Hallmark
Rating: 🎄🎄🎄🎄
Description: Erin (Loughlin) has always supported her heart surgeon husband, Adam’s (Cavanagh) career by organizing the hospitals’ Christmas charity galas. However, when he moves to a new hospital, her help is no longer needed. Feeling lost and without a purpose back in New York City, her long-suppressed regrets over giving up her dream of pursuing fashion design start bubbling up. When Erin is given a peculiar heart-shaped Christmas ornament, she wakes up in an alternate reality where she’s a world-famous fashion designer. As she “meets” and attends Christmas events with alternate universe Adam, she realizes that while her fashion dreams came true, it’s lonely at the top. While working on a way to bring more charity and heart to her fashion empire, she learns that her dream life and love were always right in front of her – if only she finds the heart and courage to ask. Starring Lori Loughlin and Tom Cavanagh.
Overall Review: I went into What If Christmas with low expectations, and within the first few minutes, I was feeling pretty good about my decision. I’ve never been particularly impressed with Aunt Becky’s (Loughlin) acting abilities, and Tom Cavanaugh is usually at his best playing some variation of a lovable goofball. So when this movie started, I was already mentally preparing the two or three-tree review.
But then something unexpected happened. The movie started winning me over. It was slow at first, and then somewhere around the halfway mark, I realized I was deeply invested. Against my better judgment, Hallmark had gotten me.
The New York setting was convincing enough that I wasn’t distracted by the usual attempts to pass off somewhere else as Manhattan. The Christmas decorations were up to Hallmark’s standards, which meant I had no distractions from the atmosphere. But neither of those things earned this movie its fourth tree. That honor belongs to the plot.
I fully expected the familiar Hallmark lesson in which a woman gets a glimpse of a different life, only to discover that she already had everything she ever needed. You know, the kind of story where personal growth means learning to be grateful for the life you’ve been quietly tolerating.
Instead, What If Christmas did something refreshing. It gave its heroine the opportunity to recognize what she wanted, find her voice, and speak up for herself rather than continuing to play the endlessly supportive wife. I appreciated that more than I expected to.
I came prepared to roll my eyes, and by the end, I was in it. Well done, Hallmark.
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