Prime Time: Just In Time For Christmas (2015)

There seems to be an unwritten rule for TV movies nowadays that, if possible, anything with a plot utilising time travel should cast Christopher Lloyd in there somewhere. Main role, cameo, it doesn’t matter. Just have Doc available, letting viewers know that you know the best time travel expert in modern cinema.

Just In Time For Christmas has both an element of time travel and the presence of Christopher Lloyd (here playing a kindly grandfather). The plot revolves around Lindsay Rogers (Eloise Mumford), a psychology professor who may just get everything she ever dreamed of. She is offered a position at Yale, and is also proposed to by her boyfriend, Jason (Michael Stahl-David). But it seems that the two things may be incompatible, providing her with a potentially crucial, and life-changing, dilemma. Thankfully, an angelic type of figure, a coachman in the guise of William Shatner, offers Lindsay a chance to see what her life will look like three years down the line.

Magical and enjoyable, if unspectacular, Just In Time For Christmas works better than some thanks to the cast. Which is something I say a lot at this time of year, because it is usually just the different faces making these films distinguishable from one another. 

Director Sean McNamara has a varied selection of TV and film to his credit, including a number of *shudder* Baby Geniuses sequels (or offshoots, I have not yet been brave enough to explore any of those movies), but he seems to respond fairly well to the script, written by Helen Frost and Don MacLeod. Frost and MacLeod have been a working writing team for only a few years now, still perhaps getting used to writing films with certain expectations to fulfil, but they do a good job here. 

Mumford and Stahl-David are good leads, the former is pleasant company and the latter embodies all of those great qualities that the male leads in these movies need, but without being as bland as so many of them are. Lloyd keeps popping up just often enough to remind you that he's in the movie, which was a tactic I welcomed, and Laura Soltis plays the mother of Mumford's character, and ends up only used for a few scenes mainly bookending the main section. Tess Atkins plays Becca, someone who has grown a LOT closer to Jason over the course of the three years that have happened in the blink of an eye, and she does well for someone with arguably the most thankless role of the lot.

Interesting in the way that it's not JUST another tale of a successful business woman realising that her career and achievements mean nothing without the love of a good man to keep her warm and cosy in the evenings, Just In Time For Christmas walks a fine line throughout. It's easy to view the lead as someone being quite selfish and disruptive, considering the film is allowing her to see the consequences of her actions, but it's also enjoyable to see something like this that doesn't force a main character to deal only in absolutes. There's room for compromise, room for difficulties on the way to real happiness, and that's probably a better lesson than the messages delivered to viewers by hundreds and hundreds of other Christmas TV movies.

6/10

P.S. Here is a huge list of every Christmas movie I have ever reviewed, either here or over at Flickfeast.

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Five Star Christmas (2020)

It's always a difficult Christmas when you head home for the holidays and find that your father has decided to turn your family home into a small b & b, without thinking about things like staff, supplies, or anything else a b & b owner may consider when formulating a business plan. Okay, it may not happen often, or at all, but it happens here in this Christmas TV movie.

Bethany Joy Lenz plays Lucy Ralston, someone as shocked as her sister (Amber, played by Grace Beedie), her brother (Will, played by Blair Penner) and his partner (Suzanne, played by Barbara Patrick), and even grandpa (Walter, played by Jay Brazeau). Robert Wisden is the father, Ted, who has had this bright idea. And there's an anonymous travel writer in the area, a woman who writes reviews that can make or break a small business. When Beth Thompson (Laura Soltis) arrives, stopping there due to a flat tyre, everyone believes her to be that writer, and so begins a comedy that has most of the family members pretending to be staff members, or other guests, as they try to get the best review possible for their father. Oh, and there's also another unexpected guest in the shape of the handsome and lovely Jake Finlay (Victor Webster).

Okay, hear me out here. I am happy to admit that I often give Christmas TV movies more leeway than most. I know the checklist, and I am happy to see the formula adhered to in a way that is cosy and comforting. Five Star Christmas is an anomaly, however, in that it hits all of the expected beats while also being a genuinely enjoyable movie. You're still not going to absolutely love it, especially if you're expecting something on par with a cinematic feature, but the comedy really works, especially in the scenes involving Will and Suzanne, who decide to promote themselves as windswept globe-trotters. Their first scenes, revelling in the chance to embody their new personas, are a lot of fun. Beyond that, you get a lot of moments in which wrong names are uttered, people are made to hide away from others who may recognise them, and the b & b is shown to treat the guests and staff just like family. Because most of them ARE family.

Director Christie Will Wolf is, as so often the case with people who helm these TV movies, a fairly experienced hand. She knows what shots are required, and she gets them all done. You have the snow-tinged glow throughout, and that particularly paradoxical warming cold that infuses the best of these films. Writer Alfonso H. Moreno has a lot of TV episodes to his credit, but he does a really good job here, making the whole situation far less cringe-inducing than it could have been. The third act needs to tie up the plot strands, and you get some romance (of course), but it feels earned after the fun of the first hour.

Lenz is easy to like in the lead role, striking a great balance between level-headed organiser and someone with a major emotional investment in the outcome, and Webster is a decent, safe, male. Wisden and Soltis have some nice scenes together, and I think you should already know how much I enjoyed the performances from Penner and Patrick. Beedie brings a nice energy, the younger sister not really sure of what she wants to do with her life, but gradually finding out more about herself in the midst of the madness, and Brazeau and Paula Shaw are both great fun (the latter playing a grandma who embraces her new role with gusto).

Whenever I review these Christmas movies, I always remind people that they are being reviewed AS Christmas movies. That still applies here. But I still think this is also, at times, something that stands out from the crowd by being more enjoyable than most, in a way that isn't just checking all of the festive film boxes.

6/10

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