Time-travel movies have long been one of my favorite genres of movies. There is something about romance, time travel, and falling in love when everything is against you. Life is strange, and time travel romances make me think deeper about time.
I am no physics professor – I don’t know anything about space – but I know that when it comes to time, I can’t figure out how it can exist on only one line. Maybe it’s watching too much Arrowverse, but whatever it is, I know it means that I will hold movies about time travel to a higher standard. A Newport Christmas didn’t deliver on that level or even the level that Hallmark has previously set with movies like A Biltmore Christmas.
Ginna Claire Mason and Wes Brown star in the latest Countdown to Christmas movie, which, from its previews, looked like it was going to be a slice of perfection. A Newport Christmas is a beautiful story, don’t get me wrong, but that’s about where it stopped for me.
The story is about “The charitable Ella heads out on a boat in 1905 and ends up in 2025. Nick has to figure out how to get her back in time and decide if their newfound love can stand the test of it.”
Wes Brown’s character of Nick, is called out to do a rescue, and all of the normal rescue boats are busy. So, he takes a small boat out to do a rescue and ends up with Ella traveling from 1905 to 2025. They are out in the middle of nowhere, and both are freaked out that they are in the boat.
And so they head back into port, where Ella has to quickly come to terms that she’s not in 1905 anymore. Newport is a different place, one that Ella quickly learns she had a big influence on. Her actions have changed the face of Newport as it is today.
She was high society – a socialite who changed the times. She wanted to help people, and I admire that. I love that she got to see that her life and all that she accomplished, as so many of us never see the meaning that our lives have.
Ella enjoys being able to have an influence on the traditions that she started back in the day, in the present time. She loves that she gets to stay and be involved in the holiday ball and learn about the life that she lived.
And the man that she married.
Nick is falling for her, but he knows that she’s going to have to return to her time. Her being there and learning about herself was dangerous. She started to disappear, and the things that she accomplished disappeared. For her, the longer she stayed, the worse things got.
Sending her back to 1905 would break his heart, and he knew it.
The two of them try to figure out who it is that she’s marrying in the past, but we find out that there is barely a trace. I was a little confused as to one man’s place in the present and the past, as well as the stories that he told them. He was so willing to tell them things that you would think that he would never want to and hadn’t shared with anyone else.
While I watched, I wanted to fall in love with this story, but it was Mason’s portrayal of Ella that made me want to turn off the movie. She was so overpowering in every scene that I had to talk myself into finishing the movie.
The ending was somewhat predictable, but I didn’t mind that. I was just happy it was ending, and that pains me. I wanted to love it, but in the end, I just loved that it was over.
