Next Stop, Christmas

Though there might be some minor plot holes in this time-bending Hallmark holiday romance, they are not enough to derail this imaginative reimagining of the "Groundhog Day" conceit, which begins with a train ride to yesteryear.

Lyndsy Fonseca stars as Angie, a neurosurgeon who finds the Christmas season less than enchanting. Christopher Lloyd plays a mysterious ticket agent who engineers a sidetrack off the path of Angie's life. She gains the opportunity to rework her life, learning lessons about love and family along the way.

The camera loves Lyndsy Fonseca and she projects an energetic authenticity that is winning. In fact, all the cast is enjoyable to watch. And they are given dialogue that feels real, not like some romances where every line feels canned.

This enchanting tale is worthy of watching and appreciating again and again.

Best Hallmark Christmas movie so far this "season". Lyndsy Fonseca's character and personality were infectious and endearing. Of course, Christopher Lloyd and Lea Thompson made the movie even more special and harkened "Back to the Future" in a memorable way.

Back during 70s, 80s, and 90s and into the early 2000s, ABC, NBC, or CBS used to have a new Christmas movie during the holiday season, usually showing up on a Sunday night somewhere between Thanksgiving weekend and mid December. Sometimes they were Hallmark Hall of Fame Christmas movies, but mostly they were made for TV Christmas movies. For the most part, those movies had more thought and creativity put into them than most of what we see now on the Hallmark networks.

This movie reminded me of those movies much more than those Hallmark networks Christmas movies that we see now. It's a little "Groundhog Day", a little "The Family Man", some "Back to the Future", and a healthy helping of "Eve's Christmas", although there are original twists to this particular story. Lyndsy Fonseca, who just recently co-starred in the Disney Plus series "Turner and Hooch" does a great job as Angie as she travels 10 years into her past and then has to figure out what she needs to do to get back to the present. Along the way she learns things about the people she loves that she should have known if only she had opened her eyes to the world around her. Christopher Lloyd also puts on a nice performance as the ticketmaster/train conductor.

Yes, the last few minutes are predictable, but so what? It's not the destination that makes or breaks this movie, it's the journey that puts this movie quite a few notches above the standard Hallmark Channel Christmas movie and one that makes it well worth watching.

There's little doubt the writers were conjuring up memories of Back to the Future since not only are there two of the stars from that movie, but the partially disappearing ticket was central to determining if Angie had succeeded in her quest. This movie is clever in the use of those elements while putting them in a Christmas setting. One almost expects the conductor to call out to Marty.

This movie isn't focused on one central romance, although Angie's future love life is one of the threads. Angie is also hard at work on her family relationships, especially her sister and her parents, the latter evoking even stronger similarities with BttF.

Because Angie's own romance is only part of the focus of the movie, Fonseca's chemistry with her romantic opposites is not as much a factor is we usually expect, but she does have great interplay with Chandler Massey. Fonseca, and for that matter all the cast, provide good acting. The dialogue is fun and plays well to the situations that crop up. Christopher Lloyd is great as usual and Lea Thompson impresses me more in this movie than in BttF.

While the redo element of the plot is not unusual for a Christmas movie, this movie still stands out as clever and creative in story, acting and dialogue.

Very nice time travel movie to find love. Not a cheesy Hallmark Christmas movie, but you might get all the feels anyway. I always enjoy a surprise ending and this one wasn't predictable (maybe a little) until the last 10 minutes.