How does anyone let go when someone passes? What would you say if you had more time? What would you say if you had five more minutes?
To be honest, I don’t think I could handle five more minutes with people that I have lost, because I couldn’t say goodbye again. I couldn’t go through it. Loosing someone is hard. Loosing someone is devastating. Loosing someone feels like all you want to do is run until no one can catch you.
Five More Minutes: Moments Like These is a movie I wanted to love. I wanted to feel that moment where all the tears came to me, where I thought that this movie would make me feel things. But honestly, it didn’t.
Not in the way that other Hallmark movies have. And that really disappointed me.
Judging by the synopsis, you would believe that you’ll be a mess. It reads, “After losing her husband suddenly one Christmas Eve, Kaitlyn (Williams) moves away from their Colorado home with her young son Adam (Brady Droulis, “Inventing the Christmas Prince”) and relocates to Los Angeles in search of a fresh start. Though she’s tried her best as a single mother, Kaitlyn worries about Adam. He’s become more withdrawn and, knowing her husband would have known just what their son needs, wishes Adam could have just five more minutes with him. When Kaitlyn and Adam return to Colorado to spend Christmas with her late husband’s family, she also must deal with the prospect of selling the home three of them once shared. While there, she becomes acquainted with Matthew (Bryant), a local contractor and old friend of her husband’s who was tapped by a local developer to present an offer to purchase their home. As Kaitlyn weighs her options – both with real estate and what’s next in life – she and Matthew spend time together and feelings start to develop between them. Meanwhile, Kaitlyn is thrilled to see Adam become involved in the local Christmas festivities and even comes up with a fundraising idea for the local food bank. With big decisions to make that will affect Kaitlyn and Adam’s lives, the answers she needs come in an unexpected way.”
But Lord forgive me for the things I am about to say.
Now I have never sugarcoated things, because I speak my truth. And my truth was that what took me out of feeling things was that Ashley Williams felt like she had one mode in this movie – looking happy. Even when she was supposed to be sad, she looked happy. I just didn’t feel the emotions from her or anyone in the cast.
Which took me out of it.
Kaitlyn (Williams) is doing her best to move on after the death of her husband, but she’s done that by leaving the house that they lived in together and transplanting her life to Los Angeles. Her son, Adam, is having a hard time and she’s worried. He won’t talk to her and she decides to him back to Colorado to spend Christmas break with family.
Especially after her sister-in-law tells her that there has been an offer to buy her house there.
She doesn’t want to go back – it’s where she spent the last minutes of time with her husband, but she doesn’t want to let it go either. However, what she seems to miss is that her son is the one that is suffering. He’s the one that she needs to be worrying about.
I think that sometimes we know that others are grieving but as adults, we make decisions that we think are best, but it doesn’t always mean it’s the best. When we communicate with kids, when we help them through their pain – we know how to listen to them.
Adam was a kid who wanted to do everything to honor his father, but also felt stuck in a place that he didn’t want to be and felt like he didn’t belong. But coming home and having to find a way to honor tradition of giving back. That part we loved. What they did for the city – 100% great.
Kaitlyn and the love interest, Matt, have about as much chemistry as well – I have nothing to compare it to, because it’s non existent. It just feels like two completely mismatched people and like an actor dropped out and they only had one person that could do it cause of permits or something.
And then the five minutes… the five minutes that was supposed to make you feel something? I’m afraid that ice is around my heart again, because I didn’t feel anything. It just felt odd and it felt out of place.
This movie just missed the boat for me.
