A CHRISTMAS DETOUR
An anxious bride-to-be throws in with a broken-hearted guy and a married couple for an emergency ride to New York City, learning about themselves and each other along the way.
Candace Cameron Bure is Paige, a neurotic young-ish woman who writes for a bridal magazine and is engaged to some vampire named Jack. She's never had a proper Christmas and is looking forward to spending the holidays with Jack and his soulless vampire family at their palatial estate in the Hamptons, but fate has other plans for the young-ish bride-to-be. Trapped in Buffalo, New York by a snowstorm with an acerbic charmer named Dylan and a bickering middle-aged couple, Paige thinks this is going to be the worst Christmas of her life, and considering some of the Christmases she's trudged through in the past, that's saying something.
Dylan is on his way home to his family in the big city, but he's in no real hurry, seeing the snowstorm as a blessing in disguise. Dylan's got some family drama waiting for him back home, seeing as how his ex-fiancé left him for his younger brother four years ago, he hasn't spoken to his brother since, and the two lovers have just announced their own engagement. So he's perfectly content to spend his Christmas at the local hotel bar, getting shit-faced on chocolate martinis and watching festive pornography in his room.
But his damned heart gets in the way when he sees Paige and an unrelated married couple named Frank and Maxine stranded for the holidays, so he rents an SUV with four-wheel drive and offers them all a lift to the big city. So everybody piles in and they commence their journey into mystery on the snow-choked highways of New York state, reflecting on their past loves and heartache, sharing their fondest holiday memories, and maybe finding (or re-discovering, in the case of Frank and Maxine) true love in the most unexpected of places.
During their journey, Paige comes to realize that perhaps she isn't really in love with her fiancé Jack, but rather the idea of Jack being "the perfect man", at least on paper. But Jack does not inspire Paige. He's never charmed her. He's never made her laugh. He's never made her feel really loved. And along comes this new guy Dylan, this sweet, funny, charming man who stirs up all of these emotions in Paige's heart, this man who makes her feel wanted and desired and accepted for who she really is and not for what someone else wants her to be.
Paige didn't count on falling in love with Dylan, and it's a very inconvenient thing, because she'd already planned out her life with Jack, and it's a familiar and secure life, with no surprises and no risks. Does she have what it takes to turn her back on the sure thing with Jack, and to embrace the possibility of finding her soul mate with Dylan? Will she follow her heart or her head? And can Dylan find it in his heart to let go of his pain and forgive his brother? Can he rebuild the strained relationships with his family before it's too late? And what about Frank and Maxine? Will they rekindle that spark of passion that drew them together when they were young and in love, or will they continue to drift apart?
Spoiler alert: everybody gets their happy endings, except for the prick Jack and his hateful wealthy family, who probably all die in a helicopter crash on Christmas Day because they're all awful people and deserve to die. Paige and Dylan throw caution into the wind and decide to believe in true love, with Dylan bringing Paige home for Christmas and making amends with his brother, and Maxine and Frank find their road trip has made them each remember why they fell in love in the first place, and they begin to mend their marriage.
A Christmas Detour really tugged at the old heartstrings, let me tell ya. Like I said before, I'm probably just a sap, but this story really grabbed me. The first ten minutes or so were a bit rough, introducing the main characters in a cutesy and unrealistic manner, but things greatly improved after everybody got on the plane and the story began to unfold in earnest. I really believed in Paige's internal conflict as she began to fall in love with this guy she just met, and I believed in Dylan's reluctance to believe in the love he was feeling for Paige due to his disastrous past experiences in matters of the heart. As far as Maxine and Frank are concerned, they clearly still loved each other, but they just needed to be reminded of that fact, having grown complacent in their marriage, and their extended overland voyage with Paige and Dylan helped them to remember that love again.
The story is sweet and even funny, and the primary actors are all quite effective in their roles. Candace Cameron Bure is charming and endearing, Paul Greene (Dylan) is clever and witty, and Sarah Strange (Maxine) and David Lewis (Frank) easily portray a middle-aged married couple, bickering and caring in equal measure. The story isn't terribly original, and the movie isn't going to win any technical awards, but it does what it sets out to do, and it does that very well. It's a wonderful little romantic comedy, and it came as such a relief after the string of garbage movies I've suffered through over the past four days. You're aces in my book, A Christmas Detour!
VERDICT: A ROARING FIREPLACE
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