MovieChat Forums > Lost Christmas (2011) Discussion > Intriguing Premise, Promising Start, Fel...

Intriguing Premise, Promising Start, Fell Flat (Spoilers Abound)


I watched this because I generally like Christmas movies, I generally like British films, and I like Eddie Izzard.

The synopsis sounded like a good holiday-themed fantasy with a bit of mystery mixed in, something that was beyond the usual holiday stuff that seems to focus primarily on showing lots of shopping and snow, decorations and Santa.

It started off really well, I thought, had me hooked, good story, all that. I liked that the plot really could have fit with any time of the year, with a tweak here and there. In other words, it was a good story that happened to be set at Christmas, not a Christmas story that happened to be good, if that makes sense.

Shortly after Izzard's character's arrival, though, it started to fall apart for me. Maybe all my synapses were firing that night, but for whatever reason, as soon as he looked at his name tag and said, "I suppose I'm Anthony", I told the wife, "You know what? I'll bet that's not his name, I'll bet he got that from someone else, it doesn't fit him at all." Strike one.

Then, just a tiny bit after that, the wife said, "What do I get if he turns out to be himself from the future?" Strike two.

From there, everything just fell into place to easily, almost like the writer felt like, "Ok, this has gone on long enough, let's just wrap it up. Here's your keys, you're not dead, you're not dead, you're not a bum, and here's your dog." It seemed to go a long way to build an interesting story, to give up at the end and take the cheap way out. To me, it felt like an ending to a typical, unimaginative Hallmark Channel movie or something. Strike three.

I'll say too that the actor playing the boy was off-putting to me. He seemed to have two expressions; perplexed and mopey, and they both looked pretty much the same. The one time, near the end, when he broke into a smile, it was almost shocking and looked weirdly unnatural.

I keep a big library of holiday movies because I'm kind of sentimental that way, and I really thought this one was going to be a good addition, but by the end, I'd changed my mind.

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I can sum up my disappointment in three words:

Not enough dog.

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Well, there's never enough dog! 8-)

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