Normally, time travel isn’t my favorite Christmas movie trope, but somehow, A 90’s Christmas is one of my favorite movies so far this year. Somehow all of tropey things that I would have taken issue with are suddenly the things that I love the most and want more of.
What would you do if you had a chance to change everything about your past? What would you do if you realized that you had pushed everyone away out of fear and found yourself all alone? I think that sometimes we’ve spent – well at least I have – spent my entire life working that I forgot to live. And what is life if you’re just existing through it?
The premise of A 90’s Christmas is simple, “A workaholic lawyer destined to spend Christmas alone is transported back to 1999 after an unexpected run in with a particularly wise rideshare driver.” But it’s movies like this that make me wonder how it is that someone can take something that is so complex and make it a sentence.
Because A 90’s Christmas is a complex movie about grief, honesty, regrets, and living. It’s a movie about the “what ifs” in life.
Lucy doesn’t stop working. She hasn’t since she was a teenager and her father died. For her, work was the one thing that kept her safe. It gave her purpose. She didn’t journey home, every day of her life was one more moment to work towards her goals and get ahead.
When she makes partner at her law firm, she has no one to celebrate it with. She ends up at a diner over a stack of pancakes, and runs into her next door neighbor from childhood. Matt was the one that got away, the one that she pushed away. She didn’t want to run the risk of getting hurt.
But that run in, the question that she was asked – if she ever wondered about the roads that she didn’t take – result in her whole life changing.
A ride share ride, where she asks to go “home” results in being dropped off at her childhood home. The place where she always wanted to avoid. But sometimes you need to go home, to realize where home is.
Waking up the next day in 1999, she sees her ride share driver. Lucy’s told that she was brought back to the time in her life where she last had a meaningful connection with people. That she’s not to chance anything about the past, but basically she needs to live through it again.
The thing about going back in time, are you going to remember everything that you did? Are you going to remember all of the mistakes that you made? I don’t think that I could remember all of the choices.
Lucy doesn’t and she has one thing that will tell her if she’s doing it wrong. Her promotion letter – paragraphs will disappear when she’s changed things that will change her future. She’s given the clue that things have changed because the Twelve Days of Christmas starts to play.
And that ride share driver shows up each and every time to remind her to not change a thing.
The thing is though, when you relive the past and know the future, there are bound to be things that you’ll want to change. There will things that take hold of your heart differently.
Watching Lucy navigate her friendships and family, having the chance to assure them that all will be okay and helping them through their pain – I cried. I cried my eyes out over and over again. She was there for her sister and her mother, helping them navigate the pain of loss, but also helping them realize that they were there for each other unconditionally.
Watching the movie and seeing Lucy navigate through her fear – fear of being loved, loving others, and fear of really living her life and allowing people in – was so relatable that it couldn’t help but be moved by her inner turmoil and fear. There is so much that comes with grief and you don’t really ever out grow it. You just somehow grow through it.
It doesn’t hurt less, it just hurts differently.
But when you’re running out of time – and Lucy is – she’s faced with having to make a choice – live the life that she has or change it.
Watching Lucy make the choice to make changes, to be open about feelings, and let Matt know how she feels, I cheered. Legitimately stood on my bed and cheered. I found myself cheering Matt and Lucy on, but more than that, I found myself cheering Lucy on.
And the changes that happen when Lucy and Matt kiss, make me root even harder for her. It’s because the changes that happen remind me that if you just find a way to see that your heart can be and is worthy of being loved.
And someone will love you.
A 90’s Christmas had me thinking about love, life, regrets, and choices – all the possibilities and all of the things in between.
