ONCE UPON A CHRISTMAS MIRACLE
A young woman with stage-4 liver cancerr meets her organ donor and unexpectedly falls in love.
The misspelling of "cancer" in the above plot description was present in my viewing guide, so I just decided not to correct it here, because nothing matters anymore. Also, the young woman in the story doesn't have liver cancer, or even liver cancerr, whatever that is, so it's just inaccurate. Heather Krueger (Aimee Teagarden) is diagnosed with a disease called Autoimmune Hepatitis, an illness that has caused her own immune system to turn on itself, seriously damaging her liver in the process. In dire need of a transplant, none of Heather's family or close friends are compatible, so the family casts a wider net, using the internet to spread the word throughout the greater Chicago area in an effort to find a good Samaritan who is willing to part with half of their liver to save a stranger's life.
Enter Chris (Brett Dalton), a former Marine who is now spending the holidays working at his pal Jack's (Steve Bacic) lawn and garden center in the suburb of Frankfort, slinging Christmas Trees and living wreaths until January, when he'll hit the road and finally begin following his dream of traveling the world, righting wrongs and helping people he meets along the way, like Kwai Chang Caine in Kung Fu. Then one day he overhears Heather's sister at the garden center talking to Jack about how she desperately needs a liver transplant, and Chris just immediately volunteers to get tested to see if he's compatible, because he's a nice guy who only wants to do the right thing. So that whole using the internet to find a liver donor for Heather plan ended up being entirely pointless. Live and learn, I guess.
Then Chris gives Heather part of his liver, saving this perfect stranger's life during Christmastime, and he also organizes a fundraiser with his local motorcycle club to help pay for Heather's medical expenses so she won't have to drop out of nursing school in the new year. Then the pair fall in love and Chris decides to just stay in Frankfort to spend the rest of his life with his new girlfriend, because she's all the adventure he'll ever need. The next Christmas, Chris proposes to Heather and she says yes, and that's the whole story. That's what happens in Once Upon A Christmas Miracle.
That might sound a little far-fetched, but it's actually a true story, at least for the most part. Back in 2015, Heather Krueger was diagnosed with AIH and needed a liver transplant. A man she never met named Chris Dempsey offered to donate half of his liver to save her life, he organized a fundraiser to help Heather pay for her medical expenses, and they fell in love along the way. The pair are now happily married and still living in the Chicago area. The movie accelerates the timeline somewhat, since the real surgery occurred in March and not December. but this is a Christmas movie and they were given permission by the real Heather and Chris to fudge a few of the details.
The true story behind Once Upon A Christmas Miracle is a genuine heartwarming tale of love and sacrifice, the kind of story that sounds tailor-made for an old-fashioned tearjerker in the grand Hallmark tradition. So why did watching Once Upon A Christmas Miracle leave me so cold?
I don't think this is a bad movie, which is what's so frustrating to me. The movie looks great, I can confidently say that much. Beautiful holiday imagery abounds, both on location and indoors, and the cinematography gives certain scenes a warm and inviting glow that has been missing in many other movies I've seen so far this year. It's clear that everybody behind the scenes was working very hard to make Once Upon A Christmas Miracle look gorgeous, and they all succeeded.
And the performances are never bad, with lead actors Aimee Teagarden and Brett Dalton imbuing their characters with a sense of sincerity that makes them very easy to like. I think my real issue lies in the unfortunate problem that these two actors have almost no romantic chemistry to speak of. They never feel like they're falling in love onscreen, even when the movie is attempting to illustrate that they are supposed to be falling in love. She'll smile awkwardly when she looks into his eyes, and he'll tell a dumb joke that he knows is a dumb joke, but she laughs anyway because she likes him too much to make him feel self-conscious. This is the kind of stuff that sounds great on paper, and the actors are doing their best to bring this material to life, but they just don't make a convincing romantic couple.
I don't know how to accurately describe what I experienced watching these actors interact during this movie. They don't necessarily have a bad rapport, but they feel more like they'd be better friends than lovers, if that makes sense. I don't think that it does, and that's starting to bother me. When they kiss at the end of the movie, it looks staged and unnatural despite the soft lighting and swelling music, because their shared vibe is more like a close brother and sister than an amorous couple. I don't know how else to say this, and I know it's a personal dilemma that I can't really blame on the actors, since I'm sure probably nobody else who watches this movie will have the same issue.
They'll probably think I'm out of my mind, and maybe I am. Maybe I'm just looking for excuses not to like these movies anymore, since I feel like I might have hit my limit of holiday cheer for this year. Am I being unfair to Once Upon A Christmas Miracle? Maybe. I honestly can't tell.
Another thing that bothers me about this story is that I never really felt that Heather's illness was treated like that big of a deal. The doctors tell Heather that she needs a liver transplant as soon as possible, and her family works to try and find a compatible living donor, but this "frantic search" only really lasts for two scenes. There's one moment after the family begins their search where Heather's asleep on the sofa while her parents sit nearby, fretting over not having yet found a match, admitting they're starting to really worry despite their best efforts to remain positive, and this scene actually works. The actors who portray Heather's parents aren't the best in the world, but they do manage in this one scene to make me believe that their characters are genuinely worried about their daughter's well-being.
After that, Chris just volunteers to give Heather half of his liver and never experiences a moment of doubt regarding his decision, and then halfway through the movie the surgery is finished and both Heather and Chris are out of the hospital in time to spend Christmas together. The movie doesn't dwell on their rehabilitation or recovery at all, and within ten days of the liver transplant Heather and Chris are acting like this pesky invasive surgery thing never even happened. I'm not saying I would have preferred the majority of Once Upon A Christmas Miracle to be spent following our romantic leads as they recuperate in a hospital recovery ward...
Wait, is that what I'm saying? Well... that could work. In real life, Heather and Chris recovered on the same ward, only three rooms apart, and they spent a lot of their time in the hospital together, getting to know each other better and even beginning to fall in love. That would have been a perfectly fine way to spend thirty or forty minutes of this movie's time, watching our leads grow closer together while they both recovered from liver transplant surgery. So yes, I guess I am saying I would have preferred that Once Upon A Christmas Miracle spent at least a little more time in the hospital.
And it certainly would have been nice if the movie had featured a few more scenes of Heather's parents worrying about their daughter's well-being, instead of just the one. The story never even implies that her parents even get tested to see if they're compatible, which I'm sure is supposed to be just assumed by the audience, but it's weird that during the big scene where Heather's family is talking about trying to find a living donor, at no point do Heather's mother or father just drop a line into the conversation like "I can't believe that we're not compatible" or something similar. Instead, the movie just glosses over all of this, and I know I wasn't supposed to notice it, but I did, and it's driving me nuts.
I guess I'm just trying to say that I am genuinely shocked that I never felt that Once Upon A Christmas Miracle was treating Heather's life-threatening illness and subsequent organ transplant surgery like the big deal that it surely was in reality. The movie just ends up treating this whole plot with the same dramatic weight as other Hallmark Channel movies treat saving the community center or putting on the perfect holiday parade, and that's a pretty big problem, since the stakes of this movie's story are just a teensy bit higher than those of, say, Rocky Mountain Christmas.
Coincidentally, there's actually a scene in Once Upon A Christmas Miracle where Heather and Chris watch Rocky Mountain Christmas on television, so there goes my Unified Hallmark Universe theory.
I feel bad, because I don't want to dislike Once Upon A Christmas Miracle. I was hoping, even expecting this movie to be a more emotional watch than the others, due to the source material. Instead, I found myself trying and failing to connect with these fictionalized representations of very real people and events, with the story seemingly intent on keeping me at arm's length throughout. I honestly felt more of a sentimental tug seeing the real Chris and Heather Dempsey being interviewed on Hallmark Channel's morning show Home & Family last week. The pair clearly love each other very much, and their story is kind of a fantastic one, the kind of story that makes a confirmed cynic like me believe that there may be hope for the human race, after all. It's a story that deserved better than Once Upon A Christmas Miracle.
But hey, no tropes! So I guess that's kind of a Christmas miracle in and of itself.
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