When I think of Charlie Webber, I think of After We Collided. He’s always going to be Vance to me. Now, yes, I know that he’s done a lot of other things, but hey, when you’re in a fandom, you’re in a fandom.
The truth is, I didn’t expect Charlie Weber to show up in a Christmas Movie, but I was happy that he did. I was happy that he did, because I love him and I love this movie.
Christmas Bedtime Stories is one of the most emotional movies I have seen for the holiday season. And it was everything I needed to feel.
I don’t think that I have ever cried so much over the movie. I knew from the beginning that I was going to have to take myself out of reality and really think about the possibilities of what could happen. I was going to have to believe in magic.
The magic that Christmas can bring.
In the movie, Danielle was left to raise her daughter on her own, when her husband goes MIA and is presumed dead when his plane goes down on a mission. It’s been three years and Danielle has been struggling to move forward, even as she’s been outwardly doing just that.
Danielle is one of those people that is always happy. She shows everyone a happy side, but inside she’s definitely struggling. She feels the need to keep a happy facade, for her daughter. She feels the need to make things as stable as possible. But what she doesn’t get is that the mistakes that she is making is that she’s not acknowledging Colby (her husband) and that isn’t helping Audrey.
But Audrey wants desperately to know about her father. She misses him and being so young – she seems so worried that the memories of him will fade. Audrey doesn’t want that. She wants to remember her Dad, because she misses him. She loves him.
And so Audrey starts asking her Mom questions about her Dad. She wants to hear stories about how they met. She wants to know more about her Dad.
Especially after Danielle asks her if it’s okay that she gets remarried.
Audrey is open to Danielle getting remarried, especially because she knows Pierce. Pierce was her Dad’s friend and he’s been around her whole life. She likes Pierce and she likes her Mom being happy. Who doesn’t love happiness?
Audrey is so accepting of Pierce, so much so that she asks him to take her to the father/daughter dance and makes his year. He feels like this means that he really is a part of the family and her acceptance is genuine.
Part of me at this movie wants to hate Pierce, because like I mean that’s your best friends wife. But now that we’ve briefly talked about Pierce, going to stop talking about him for awhile.
Audrey and Danielle are the important parts of this story. Christmas Bedtime Stories isn’t a movie about typical stories. It’s a movie about the stories how a love and family came to be. It’s a story about a love so powerful that you can’t and won’t let go. It’s a movie about hope.
Now, I know that I am getting a little deep here, but after the past few years, it’s the kind of hope that I needed. There are days where it’s impossible for me to get out of bed. There are days when I struggle to find hope. And that’s part of the beauty of Christmas movies, we get to return to a place of hope and perseverance.
You get to remember that there are better days ahead.
The holidays have always been a triggering time for so many and for me – they definitely are. I don’t like Christmas in my life, but I look forward to Countdown to Christmas every year. And I admit – that Hallmark movies are my Christmas family.
As I watched I felt like Danielle and Audrey were family – the ones that you were rooting for. The ones that you wanted to get through the pain.
The best part of this movie was that with every story, there were reminders of Colby that Danielle was faced with. I know, I know – saying that the best part was someone faced with pain is wrong on a lot of levels. But the reason that I am saying that is because in the moments that the reminders of Colby came, Danielle was coming face to face with her feelings and it reminded her that she’s not ready to move on.
And that’s okay. She didn’t believe that Colby was gone and there was still that hope.
And as I have said a million times, I don’t believe that anyone should ever have hope taken from them.
I think that it was good that Pierce and Danielle realized that they were at different points in their lives, because the person that would have been hurt was Audrey. She’s just a kid who wanted nothing more than a family. Or you know, so we think, until she goes to visit Santa and all she asks for is her bear, the one that played her Dads voice, to sing to her again.
And well I lost it there.
How does one help a child? What can you do to make things better for them when they don’t even know how to make things better for themselves? She’s a child and what she wants is to hold onto her father. How can you not cry? How can you not want to protect her?
Danielle is doing the best that she can to figure out what is best for her daughter. She apologizes for not talking more about Colby, for keeping things to herself. Danielle has never given up hope for Colby to be alive. There are things that Audrey doesn’t know and doesn’t understand, but as her Mom, Danielle is definitely going to do everything that she can to keep the worst from her.
Including the things that happens on the news. Near where Colby’s plane went down, there was a raid on a camp and prisoners were liberated. The Marines say that all the intel tells them that no American prisoners were in the camp.
Kids can overhear the news and it can be scary. But what is scarier sometimes than loosing hope is having it. For a second, when Danielle hears the news, she thinks that Colby could have been there. And loosing that – well, that is devastating.
But her life must go on.
Danielle tells her that she’s going to take her to the dance. She knows that it’s the father/daughter dance, but there will be other Moms there. It takes everything for her to get through the dance. And at the most important moment of the dance – the moment when she’s supposed to be doing the father/daughter dance, she’s in the bathroom trying to pull herself together.
And when she does, she sees a man standing in the doorway. A man who she knows from any angle. A man that she’s loved forever.
Colby survived. He’s alive.
Yes, you guessed it. I was a crying mess again over this. Granted, it through me for a loop, because it’s not what I expected from Hallmark. But that’s not something I hate. The channels trying to think out of the box.
What it does is delivers a story that impacts your heart, delivers Christmas spirit, and reminds you that you need to always listen to the world around you. What it does is break you and put you back together, reminding you that in the end – nothing is impossible.
Seeing Audrey get her Dad back and the light in her eyes, yes, I was crying even more.
Christmas Bedtime Stories suspends reality and just makes you see that stories need to be told. They need to be expressed. They need to be felt.
And this movie will do just that.
Overall Rating:🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄
One of the worst movies I’ve seen. The fact that the husband is still alive is a pretty big stretch. I could live with that except the colonel has no idea he’s alive even though he found his way to the embassy and had to get transportation back to the states. And instead of looking like he’s been a prisoner for 3 years, he looks like he’s been at a spa.
I know there’s supposed to be some artistic liberties but this movie went way too far.
I mean it’s a movie Jane, and it’s a Christmas movie. We found hope in it and the beauty of family. We’re sorry that you didn’t see that and remember the channel that you are watching it on.
I love a good tear jerker, love story, but this ending was a disappointment, unrealistic and would have been much better if she had a dream settling things with her husband and married the man who loved her & her daughter.. and helped her for the past three years.
For the 1st time in my lifelong devotion of being a fan of all things Hallmark, I lost all respect for this movie when the Dad miraculously showed up at the end. My family has 5 generations on both sides, including marriages of Military, including losses. It does not work this way, even with pow, miracles, etc. They glossed over the facts and the Superior she called would have known and her husband would have had to check in to Superiors before just ‘showing up’ at a dance. The plausible actions just fell flat and were not believable by the end. They spent alot of time building a story of liss and a daughter begging to know if her father, a mom mourning a loss, but not pulling the rest of the story together to fix the friendship and husband coming home parts. Great premise, actors, just the 1/4 finish was rushed and ruined my 1st hallmark Military movie. I tend not to watch Hallmark Military themes, they just don’t get a pro on the scene to help with accuracy/authentication. But I’m still a devoted Hallmark fan. Waiting on the next Fri/Sat/Sun movies