It’s Not Always Black and White

This movie is based on a good premise and cleverly executed with a nice Christmas message that unfortunately kind of didn’t quite live up to my high expectations. Lyndsy Fonseca is splendid as our heroine, Addy. I’ve been a fan since 2021’s Next Stop, Christmas. Addy lives and works in Chicago and has not been home for Christmas in 6 years. She works in the Christmas industry year-round and at Christmas, she takes off for the Maldives. The last thing cynical and overworked Addy wants is to be surrounded by her Christmassy family in her Christmassy town at Christmas time. She has agreed to finally come home because her brother called with the news that he is going to propose to his girlfriend on Christmas Eve and he wants her to be there. (Why??? Is that a thing???) Anyway, she agrees. When she gets home, everything is fine with her family on the surface, but she senses that something is a little off. They seem distant,  especially her father. He is constantly making little digs at his daughter and her past absences at Christmas time, if not in body, as usual, then, this Christmas, in spirit. Her mother gives her a list of Christmas errands to run around town. Everyone is super jolly and happy to see her. All Addy wants to do is decompress by herself in her room. She looks at the Christmas app on her phone and wishes there was no Christmas.  She apparently has never seen a Hallmark Christmas movie before because if she had she never would have done that.  Making a Christmas wish can be very dangerous in a Hallmark movie.

Driving around, she has a car wreck and hits her head. When she wakes up, everything is in black and white and her wish has been granted. Hunter, the owner of the auto repair shop rescues her. No one knows what she means by the term “Christmas.”  All the Christmas decorations are gone. All the Cookies and Charity events are gone. Christmas has been wiped out, as well as all of the color in the town and from its citizens. In an amusing meta moment, her Mom mentions “the New Year’s movie marathon”: “Every year they make like a hundred New Year’s movies and they start airing them in June!” Addy, at the end of her rope, declares, “New Year’s movies are NOT a thing! Christmas movies are a thing!!” She runs around town freaked out and trying to figure out what is going on and why. Everyone is really cold and grouchy. It turns out that no one remembers Christmas until they can remember a happy Christmas memory. Hunter is the first to remember when Lyndsey returns his “Pop’s” Military service ring that fell off in her wrecked car. He regains his color and they are now a team determined to get everyone back to remembering Christmas and turn from black and white back to living color. Michael Rady, a favorite of mine, plays Hunter, a veteran of Afghanistan who seems to be suffering from a mild case of PTSD. The promising romance between him and Addy was not engaging to me. Maybe because he was so sad all of the time.  Or maybe because there was too much other more urgent stuff going on. Eventually, starting with a few people and multiplying slowly and surely, the town starts to remember happy Christmas moments and Christmas is well on the way to coming back. At last, there are only two holdouts: Addy and her father.

 There were so many good things about this movie.  The performances were great, especially by Lyndsy Fonseca and Jim O’Heir, Jerry (or Garry ???) of Parks and Recreation who plays her father.   Lyndsy makes her character likable and funny, as we empathize with her frustration both with Christmas and the lack of it. We admire her determination to bring Christmas back. She even made her quick turn from hating Christmas to missing it believable. Addy could well have been too unsympathetic, especially at the beginning. O’Heir takes her father from mild hurt and petulance over Addy’s absence to hostility and even rage as he sees everyone in town remembering Christmas and regaining their joy except him. As the movie goes on, the people who are still in black and white and still don’t get the whole Christmas thing, get more and more hostile and frustrated with being left behind. It was good writing and thought-provoking. The special effects were on point in the tiniest detail. There would be a town scene almost all in black and white but with a few touches of red and green indicating change. There was good balance between comedy and drama, but the emotion wasn’t there for me. I didn’t like the way the romance part was overshadowed (Maybe I like Michael Rady too much?) I think that it’s the type of movie that will definitely improve upon re-watching though.