the message meant the Christmas market.
The two threads run simultaneously (and also while Josh wins a stuffed bear, and she gets to take a picture with his family and Santa), but the market is a dead end, and while the song DOES come to fruition in that the music owner figures out what it is, they don't get closer to finding the guy even though they now know he's bought the specially made snowglobe it was playing out of.
While this is all happening, we slowly uncover more of that Christmas eve three years ago, during which the three friends reconnected, and Josh overhears Lizzie and Andrew speaking: she's telling him that she can't keep on pretending that she's just friends, not when her feelings were growing stronger.
If you're an old hand at Hallmark movies, you know what this is about, but Josh has unfortunately never seen one of them in his life, because he interprets this as Andrew and Lizzie being a thing (and to be honest, the shots DO make it seem kind of like that, too), and given he's been over the moon for the girl since forever, he takes off to clear his head.
This means he's not there when she has to return to her mom's party, so Andrew ends up taking her back instead.
Only, they get into an accident, and Andrew dies as a result, fracturing the two other parts of this BFF triangle in the process.
Josh admits to Lizzie he overheard them that night, and asks if she still feels the same; while Lizzie believes he heard it ALL (per his words), he's actually still missing a crucial detail, so their wires are still crossed and they part ways, both of them sad because Lizzie thinks he doesn't reciprocate, and Josh thinks she hasn't gotten over Andrew yet.
Meanwhile, in another part of town, the Madelyn they're searching for breaks up with her boyfriend because of all the memories, and the Carter that left the message slowly reconnects with the people in his life after three years of feeling ashamed of himself.
Josh is the one who finally clocks into who Madelyn is, when he sees the name of her band, and he once again springs Lizzie from the corporate Christmas party so they can catch her before the concert starts. It turns out that three years ago, CARTER was the driver who hit the patch of ice which ended up leading to Andrew's death, Lizzie blaming herself, Josh leaving, and Carter breaking things off with Madelyn because he felt so incredibly guilty.
And also, he left a message for Lizzie on Madelyn's phone, apparently getting both numbers switched around.
Josh goes with Lizzie to meet with Carter, and we finally see the full conclusion of three years ago as both of them realize that neither one has ever blamed the other, but themselves, and maybe they can lay down the guilt? Then Madelyn walks in for that second chance, and Lizzie FINALLY realizes Josh doesn't know HE'S the one, so she ends up just telling the big oaf, and we can close this chapter off.
Which we do. With a kiss, and a Christmas concert by country star Tenille Townes, playing the song from the snowglobe per request, while the two couples who'd been searching for each other all movie enjoy their love, and the music.
FIN!
Heartwarming, compassionate, as well as slightly heartbreaking in terms of what guilt can do to us, Time for Him to come Home for Christmas is one of those movies that pulls at all the right strings and makes sure to keep you engaged right until the very end. I thought the mystery and the connections were all very well done, and the characters were incredibly believable in their actions.
Holland Roden and Tyler Hynes nail it in the leading roles, but Steve Bacic and Meghan Gardiner are equally no slouches in the secondary department, and the four of them truly create something magical together.
Then again, Blake Shelton is linked to this one as a producer, so I don't know what I was expecting, other than something great.
If you have the time, check this one out, too. The story is again not quite driven by the main love interests and their personal squabbles, but by trying to reunite the secondary couple, which I think is a brilliant choice. It takes away the usual holiday movie shenanigans and opens the door for a much more natural vibe.
10/10 recommend!
xx
*images and video not mine
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