The Hallmark Channel’s A ’90s Christmas is the network’s take on the “change the course of your life by going back in time for a re-do” genre. The result is a sweet, nostalgic rom-com filled with references to Sixpence None The Richer and Friends which is pretty much all a woman of my certain age needs in a movie right now. When Lucy, a high-strung lawyer with no close relationships, gets a chance to re-live the winter of 1999, she realizes that she gave up all of her close high school friendships and the relationship she had with the boy next door to chase her ambition. With the help of a magical rideshare driver (lol?), she realizes that if she makes a few tweaks, maybe she can actually have the dream job without pushing away the people that matter most to her.
Opening Shot: Lucy Clark, a divorce lawyer, finalizes the terms of a divorce with one of her clients. All this while her firm’s Christmas party is happening outside her door, but Lucy doesn’t stop working… ever. Her assistant Spencer arrives after the client leaves to inform her that she just received an offer letter making her partner at the firm, which is great news but all the more reason for Lucy to declare that she’s not planning to celebrate Christmas, she plans to work over the holiday instead. Keep an eye on that offer letter though, it will become a major part of the plot down the line.
The Gist: As we’ve established, Lucy (Eva Bourne) is a workaholic and getting into the Christmas spirit isn’t on her to-do list. Her sister Alexa is begging her to come home to Milwaukee to see their family for the holiday, but Lucy hasn’t gone back in years and she’s fine with that. But when Lucy runs into an old high school friend named Matt (Chandler Massey) one night at a diner, he calls her out on the fact that she was pretty quick to drop all the people closest to her after high school, including him and her best friend Nadine. Lucy resents Matt’s unnecessarily harsh hot take, but things get especially weird and whimsical when a waitress nearby (a magical waitress!) overhears the conversation and comes over after Matt leaves to ask Lucy if she’s truly happy with the fact that she has no close friends, and if she had the chance, would she change anything if she could do her life over again? Lucy’s like, “Impossible!” and when she leaves the diner and gets in an Uber, the driver is… her magical waitress (played by Kat Barrell) now a magical rideshare driver. “Get in, I’ll take you where you need to be,” she portends. Lucy dozes off in the car, and instead of being brought back to her apartment in Chicago, when she wakes up she finds herself at her family house in Milwaukee and… it’s 1999.
There are loads of 1999-specific gags when we go back in time (weirdly generic posters on the wall for a film called She’s All There and bands that look like the Backstreet Boys and Hanson but aren’t), although there’s one based-in-reality joke, as Lucy picks up a notebook where she has scrawled out a love note for Joshua Jackson and sighs, “Oh, Lucy.” I mean, some things actually don’t change, the man is a fine wine. But when the magical Uber driver reappears, she explains to Lucy that this is real, and Lucy gets a chance for a do-over now that she’s back in the time and place where she actually had people around her who she felt close to and didn’t push away.
The only person that Lucy can tell about the fact that she’s from the future is her old bestie, Nadine (Jenny Raven), who she’s grown apart from in the 2024 timeline. Nadine is a sci-fi geek so of course she immediately buys in to the fact that Lucy is from the future. Together they deduce that Lucy has been sent back to 1999 to re-do a kiss with Matt that cause things to get weird between them and completely cut each other off.
After spending time in the past, Lucy actually realizes her real mission is to help everyone else around her, from convincing her gay sister that she’ll be supported when she comes out, to encouraging Matt not to give up on his dream of becoming an actor – something he did in the present timeline – to addressing her own shortcomings and emotional detachment. And, yeah, if she and Matt fix that kiss, then Lucy’s whole world might just change, too.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? A ’90s Christmas is an homage to Back To The Future with a dash of 13 Going on 30, using the magical powers of time travel to help our protagonist adjust the timeline of their life.
Our Take: Considering the fact that a large percentage of the Hallmark audience is millennial and Gen X women, a movie filled with references to our adolescent and young adult era is a rewarding little reminder of youth. Many of the jokes are fun jabs at the differences between 1999 and 2024, like the aforementioned joke about Joshua Jackson to the conversations about Friends and iPhones and almond milk (“You can milk an almond?”), while some of the references are reminders that some stuff is best left in the past (Nadine is that friend who screeches “Whazuuup!?” every time she enters a room, referencing the Budweiser commercials of yore. We all had that friend!). Add to that the fact that the movie is also referencing several classic movies we all grew up on, and it feels like a movie that isn’t just filled with Easter Eggs, it just is an Easter Egg.
If I’m being honest, the film does more than just reference Back to the Future, it liberally rips from it; there’s an entire plot about how the ink on Lucy’s law firm’s offer letter slowly starts to disappear with every action she takes that diverges from her 2024 timeline, just like Marty McFly’s family photo that starts to dissolve away when he can’t get his parents together in 1955. And just as Marty McFly plays “Johnny B. Goode” in an effort to save his parents relationship, every time we hear “The 12 Days of Christmas” we know it’s symbolic of Lucy getting closer to course-correcting her life. The film works not just because Lucy is meant to curb her curmudgeonly, workaholic ways though, it’s great because Lucy is told over and over again by her magical Uber driver that, by helping everyone around her, she’ll be affecting their lives for the better, too. In a montage at the end of the film, we get to see just how Lucy has made this happen and though it only lasts a brief moment, it’s a journey into everyone’s new, blissful future. Alexa came out and gets married! Nadine buys stock in Apple and gets rich! And Lucy and Matt? They follow their dreams and stick by each other and have a life better than the one they had in their old timeline.
Parting Shot: The tune to “The 12 Days of Christmas” starts to play inside Lucy’s mom’s house. It’s 2024 and Lucy and Matt are married, and her trip back in time has completely shattered her previous life, while giving everyone around her a new, better version of theirs. “I know you hate this song,” Matt says to Lucy. “You know what? Not so much anymore,” she replies.
Performance Worth Watching: Jenny Raven has just enough alterna-teen edge to make Nadine a believable 1990s sidekick. Her nerdy vibe, mixed with a little dry sarcasm, is the defining feature of our people.
Memorable Dialogue: “Y2K is nothing to laugh at!” is just one of many jokes sprinkled throughout the movie that reference the specific moment in time we were all living in December 1999.
Our Call: STREAM IT! This film draws most of its humor from the many 1990s references and gags throughout, but ultimately it shines as a warm, time-travel-tinged take on a redemption story where our leading lady realizes that she can have it all, if she just opens her heart a little.
Liz Kocan is a pop culture writer living in Massachusetts. Her biggest claim to fame is the time she won on the game show Chain Reaction.
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