Oh. My. Goodness. Gracious. Seldom have I been more disgusted by the behavior of a TV romance man. Let me back up. Brooke Elliot of Drop Dead Diva plays Chrissy, a Nashville singing star whose career has taken a hit due to a failure of a song called "Reindeer Slay". We see a clip of it and it is actually awesome. Anyway, her manager insists she goes back to her hometown to film a concert to get back to her roots and stop being trendy. She has not been back for 10 years where she also left her former musical and romantic partner, Luke. More on that later. Getting close to her old hometown, driving with her assistant, Eugene, they stop for an emergency comfort stop. She runs into a restaurant/bar which is now owned by Luke and they have a meet cute along with his Granny. He behaves very rudely toward her. Which, of course, is standard procedure in rom-coms. Just to fill out the rest of the plot, Back in their 20s when they were struggling to make it in dive bars and other sparsely attended venues, she was the real draw with her great voice and he was the guitar player and primary songwriter. He is very resentful of her leaving, and at this point, I thought, "Well, maybe he has good reason. After all, she did leave on Christmas." Granny forces him to take her to dinner and they are getting along great reminiscing. But when she mentions that she will be filming a concert there, he gets all angry again and huffs and puffs saying that he thought she came back because she missed her small town, and maybe him, and wanted to reconnect, but "you are here FOR WORK!" He says some really mean things, yells that she is a fake person without an authentic bone in her body, and leaves her at the dinner table. What a Drama Queen. And rude!
At this point, I was starting not to like this guy, even though we have already learned that he adopted his sister's baby after she died in an accident ten years ago shortly after Chrissy left.
My dislike got worse and worse:
First off, he hasn't dated anyone since Chrissy because he worries about what would happen if Brandon didn't like her. Nothing would happen, Doofus. He might love her and if he doesn't, you move on. His excuses are so phony and a way to blame the kid, rather than his own choices for not engaging with the opposite sex.
Second, we find out the real story behind her "abandoning him" for fame and fortune. The reason why she left was that she wanted to have her shot in Nashville after hanging around Hicksville with him until she was 28 years old. He refused to leave his hometown in no uncertain terms, trying to manipulate her into staying put, despite her talent and promise. So when her parents gave her a one-way ticket to Nashville for Christmas, she was strong enough to leave despite his threat. (She did leave him a note.) Soon after, her parents retired to Key West, so she had no home there to come back to, anyway. Pouting and nursing his resentment for 10 years in not attractive.
Third, no Christmas decorations or a Christmas tree with a little kid in the house? Other than laziness or too much wallowing in his personal issues, why not? Letting his 10-year-old mourning for his sister outweigh her son's happiness is not what his sainted sister would have wanted, I'm sure. After Chrissy and he make up, he does change his mind and they go up in a blink of an eye. Now that wasn't so hard, was it?
Fourth. At first, he wouldn't introduce the child to Chrissy let alone take him to her concert. Again, denying his child a treat to nurse his personal grievances.
Fifth. When her ex Brad shows up uninvited and unannounced in the middle of an intimate moment with Luke at his bar, Luke storms out of the place, even though she is plainly shocked and upset by his arrival. He doesn't give her a chance to explain, just abandons her there in the middle of a winter snowstorm. Stranded. With no way to get home, except with Brad. Who actually turns out to be a pretty nice guy, despite his referring to himself in the third person.
Now here's the kicker. Granny gives him a good talking to telling him to get over himself and quit with the pity party. He seems to get it, especially when she tells him he needs to do something to make it up with Chrissy, because if he does nothing, that is exactly what he is going to get. Nothing. The next time we see him he is sitting by himself in his house reading a book at the same time that Chrissy's concert is going on. Doing exactly NOTHING! Little Brandon, Granny, and Chrissy have to trick him into coming to the concert where they finally make up. Luke agrees to follow her to Nashville because home is not a town, but wherever she is.
Chrissy deserves better. She was nothing but sweet, funny, and classy throughout the whole thing. I think she is going to have her hands full with Luke. She should have stuck with Brad, or better yet, stayed single.
The singing in this was excellent, which is not usual for these things. Often, it is quite bad. I don't know if Brooke Eliot was doing her own singing or not, but I could readily believe she was a Nashville star. Also, I was really really disappointed that the winter storm that happened in this one was not Winter Storm Megan. I guess Lifetime dropped the running joke it had that when a storm was called for to advance the plot, It was always the same storm running through all their Christmas movies, tying them all into the same universe. It was fun and funny.
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