Movie Review: A Christmas Wedding Date
December is rapidly approaching which means spending time in front of the fireplace, drinking hot chocolate with marshmallows and making way more cookies than your heart could ever desire. It also means participating in one of my favorite holiday traditions: watching Lifetime Christmas movies. Even though I’m Jewish and personally don’t celebrate Christmas, these movies never fail to get me into the holiday spirit.
I got the opportunity to watch “A Christmas Wedding Date,” the last of the Lifetime’s three-holiday movies to air this season, early. However, I was slightly disappointed to learn that this film had already aired a couple of years ago on a different network, meaning that it is not an original Lifetime movie. Nevertheless, I watched the movie with an open mind and was pleasantly surprised.
After being fired from her high-powered job, Rebecca (Marla Sokoloff) heads back home to see her mom and attend her friend Amanda’s wedding on Christmas Eve. She’s hesitant about going home as she has not been back since her dad passed away three years earlier. She runs into her high school sweetheart Chad (Chris Carmack) at the wedding, who still clearly has feelings for her. But when she is reminded of why she thinks that relationship ended ten years earlier, Rebecca is grateful that she is staying only for one night. Mr. Destiny (George Wendt), her cab driver throughout her trip home, however, starts a time loop, in which she resumes the Christmas Eve wedding endlessly until fate is satisfied. Even though she is bored and frustrated with the time loop at first, Rebecca starts to approach each repeated day with enthusiasm. She starts to become aware of the possibilities for growth through new experiences and aware as well of her lingering feelings for Chad.
As I mentioned previously, I was pleasantly surprised with the movie. Although it is not an Oscar-winning masterpiece, it invoked feelings of family, romance, and the holiday spirit. I found myself relating to Rebecca on a lot of levels and really appreciated the down-to-earth qualities that Marla Sokoloff brought to the character. It was definitely a feel-good movie and one I recommend watching when it premieres on Lifetime.
A Christmas Wedding Date airs Saturday, December 10 at 8 pm ET on Lifetime.