Movie: Christmas Bedtime Stories
Starring: Erin Cahill, Steve Lund, Charlie Weber
Network: Hallmark Movies & Mysteries
Synopsis: When Danielle is left to raise her daughter after her husband goes MIA and is presumed dead, she begins to tell her daughter bedtime stories of her father.
⚠🛑 Disclaimer: This review may contain movie spoilers
Rating (out of 5 stars): ⭐⭐
Review:
What did I just watch? All...this had the potential to be a 4-5 star movie but what in the world happened in the last few minutes of this movie? It absolutely ruined the movie for me. What a complete disappointment. I cannot convey how poor this was and I have no clue why Hallmark decided to end this movie the way that they did. It was unrealistic, rushed and basically erased the purpose of the rest of the movie.
Plot
Ignoring the last few minutes lets go through the first part.
Steve Lund and Erin Cahill were absolutely outstanding in this movie. Cahill played the part of a broken military widow and her struggles with moving on just wonderfully. Her emotions, doubts, fears...everything was wonderful. This by far was the best role she has done for Hallmark.
Moving to Steve Lund...LOVE him. His performance showed the love and the support he had for both Danielle and her daughter. He was supportive of her "working" through her challenges. His mannerisms and looks just conveyed such emotion upon realizing his fiance was pulling away from him. He was phenomenal.
The concept of the movie was pretty good as well. A woman who's husband was declared dead albeit his body was never retrieved. She was moving on with her life and found a new man to love her and her daughter. The flashbacks of stories of her husband were just beautiful. You could see the love in these stories that she told her daughter and I love how that played out on screen..literally. Then the concept that after each story little signs would happen which started to given Danielle some insecurities with moving on was brilliant. I didn't mind any of this as I thought that these signs would help her move forward with her life...not backward. The signs made sense as she worked through her grief which she so clearly hadn't done in the 3 years since her husband went missing. It was a necessary step for her to take before marrying Pierce. This is where I thought the movie was going and was going there so well and then it just crumbled.
After having all of these signs and them stirring up significant doubt she realizes that she just can't marry the wonderful Pierce so they amicably break up. Amicably! Then we never see or hear about Pierce again! What???? What a tragic way to use Steve Lund. What happened to Pierce? So we have this wonderful supportive fiance who is now tossed aside during Christmas to wallow in his grief because she saw signs? Did she just realize that she didn't truly love him? I don't get it...she was going to marry him for goodness sake.
Upon hearing that they found prisoners of war near where her husbands plane went down she had hope. Only for the hope to be shut down again when the general said once again no way it could be Colby. OK so he's dead right? Good grief how many times does the general need to tell you he's gone? So she goes to the dance with her daughter and comes out of the bathroom and who does she see? Her husband Colby in army fatigues! Wait what? It has to be a dream right? Nope...he says he was a POW and escaped. Well he looks awfully healthy to me and doesn't really look like he spent 3 years in captivity...so I'm thinking it's still a dream. Then he goes into the dance and dances with his daughter. Then the movie finishes with them at their daughters bedside and he tells her that it's ok that the talking bear doesn't work now because she has the real thing. The End. Huh? What happened here? So it isn't a dream? How is this even realistic? So many questions for an absolutely stupid ending.
I really don't have anything else to say as I am just dumb founded with what happened on screen. I absolutely loved the movie up until the last few minutes where everything I watched was tossed aside as if it didn't exist. It took away any reason for having the great Steve Lund appear in this movie. It took away the reason behind the "signs" that Danielle had throughout this movie. It just ruined it.
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