Il était deux fois Noël

Over the years, Hallmark has done a few of these "alternate reality" stories, and they are a break from the normal straight through romance which check all the same boxes ... except half of this one checked those boxes anyway.

Our female lead (who reminded me a LOT of Annette O'Toole) winds up in simultaneous alternate realities via a not so clear split screen scene where in one she suffers a delay and barely misses her flight home and stays in Chicago an extra day and spends time with the dreamy lawyer from a firm in the building her company occupies. In the other, she makes her flight and spends her planned Christmas with family and old friends.

Unlike many of these stories, there's no "good boyfriend/bad boyfriend" dynamic. I like both guys. In fact, I liked the lawyer best. The "hometown boyfriend" was a bit of a Drama King in my opinion. That was one of the common tropes ... the hometown guy where they'd both had unrequited love many years ago. The question is ... which will she choose when she's back to one reality?

Yes, there is ONE timeline goof near the end. Can you spot it, too?

A tale of 2 Christmases was 2 Christmases too many. I've been working at clearing my DVR of Christmas movies. I liked the idea of two different timelines, but not the end result.

The lead actress had no chemistry with either lead actor and I didn't care who she ended up with. It was just sort of meh. Maybe they needed a stronger lead.

I wasted 2 hours watching this, but won't have to do it again. I would rather watch repeats of Three wise men and a baby or Haul out the Holly.

Christmas at the Golden Dragon did a nice job telling the multiple stories and how they intermingled with each other. If you're looking for a movie with multiple storylines, Golden Dragon or Holiday Spectacular would be my recommendation.

This is one of those movies that starts off with an interesting premise, bounces around in confusion, and just takes an agonizingly long time to wrap up. It manages to hit the point of no return, where you might feel you've already invested (wasted?) sufficient time to justify sitting through the inevitable. Your reward is the slow, inexorable (excruciating?) suction into its sappy, sloppy, conclusion where our protagonist chooses to surrender her career to a drama king "for love".

If you're in the privacy of home, you're inclined to yell at the TV in frustration.

And for a rom-com, it's not that funny. I gave it a 4 because the leads really did try to make the best of a rat's nest haircut.

Speaking of which, for gawd's sake, you get a candy cane out of your luxurious hair with hot water, not by having your meddling, inept, yakkity-yak MOTHER hack it out with kitchen shears!

I don't understand why so many are confused by or stymied by the dual timeline but I have my suspicions.

The key to which reality she's in at any given time is even minor attention to the detail of what she's wearing. The split screen at the start gives a big clue- in one reality she's wearing a winter white coat while in the other she's wearing a bright white coat. I won't even enumerate the many others.

The movie was cute and I didn't hate it but it was another mediocre Hallmark by the numbers romance they work into everything (over-achieving, over-dressed women, frequent , very long commercial breaks, etc.) complete with the picture perfect ending.

If only we all had these problems...two sweet and attractive guys like you and your successful at your job and have a loving family to go home to.

Emma (Katherine Barrell) is a beautiful successful architect living in the city, but heading home for Christmas...or at least she is supposed to. This is where the story splits, in one scenario she makes her flight home and gets to enjoy Christmas with her family and the sweet boy next door and in the other she misses her flight and ends up spending Christmas Eve in the city with a dreamy lawyer who works in her building.

Honestly, I get why it ends the way it does...but I kind of liked the dreamy lawyer Max played by Evan Roderick. It was nice not to have any villains in this split scenario.

It was kind of a middle of the road holiday romance, but slightly different than the usual Hallmark fare...so maybe worth a watch.