Writer(s): Danny Max and Scott Thomas Reynolds
Starring: Brittany Underwood, Vivica A. Fox, Jonathan Lipnicki, and Tara Reid (ugh)
Well, it’s official: we’ve hit that
part of the year where all of these holiday movies are starting to
blend together, and it’s getting harder and harder to differentiate
one blob of mush from another—even within 24 hours. I think this is
one of the signs of Sappy Movie Overdose (SMO) and it’s only going
to get worse and worse the closer to the holidays we get.
Anyway, as the title implies, this is
yet another example of a character getting a second chance at life,
only this one is slightly more forgivable than many others, because
it’s actually marketing itself as a take on “A Christmas Carol”.
In it, seasoned Lifetime vet Brittany Underwood plays Chance Love
(wow, subtle), a popular singer (again with the music theme!) who
also happens to be a huge cunt. I’m talking, she’s probably one
of the least likable characters in the history of Lifetime movies, using her status as a social symbol as an excuse to shit on everyone around her to an insane degree, without so much as a shred of remorse.
She’s managed by her longtime friend,
who clearly is in love with her, and who has stuck by her side through thick and thin for several years. But she doesn't treat him any differently - in fact, he may get it even worse, such as the time she refuses to allow him time off to visit his dying mother. Yeah, this is the level of cunt we're dealing with here, and somehow we're supposed to cheer not for this man to drive an ice pick through her skull, but for them to actually get together? At the very least, it’s common sense that she will have to learn the errors
of her ways, so she is visited by the Ghosts of Christmas Past,
Present, and Future, in the hopes that it will scare her into
becoming a better person.
Really, this is a case of the writers
going overboard with the material, and taking things way too far:
Chance is such a super-bitch, that she’s virtually beyond
redemption; by the time she finally sees the error of her ways (she’s
still making excuses and standing up for herself as late as the Ghost
of Christmas Future) you’re no longer wanting her to change, you
want her mangled body to turn up in a ditch somewhere.
Alas, she has a completely unconvincing
about-face and does the required 180-degree spin from cold, heartless
bitch to loving, warm companion all within a span of about five onscreen minutes, but by that time, the damage has
been done. That’s quite unfortunate, because there are some things
to like: Aside from his inexplicable loyalty to a woman bereft and
unworthy of any human sympathy, Kristos Andrews is good as Chance’s
manager/punching bag, and the ghosts are uniformly the most likable,
humorous characters in the whole affair (even Vivica A. Fox seems to
be relishing her role as “Death”, and looks legit creepy at times
in the role, thanks to some rather heavy visual effects.)
But watching this, I was constantly
reminded of a quote from the great Dennis Reynolds, a character from
the classic American sitcom “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”:
“This isn’t ‘will they or won’t they’…this is ‘I know
they won’t, and I don’t want them to!’” Only, in this
case, against the wishes of everyone watching, you know they will.
STRAY OBSERVATIONS
- Not only do these movies borrow plots from each other almost verbatim, but they also steal titles: hence the reasoning for the bizarre "2nd" format in the title, probably as a means to differentiate itself from last year's unrelated Second Chance Christmas.
- Why does Tara Reid have to show up everywhere in these movies? She's probably the single biggest buzzkill for everything, and delivers her lines with the same disinterested monotone delivery whether she's supposed to be shocked, or excited. Her career should actually be below holiday movies at this point.
OVERALL: 4/10
TRAILER
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