Kristin's Christmas Past
It's the eve before Christmas Eve in NYC and Kristin (Shiri Appleby) is heading off to a company Christmas party with her bestie Jamie (Will Kemp) and his terrible girlfriend, with Kristin dressed as Slutty Santa's Helper. Now for anyone who might be offended by some potential gratuitous objectification, no worries for the absolutely lovely Ms. Appleby has a body type that prevents anything she wears from actually looking slutty.
Kristen is a bit of loser, has a dead end job and has lost yet another boyfriend so she plans on getting lit at this party before spending another Christmas Eve with her bestie, but he informs her he is heading back to their hometown in Cali to introduce his folks to his terrible girlfriend. This makes Kristen sad because she will be all alone on Christmas Eve as she refuses to go back home because she hates her family, so she heads to the liquor store to get further lit up, but this is where the freaky clerk gives her a free bottle of roofied champagne.
34-year old Kristen drinks the poison champagne, which of course knocks her out, but has the side effect of waking her up 17 years prior, right next to 17-year old Krys (Hannah Marks) her younger self. Say what? After a remarkably short explanation which Krys seems to buy rather quickly, Kristin needs to figure out why she's back in 1996 Palm Beach or wherever, and has to pretend to be her younger self's academic advisor. But she knows what she REALLY is there for is fix whatever went terribly wrong on this day which caused the irreparable rift with her mom (Elizabeth Mitchell) and her dad (Judd Nelson). Note that Judd Nelson seemed to be nearly comatose throughout most of this movie.
Now Kristin sets about the task of guiding young Krys into avoiding all the disastrous mistakes she made as her back in the day, but guess what? She's not listening to her! Because she's a seventeen year old and they know every damn thing! Me and my homegirl often talked about going back in time to set our younger selves on a different / better path but realized that would ultimately be a futile exercise because there is no way young us would listen to old us, even though we are them. So I buy into this completely. Eventually Kristin realizes that it's her mistakes that made her who she is, drinks some more poison champagne, wakes up a different woman back in NYC and decides to head home to Cali to make things right, and steal her bestie, who has always loved her, from his terrible girlfriend. Merry Christmas!
So this movie, 'Krstin's Christmas Past' was made, I guess, before Hallmark infected the whole TV Christmas movie scene. Because this movie was missing just about EVERYTHING we've come to expect from a Hallmark-ish Christmas movie. No snow, thus no snowball fights, no cookie baking, no Christmas tree shopping, no mistletoe, no wise old people dispensing knowledge, no orphan kids or kids of any kind, no dead parents... nothing! And while Kristin will eventually get a man, the movie wasn't Get A Man-Centric so no near miss kiss, no losing the man just to get the man back or anything like that.
However, not being confined to these brutal restrictions we've come to expect and even look forward to, to a point, this was actually pretty good. Most of this goodness is based on taking your radiant, magnetic star, making sure she's in virtually every single scene and simply let her tiny self carry the movie which Shiri Appleby did with relative ease. She's funny, she has personality to burn, you cared for her characters well being, and you end up rooting for her through the entire thing. Then there's actress Elizabeth Mitchell playing Kristin's mom, whom due to her oppressive height... she's like a foot taller than everybody in this movie... and her sharp Aryan features usually ends up playing officious characters of a bureaucratic nature, and she was quite the officious and bureaucratic... read mean... mother in this. I guess she wanted the best for her teenage daughter? I guess? Maybe? But the movie was better for it. Don't get started on whatever Judd Nelson was doing in this movie, which wasn't much. He had like ten total lines, all of which he delivered like he was on Percocet, and at the end when Kristin finally goes home and reunites with her family, Judd couldn't even find the time to show up for that scene. She just hugged her super tall mom and the credits rolled. I was even looking for a voice over from dad in the background. Something. Got nothing.
Clearly 'Kristin's Christmas Past' isn't very vomit worthy due to everything it's missing, but if you like not too terrible, semi-romantic Christmas movies and happen to be a fan of Shiri Appleby, then this is sort of a can't miss deal.
Comments
Post a Comment