KRISTIN'S CHRISTMAS PAST
A woman estranged from her family relives her worst holiday when she wakes up 17 years in the past.
Kristin Cartwright (Shiri Appleby) is, in her own words, "a hot mess". Living and working in a studio apartment in Manhattan as a music producer for an indie record label, she's just barely scraping by financially, and her love life seems to be a revolving door of failed relationships with vapid wannabe actors and models. At 34, she still hits the clubs every weekend and parties until she's exhausted trying to keep up with all the younger ladies on the dance floor.
Jamie (Will Kemp), her best friend for as long as she can remember, is a successful programmer who's made a mint from an app that caught on like wildfire in China, lives in a spacious penthouse not too far away from Kristin, and they still see each other almost every single day. Jamie's carried a torch for Kristin since they were growing up together in Pasadena, but Kristin's always been too distracted by the "bad boys" to ever see him as anything more than a friend, and Jamie's been too afraid to jeopardize their friendship to ever tell her how he truly feels.
No matter what else is going on in their lives, Kristin and Jamie always spend Christmas together, usually making an appearance at some party or another before ending the night on the roof of Kristin's building, watching the city that never sleeps gleam like Christmas lights all around them as they celebrate another year's ending, then exchanging gifts the next day over a late breakfast. This year, Kristin overdoes it a bit at the party, getting trashed early and prompting Jamie to escort her home before she embarrasses herself in front of a bunch of strangers..
Out on the streets, Kristin breaks away from Jamie and heads into a corner store to buy some greasy snack food. Jamie catches up to Kristin and finally tells her that he's going home to Pasadena to spend Christmas Day with his family, and he wants her to come along, but Kristin hasn't been home since she graduated from high school, after her relationship with her mother Barbara (Elizabeth Mitchell) degenerated to the point that she simply couldn't stand to be in the same state with the woman, much less the same house, and she lets Jamie know that she'll be staying in Manhattan, thank you very much, prompting a fed up Jamie to walk out on his best friend.
Knowing she'll be spending her first Christmas Day alone in her life, Kristin is suddenly not in a very festive mood, but as she makes to leave the corner store, the kindly proprietor presents her with a very special bottle of champagne as a Christmas gift, which she gladly accepts. Back in her apartment, Kristin pops open the champagne and takes a few sips, toasting to her continued rotten luck before passing out on her couch.
Waking up with a mild hangover, Kristin's surprised to find herself face-to-face with... herself, only 17 years old, in her old bed in her old home back in Pasadena. Both adult Kristin and teenage Krys (she thought it would be cool to spell her name with a "y" for a while back in high school) scream bloody murder at each other until Kristin begins to get a grip on her current situation, surmising that she's likely hallucinating or merely experiencing a very vivid dream. Kristin manages to quickly convince her young counterpart that she's actually her future self by rattling off a string of very awkward personal facts, and they both try to understand exactly how and why Kristin has found herself back at home 17 years in the past.
Is she supposed to fix the mistakes of her past, helping Krys make better life choices so that Kristin can enjoy a better future? Or is she merely meant to gain a new perspective on the painful events of her past, perhaps even coming to understand that she may have been wrong to hold such a grudge for so long regarding what she saw as unreasonable behavior from her strict mother?
Kristin quickly learns that she won't be able to convince her stubborn younger self from making the mistakes that eventually lead her to her current position in life, and she also realizes that that's ultimately okay, because this miraculous gift of finding herself back in her own past has given her the opportunity to see her entire life in a brand-new light. Passing herself off as Kaye, Krys's college adviser, Kristin's able to spend time with her family while her teenage self is off being a melodramatic mess, allowing her to reconnect with Barbara as an adult and not a selfish child.
There's an especially touching scene that takes place at a thrift store between Kristin and Barbara, when Kristin finally asks why her mother always hated second-hand clothes, since she always chided her daughter for bringing home vintage threads as a teenager. Barbara admits that her own mother died when she was around Krys's age, and her father made Barbara quickly sell all of her belongings to remove any potentially painful reminders from the family house. Barbara ended up bringing everything to a thrift store not unlike the one in which they're currently standing, unloading everything her mother owned for pennies, including an old costume jewelry pearl necklace that Barbara gave her as a gift a few years earlier. It was a cheap bauble, but it meant the world to Barbara's mother, and she had to give it away.
Kristin never knew any of this, and this simple story and the way the emotions play on Barbara's face as she tells it finally make Kristin see Barbara not just as "mother" but as a complete human being, and she finds she only regrets that it took some bizarre cosmic occurrence such as this for her to finally have her eyes opened. Kristin even buys a pearl necklace from the thrift store and presents it to her as a gift later on, a moment that was realized so perfectly between actors Shiri Appleby and Elizabeth Mitchell that I found myself caught up in the drama of the scene so completely as to be genuinely moved.
The heart of the rift between Kristin and Barbara involved Kristin falling in love with a two-timing young stud who called himself "Maverick". This dude swept Kristin off her feet in her senior year at high school, and she followed him to NYU for college, only to have her heart broken a few months later when she caught him cheating. Barbara always knew "Maverick" was no good for her daughter, and told Kristin that if she chose to go to NYU that she was cut off financially, thinking that after she wised up and saw what kind of man he truly was, that she'd come back home to Pasadena where she belonged. But this ultimatum only set Kristin's resolve, and she stayed in NYU, working a series of part-time jobs to pay her way through college, never even once bothering to call her own mother to just let her know that she's okay, for 17 long years.
This scene between Kristin and Barbara at the thrift store makes Kristin realize how selfish and stubborn she's been for all these years, allowing her own anger over her mother's perceived cruelty to blind her to the truth; that Barbara was only trying to protect her daughter from getting her heart broken by a young man who she knew couldn't be trusted. Kristin just kept up her petulant teenager routine for so long that she found it difficult to put away as an adult.
Kristin also finds herself reconnecting with her aunt Debbie (A.J. Langer), a kindhearted free spirit who was living with her sister Barbara at the time due to her recent breast cancer diagnosis, something Krys didn't learn until much later, since Debbie didn't want the news to ruin her niece's Christmas. But Kristin, knowing that this would prove to be Debbie's last Christmas, finds herself making excuses to spend just a little more time with her beloved aunt throughout the day and into the evening, when the pair get a little tipsy on eggnog and crawl under the Christmas Tree to lose themselves in all the twinkling lights.
Kristin even finally learns that loyal Jamie has loved her since the beginning, and Krys was always too interested in finding the next Maverick to notice that the real man of her dreams has always been there for her, every single Christmas, without fail.
Finding a very familiar-looking bottle of champagne under the family Christmas Tree, Kristin pops the cork and takes a sip, waking up back on her own couch in her studio apartment in Manhattan. Was her entire experience just a dream? It doesn't matter, because Kristin knows that she has to set a few things right in her life on this Christmas Day, booking a last-minute flight to Pasadena where she finds Jamie waiting for her outside her childhood home.
Finally gaining the courage to tell her how he feels, Jamie's surprised at Kristin making the first move with a romantic kiss in the moonlight. Holding hands, they approach the front door and Kristin wonders aloud if her mother will be able to forgive and forget since it's been so long, but the moment Barbara opens the door (wearing some very familiar pearls around her neck) and locks eyes with Kristin, her mouth splits into a wide grin as she embraces her daughter for the first time in 17 years, all the years and the pain melting away for them both in that healing moment.
I have to tell you that I really enjoyed this movie. Choosing to watch Kristin's Christmas Past on Lifetime this morning based entirely on the ridiculous plot description, I was expecting something insubstantial and goofy, perhaps good for a laugh. After the past several movies, a little risqué TV-PG entertainment might have been enough to lift me out of my squeaky-clean TV-G blues.
And to be sure, this movie has a much harder edge than anything Hallmark would ever produce. There's plentiful cleavage on display in the early goings when Kristin's attending a Christmas party, and even a porn star-looking shirtless Santa posing for photographs with guests. People are drinking alcoholic beverages throughout the movie, and even getting drunk, which I have never seen on any Hallmark Channel production. And the kisses, when they arrive, linger a little longer, and with a little more passion. It's just so bizarre to see a movie where people acknowledge that they're sexual beings after finding myself adrift in a sea of sexless gee-whiz romantic drama for the better part of a month.
But beyond all of those more adult-oriented trappings, it was just wonderful to connect with some strong dramatic elements in Kristin's Christmas Past. There's some great character work on display here, including a few endearing scenes between Elizabeth Mitchell and A.J. Langer as they play off each other naturally, making jokes on the couch in front of a flickering fireplace or painfully coming to terms with one's terminal illness with clenched hands and sad smiles, This pair is the heart and soul of the entire movie, and their work here is just fantastic, really better than movies like this usually get or deserve.
But Shiri Appleby is made to carry the entire story on her shoulders as Kristin, and she acquits herself admirably as she evolves from a seemingly carefree party girl into a mature and understanding woman who owns up to the mistakes of her past and chooses to move beyond them, building the foundation for a better future for herself in the process. And the relationship Kristin forges with Barbara is so simple and moving, for while Barbara doesn't know that this strange adult is her grown-up daughter, her heart knows that there's more to "Kaye" than meets the eye, and the pair make an immediate connection that doesn't feel at all contrived, which is a lovely surprise, as it's so common for movies of this ilk to just toss around plot elements like these without giving them any care at all.
And it was such a refreshing change of pace to watch a movie that doesn't worry about holding the audience's hand at every turn. We don't learn that Kristin is a music producer who hasn't seen her family in nearly two decades through a block of awkward expository dialogue with a close friend we never meet again, but through letting the plot unfold at its own pace. Kristin doesn't stare longingly at a decorated tree and start wistfully reminiscing with Jamie about her beloved aunt Debbie who died before her time. The audience only learns that Debbie exists when Kristin wakes up in her own past and is so happy to see Debbie alive again that she can't help but embrace her, despite being a complete stranger to the very confused older woman. All of the pertinent information regarding Debbie and her ultimate fate is parceled out while the story unfolds, ya know, kinda like in a real movie.
After being subjected to the so-very-safe template of the Hallmark Channel holiday romance again and again throughout this month, stumbling across a movie that actually trusts its audience to pay attention to its (heartfelt and genuine) plot without having to spoon-feed them crucial information like a gang of kids with ADD is akin to a man dying of thirst finding a sparkling oasis in the scorching desert.
The people involved with making Kristin's Christmas Past, both cast and crew, were truly engaged with the material, and that engagement is clearly evident throughout the movie. I am so glad I decided to watch Kristin's Christmas Past, today. It genuinely brightened my day. What a delightful surprise.
Christmas Magic - The movie leaves it ambiguous as to whether Kristin's magical journey into the past actually happened or not, but there was something about that guy behind the counter in the corner store. He knew what he was doing when he gave Kristin that bottle of champagne, like a slightly creepier, bodega version of Michael Caine from Mr. Destiny. There was some Christmas magic afoot in this movie, dammit! I believe!
VERDICT: I BELIEVE IN FATHER CHRISTMAS
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