Chandler Massey

A ’90s Christmas

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“There You Go.”

This one didn’t get a lot of promotion that I saw, and it was on at an odd time Friday night. Also, it didn’t have a lot of popular Hallmark stars except possibly Chandler Massey who has never not been adorable. But since it was time travel, (how could it not be, since Chandler was in it?) one of my favorite plots, I decided to give this first priority with a view to reviewing it the next morning. And what a good thing, because it turned out to be my top favorite Christmas Movie so far this year.

Lucy is a workaholic divorce lawyer who has just received the letter confirming an offer to become a partner in her Chicago firm. She has worked so hard for this goal that she has  cut herself off from her family in Milwaukee and has no friends to celebrate with. Intending to work right through Christmas, she goes to a nearby diner, foregoing the staff Christmas Party, to have some celebratory pancakes. There, she has two encounters. The first is with a guy that used to be her next door neighbor which we learn she used to be close to. They have a catch up, and Lucy is surprised he had given up his dream of being an actor. He wonders why she is alone in a diner and not with her family. He leaves commenting sadly that she is the “Same old Lucy.” She turns around a little confused and now sitting across from her is the waitress. It’s a magical waitress to whom she insists that she is very happy with her life and wouldn’t change a thing. She leaves the diner and the “waitress” is also her Uber driver, played to perfection by Katherine Burrell. She asks to be taken home, dozes off, and when she wakes up, she is back at the family home in Milwaukee and, as she soon learns, it is 25 years ago, in 1999!

What follows is Lucy trying to get back to her present life in Chicago and the promotion she has been working so hard for.  The Christmas that Lucy is sent back to was pivotal in her life. Her father had died earlier that year and that made her a different person. She is now back to the first Christmas without him. Her Mom has not yet embraced her grief, wanting to be the strong one for her two daughters. She distracts herself by keeping busy busy busy and trying to make this Christmas perfect. Lucy, at only 19, was  wrapped up in her own  grief and did not help her at the time, nor her sister, who is struggling with keeping her homosexuality under wraps, as well as her own grief.  Now, with the wisdom of her 44 years in her 19 year old body, she sees what a mess her mom was and how much help her closeted lesbian sister needs. But whenever she does the right thing and tries to help them, she is changing the future and that lessens the chance that she can get back to her old life. Whenever she acts differently than her oblivious 19 year old self, the letter offering her a partnership starts to fade away. Like the family photo in Back to the Future.  Meanwhile, Grace, the Uber driver who took her back in time is tut-tutting and issuing disapproving noises whenever Lucy changes things that make it harder for her to recapture her 2024 life. It all hinges with Lucy staying the course and taking the full ride to Northwestern University like she did in 1999, rather than follow Matt (Chandler) to Columbia University which she would have to pay for. I really liked the love story in this. The two 19 year olds were in love, but with the death of her father, Lucy pulled away from him, afraid to be close to him as with her sister and Mom. The tension of Lucy repairing her relationship with Matt and them falling deeper and deeper in love, Lucy tempted to follow him to Columbia instead of guaranteeing her stable successful future, combined with the viewers rooting for Lucy to choose Love, Family, and Matt instead of the dry and lonely life she is living in her 40s makes this movie a great one. When will she realize she is working against her best interests by striving to recapture her Chicago life?

The details of the set decoration and references to ‘90s history and culture were spot on and clever. There was some really good humor in this movie (Y2K anyone?). One of my favorite lines was Lucy asking Grace, “ What happens if I can’t remember every little thing I did back then? What if I sneeze and I didn’t sneeze before? Does that create a ripple in time and now the air fryer doesn’t exist?” The acting of everyone was terrific, especially Chandler who was very endearing as Matt, Kate Drummond who did such a great job in this year’s To Have and To Holiday, and Alex Hook as her struggling sister. Another bright spot was Lucy’s science fiction loving best friend, Nadine,  with whom she had grown away from, but the only one she tells in 1999 that she is from the future.

The last 10 minutes of this were some of the most moving I have ever seen in a Hallmark movie. From the point of Grace’s reaction seeing that Lucy has finally taken the alternate path and gotten it right at last, (despite her warnings to the contrary throughout the movie), to our glimpses into Lucy, Matt, and her family’s life as it turned out to be, thanks to her time-travel, I was choked up.

My only quibble with this movie was seeming to have Lucy follow Matt to Columbia despite getting her whole college paid for at Northwestern. I didn’t think that was a great message. But I looked at the ending twice, and I think a case can be made that she did make the fiscally responsible choice rather than follow a boy to his school, but was still able to stay close to him thanks to what she learned.

Rating: 10 out of 10.

Mystic Christmas

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A Welcome Change of Pace

This movie had a lot of words, and they came fast and furious! I was like, “Whoa there, slow down!” for the first 15 minutes or so until I got used to the rhythm. After the first 5, I turned the captions on but that didn’t help because I can’t read that fast. It is packed with banter, exposition, quirky characters, plots, subplots, running jokes, nods to the old movie “Mystic Pizza,” you name it. It was a real change of pace for Hallmark, no pun intended.

Dr. Juniper Jones is a Marine Biologist who is somewhat of a rolling stone despite her important career. She is on her way to Norway to view the Northern Lights when she gets a call from her best friend, who needs her help with a rescued seal. Juniper agrees to come to Mystic Connecticut for a bit to lead the project to get the poor Peppermint back to his natural habitat. The day after Christmas she is headed to South Africa on another seal mission. Also in Mystic is her friend Candice’s younger brother Sawyer with whom June made a strong romantic connection 10 years prior. It is awkward and embarrassing because Juniper poured out her heart to him in an email and he never answered back. We quickly learn that Sawyer claims it was the other way around. He did answer her, but she ghosted him. It’s a mystery, indeed.

The main characters, Juniper and Sawyer, have many lessons to learn and lots of work to do on themselves before we can get to the happy ending. Why is June (June?/Opposite of December?/Juniper?/Christmas tree?-Is that a gag?) so averse to settling down in one place and connecting with people? Why is Sawyer so all-fired determined to help everyone in the town do everything instead of traveling the world and having adventures like June? Before these two can get together, they have to communicate first and their communication skills are one of several things that they need to fix. The turning point comes after a text message misunderstanding that encapsulates their problems in a nutshell. Juniper has to break a date that Sawyer has gone all out for, but doesn’t explain that it’s because Peppermint the seal is deathly ill. Instead of calling him, she texts him (keeping these light again!) Sawyer replies with a thumbs-up emoji instead of finding out what is going on. They are both hurt and angry. They are having words in a crowded auditorium when a very minor but still well-written character, Ken, overhears their conversation and sticks his nose in. Sawyer thought he was being “low key”. He thought he told her not to worry, everything is all good. Ken explains to him that there is a difference between being low-key and passive-aggressive. June is all like “Yeah!”. When June says she texted him and didn’t explain about Peppermint because she didn’t want to make excuses, Ken turns on her and says there is a fine line between making excuses and giving an explanation. This gives them both food for thought and results in them finally being honest with each other and really laying things on the table. June realizes that she won’t settle down because she is afraid of becoming attached to people and having them disappoint and hurt her. Sawyer realizes that he puts everyone else’s needs over his own because he is trying to earn their love and friendship instead of realizing that it would be given freely because he is who he is. The fact that their epiphany is because of Ken, very much a side character whose business their relationship is not, is typical of this movie. Things just come out of nowhere and it is full of unexpected delights that just don’t quit. And through it all, we have the ongoing mystery of that dang email that so changed Juniper and Sawyer’s lives.

All of the characters, from wise and dry-witted Candice, her shy reader of a daughter who is a “late bloomer”,  to the 3 over-eager interns at the aquarium to Sawyer’s ambitious assistant at his pizza restaurant all have great lines, contribute to the story, and have their own character arcs. There are so many details that amuse and surprise. Sawyer’s terrible handwriting, an intern who doesn’t like sweets who is in love with a baker, Candace’s love of murder mysteries that she always figures out (turns out there’s a reason for that), and on and on. The actors handle the challenging non-stop script with aplomb. Everyone was on top of their game in this one, but I particularly loved Jesse Schram as Juniper, Patty Murin as Candace, Delaney Quinn as her daughter Louisa, and Eric Freeman as Peter, one of the interns. Chandler Massey was kind of adorable as Sawyer. Gee, that’s just about everybody.

If there is anything to criticize about the movie, it is the very denseness and fast pace of the script which is bursting at the seams. It keeps things a little too light, bordering on glib. The rat-a-tat-tat dialogue is certainly entertaining, but perhaps better suited to a 30-minute sit-com rather than a whole movie. On the bright side, it’s a movie that will only get better with repeated viewings. It is extremely well-constructed and organized. No lazy writing here. And I loved the way the World Traveler V. Homebody relationship dilemma was resolved. And everyone in the movie loves to read. Always a quality dear to my heart.

Rating: 8.5 out of 10.

Next Stop, Christmas

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The Time Travel Express

**Spoilers**

This was a fairly straightforward time travel story elevated by the appealing cast and good acting. Even the bad boyfriend had his charms. I love seeing all of the fresh faces. Angie (Lyndsy Fonseca, who was excellent) is a busy surgeon in NYC who takes her family for granted. She does not want to go home for Christmas since her parents’ divorce and her sister’s struggles with adoption. Too stressful and depressing. She remembers the last good family Christmas she enjoyed 10 years ago when her parents were still together and she turned down a marriage proposal from a now-famous sportscaster. On her way back to her apartment to spend a stress-free solitary holiday, she is diverted by Christopher Lloyd and finds herself on a magical train back home to that Christmas of 10 years ago. While there, she sees opportunities to redirect the course of her and her family’s lives: save her parents’ marriage, accept her ex-boyfriend’s marriage proposal, and help her sister. She also reconnects with her childhood friend who has been in love with her his whole life.

The cast was fantastic. Come on, Lea Thompson (her mother) and Christopher Lloyd (the Train Conductor) in a time travel movie? Sign me up. There are many nods to Back to the Future, but it does not distract from this story. Her parents unraveling marriage and her sister’s fertility troubles were engrossing and realistically done. Her ex-boyfriend, though adorable, was not a match for her. No harm, no foul, no drama. Her childhood buddy was appealing, looked like Justin Timberlake, and was obviously her destiny. Obvious to everyone but her. Talk about dense.

Loved seeing Erika Slezak looking her age, but great, with her smiling eyes. When I saw this the first time, I had a problem with some aspects of the time travel thing. the usual paradox-type things. But I saw it a second time, and I see that everything worked out with no worries. Because of her going back to that one Christmas with her 10 years later knowledge, she lived a whole different life. I won’t explain further, but she was with Ben the whole time, her other unsatisfactory life was just erased. The one weak point was the character of Chloe, who was super annoying and totally unnecessary. All in all, this was thoroughly enjoyable and engaging.

Rating: 9.5 out of 10.

November 8, 2021