A '90s Christmas | 2024 Christmas Movies

When I saw the title for A ‘90s Christmas, I thought that this might be a movie starring actors or musicians from the 1990s. It’s not. It’s a time travel movie. As someone who lived through the ‘90s, that made me a little sad.

Divorce lawyer Lucy (Eva Bourne) just got a promotion to partner. As she celebrates alone in a diner on Christmas Eve, she is asked by the waitress, Grace (Katherine Barrell), if she is happy with her life. While Lucy claims to be happy, Grace - now a rideshare driver - transports her back to her childhood home in 1999. Now Lucy has the chance to repair all of her broken relationships.

As I said, I was sad that this movie wasn’t really about the 1990s. They had the stupid references: “Ugh, how we wait so long for the internet to load?”, “I can give you a Blackberry to read your email.”, and people staring at her when she says to google something. (For reference, Google existed in 1999. It just wasn’t considered THE search engine.) Oh, and there was one song - I think it was “Kiss Me” by Sixpence None The Richer, which came out in 1998. That is about all of the ‘90s stuff the movie has. I hate it.

Sadly, there isn’t anything that could save this movie from the disappointment the title gave me. The acting was fine but nothing spectacular. The script…well, the most annoying thing about it is Grace tells Lucy multiple times that she can’t change the past. To the point that “The 12 Days Of Christmas” plays every time she does something that causes the future to change. And the change is the freaking point of the whole movie. So Lucy is trying to figure out how to get back to present day without changing anything and Grace is doing nothing to help her. WHAT IS THE POINT OF GRACE?! There are so many contradicting things going on. I hate it.

Rating: This is not a ‘90s Christmas.

Mystic Christmas | 2023 Christmas Movies

This may be bad. We’re barely a week into Christmas movie season and I’m already bored. At least Mystic Christmas has some animals? Well, one animal anyway.

Juniper (Jessy Schram) comes to Mystic, Connecticut for the holiday season to work at a rehabilitation center preparing a seal to be released back into the wild. A former flame, Sawyer (Chandler Massey), not only lives in Mystic but is the brother of the aquarium manager, Candace (Patti Murin). Will Juniper finally settle down or will she continue to run from her feelings?

Yeah, this movie was boring. Peppermint the seal might be the best part of the movie and she’s barely in it. Nothing really happens. It’s a lot of Juniper trying her best to avoid interaction with anyone because she’s “an introvert.” (Note: Introverts don’t hate being around people. They just need some time to themselves to recharge.) So a lot of the story revolves around people, mostly Candace, trying to get Juniper to open up to the townspeople and have fun. Which would have been fine if they made it interesting. It would have been more interesting if Juniper used the seals more to show how she interacts with animals better than humans.

Here’s to hoping we get a good movie soon. I don’t want to be bored this early in the season!

Rating: Fish out of water

A Tale Of Two Christmases | 2022 Christmas Movies

Hallmark has decided to give us two Christmas romance movies in one! Though in A Tale Of Two Christmases, it’s one woman and two men. This could get messy.

Emma (Katherine Barrell) is an architect living in Chicago. She has to decide whether to go home to Vermont to celebrate Christmas with her family and childhood friend, Drew (Chandler Massey), or stay in Chicago to spend it with her crush, Max (Evan Roderick). Thanks to some Christmas magic from Santa, Emma gets split into two separate Emmas to explore both possibilities.

I have to admit that this sounds like a very interesting plot. We get to see Emma experience both choices but Emma herself doesn’t know it’s happening. So instead of like a split personality type thing, it’s simply two completely separate stories featuring the same female lead with two different male leads. What could have been interesting just turned dull.

Since this is Hallmark, they are obviously going to pick one of the men over the other. There’s no way they would let both of them be The One. The result is that Max is kind of a self-centered rich douchebag while Drew fawns over everything Emma does. It would have been cooler if both men were on the same level and Emma’s big decision was to stay with her corporate job or move home to work with her father. That is a much more interesting story.

Sadly, twice the romance doesn’t mean a better movie. While I wouldn’t recommend watching A Tale Of Two Christmases, I do have to say that Massey is pretty fun as Drew. I guess if you want to sit through it, he would be as good a reason as any to do it.

Next Stop, Christmas | 2021 Christmas Movies

Last year, Hallmark remade The Wizard of Oz into a Christmas movie. This year, they took the basics of Back to the Future and turned it into Next Stop, Christmas. They even got Lea Thompson and Christopher Lloyd as basically the same roles.

Angie (Lyndsy Fonseca) is a doctor who is unable to come home for Christmas, despite her family’s pleas. Her normal train commute ends up taking her back in time 10 years to 2011. Now she has to figure out what she needs to fix in the past in order to get back to the future.

Yeah, see? It’s basically Back to the Future. She even has to get her parents, Evelyn (Lea Thompson) and George (Matt Walton), back together. And Christopher Lloyd plays the train conductor that takes her to the past. Hallmark is trying to play on our nostalgia.

One of the things that annoyed me the most about this movie is Angie’s family. First, they are begging her to come home for Christmas. She is some sort of surgeon (we see her performing surgery) and she is on-call. Her mother blatantly says that this is the second Christmas that she hasn’t come home. Do they think hospitals stop because there’s a holiday? Not to mention that she is probably the bottom of the totem pole when it comes to surgeons at that hospital. We learn that 10 years ago she was in med school. We don’t know how long she has been in med school but let’s say almost finished. So another year there plus up to 7 years in residency. She may have only been a “real” surgeon for a year or two. She doesn’t get a say on when she can and can’t work. Her family needs to learn that. Fast.

When Angie is in the past - meaning that she has never missed a Christmas at home - her family is whining that she doesn’t communicate with them enough. Her sister wants her to call or visit or text or whatever. Which is understandable but YOUR GIRL IS IN MED SCHOOL. Cut her some slack. Maybe instead of waiting by the phone for her, pick up the phone yourself and text her to see if she is surviving.

I get the overall message of the movie. Relationships of all types take work and the people that really love you will always be there for you no matter what. But, man, these people suck a lot. Poor Ben (Chandler Massey) keeps getting passed over romantically for self-centered Tyler (Eric Freeman) and I don’t understand what Angie sees in Tyler. They have nothing in common. I’m not even sure they like each other all that much. It’s also annoying.

I guess if you are looking for the True Love Conquers All type of movie, this is definitely one of those. I’m not sure that I enjoyed the movie but I did like seeing Lea Thompson again. Even if her character was a sad sack.