Family for Christmas (2015)

Fresh and Exciting

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Another Hallmark film pandering to women who stay-at-home, have children, and forgo a career.This leading lady realizes a life of car pooling & baking cookies is better than her high profile, profitable career in the big city. It's the sleek metropolitan life versus quaint suburbia once again, as Hallmark regurgitates it's sexist ideas in Christmas colors.Why not make a movie where a woman is changing diapers, arguing with kids about video games, and grounding her teenager from using the car and then she wishes away her family and children? Lest we forget that a woman can never live a life of peace and fulfillment without a husband and kids, right Hallmark?This poor female lead was separating the flakes and raisins out of her two daughter's cereal bowls each morning and everyone in the family, including the husband, expected her to do it and acted like it was normal....and THAT was the preferred life for her!Very disappointing.

I seem to say "It could have been good" about so many movies these days, especially Hallmark movies. Before I get started on my rant on all that was wrong with this one I have to say that I think a lot of people who bashed this movie (for different reasons than me) misinterpreted the message intended. It wasn't saying women shouldn't have a career and family, it was about being so immersed in your career that you lose sight of everything else. She didn't even give herself a chance to possibly find love and have a family yet she definitely felt lacking in her current life despite her huge success. In her alternate what-if life where she's been married for awhile with two kids but no career at all, many reviewers criticize her husband for making her feel guilty about wanting to start a career but in reality he came through for her and said they would make it work...he obviously loved her deeply and put her needs above the needs of the family. The problem I had with this movie is that it didn't make sense, had no realism at all, and I'm not referring to the magic santa part. She was unconsciously wondering what it would have been like had she married her boyfriend who she had left many years before in order to start an internship with the intention of coming back within a year. They never go into what happened, why the relationship ended, instead of him logically moving to be with her since he wanted to be an author, and the job he ended up with could be done anywhere. It doesn't make sense that they would be out of touch for so many years. They didn't portray him as the type of guy who would give up the love of his life so easily. Then her alternate life goes to the opposite extreme. There is no way she would have abandoned her career goals to have two children and be a stay at home mom, that wasn't who she was portrayed to be in the movie. It wouldn't have been all or nothing. Another thing that bothered me a lot was how they wrote her kids as such brats! They actually sat there expecting her to separate things out of their cereal that they didn't like, really? They have perfectly functioning fingers. They just sat there and glumly looked at her while she did it and didn't even say thank you. They completely had that entitlement attitude. Then when they tell her she has to bring cookies as a snack to some event, they freak out and yell at her because she bought them at a store and were supposed to be home made. That was SO stupid, kids wouldn't care that they were bought at a store. They were trying to make certain points in this movie to show how out of her element she was in her what-if life, but they completely failed. They spent a lot of time on her neighbor's character and the developing relationship between the two women, then at the end nothing was done indicating they would even meet again so what was the purpose of the focus on the neighbor?Needless to say the end was ridiculous and just just added further aggravation for me. I wish I could unwatch it, unless I could be the magic santa and do the what-if thing and fix everything that was wrong with it, then it would have been a decent movie.

SPOILER ALERT!This move set women back at least 50 years! I was so disappointed. I love Hallmark movies and look forward to the Christmas movies every year but the message this movie gives is horrible. Basically, women can't have a career AND a family and should choose to stay at home. The main character of the movie gives up her boyfriend to take a job in the city and has a very successful career as a TV reporter. He contacts her online after many years so she starts thinking about what would have happened if she had stayed with him. She gets the opportunity after talking to Santa and ends up waking up in the suburbs married with two kids. In this alternate reality she is a stay-at-home mom but misses her career. She ends up getting the attention of the station she works for in the alternate reality and they offer her a job. Her husband gets upset and makes her feel guilty so she doesn't take the job. Her boss even tells her that if she take this job she can only love her career. What is that about? There are many reporters with families. I'm sure they would find this insulting!It had promise and I was thinking the message would be to find the right balance to have both if that's what you want. There's nothing wrong with a career and there's nothing wrong with being a stay-at-home mom but why can't you have both a career and family? Many people do!

*** SPOILERS AHEAD ****As disturbing, dystopian horror movies and black comedies go, I thought this one was pretty good. The main character, a relatively content and successful person, is sent by a creepy "Santa" into an alternate universe (because he says she made a wish without knowing it) where she loses everything she worked her whole life towards, and is thrust into an awkward and macabre "family" where she has two "daughters" and a "husband" with whom she shares nothing in common and has no semblance of familial chemistry or even congruity.She is forced to try to adapt to this nightmare by changing everything that made her who she is, and becoming what those people demand her to be. When she finally gets to a point where she is barely able to survive in that environment, the creepy "Santa" puts her back into her original life. The circumstances are so disorienting and traumatic for her that she finds herself unable to deal with her original life, she begs "Santa" to put her back in the alternate universe and he says he can't, and then the movie ends. I didn't notice if any credit for story inspiration was given to Franz Kafka.For me, packaging the movie in the usual Hallmark style production elements made it even more effective as horror, and I will have difficulty sleeping. Fortunately, outside of Lacey Chabert's performance, which as always comes across as sincere and natural, there was not a single note in the movie which rang true, so I will be able to forget the experience of watching it soon. I'm glad the movie premiered in July, because I prefer not to watch horror movies during the actual Christmas season.