9/10
Lots of favorite and familiar Hallmark actors, good acting and chemistry, a bit of a shopworn plot.
10 December 2022
The good: Brendan Penny and Jessy Schram are two of my favorite Hallmark actors and they have good chemistry together as their relationship realistically develops. There are quite a few supporting roles for others in the Hallmark stable of actors - Allison Sweeney, Lochlyn Munro, Lisa Durupt, Brendan Zub, Alix West Lefler, April Telek, Camille Mitchell, Azriel Dalman, and probably others I don't recognize. One pleasant surprise is that 3 of them play against type. Lisa Durupt usually plays a charming and pleasant character, but at least starts out shrewishly here. Lochlyn Munro and Brendon Zub usually play pretty sketchy characters but are good guys here. I really liked the short scene with Allison Sweeney. I wasn't sure who she was playing - a lot of her characters seem to be bakers - until she mentioned "her husband" Jack and Will - which told us that she is, in fact, Kat, and that she and Jack stayed together. So this serves as kind of a sequel or coda to another of the Time To Come Home movies. Nicely done!

Loss is a common theme in a lot of the Hallmark movies in general and their Xmas movies in particular. And that's true here. (IMO, this is also something that a lot of people deal with in real life, too, so I like this theme in these movies.) Of course there's the loss of memory, but there are other issues in this movie (that I'll leave out to avoid spoilers) that are dealt with very well here - with realism and sensitivity.

Not so great: Although I think it was dealt with well in this movie, really, another amnesia plot? You'd think that everyone loses their memory at some point. There are at least 5 Hallmark movies I can think of where this is the primary plot element.

I'm getting a bit tired of the song. I know that Blake Shelton is a producer and that he wrote the song, but honestly, IMO it's not all that great, and it's overplayed in these movies.

Last, after I just saw this movie (again), I noticed that despite her character supposedly being a pie lover, in the opening scene, as she's leaving the diner, you can see that she barely touched the pie. Really? (OK, not a big deal, but I gotta mention it.)

Overall, though, I enjoyed the movie, and I'm watching it again as I write this.
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