Second Chance Christmas

A woman gets hit by a car, has amnesia, and forgets she was about to divorce her do-nothing, slacker of a husband and forgets she runs a successful event-planning company. Of course all her loved ones lie to her so she doesn't remember all these distressing details. And the viewer is somehow supposed to feel that all this deception ultimately leads her to some grand revelation.

It's pretty insulting, really. Just skip this one.

My high school creative writing teacher told us that amnesia is the lamest, most overused plot device there is, and that's the whole basis of this plot. If you can get past that, here it's an opportunity for new beginnings in a troubled young marriage, nothing new either, but for those who can't get enough of happy endings after 90 minutes of what amounts to do-it-yourselves couples therapy, this should do it well enough.

Standard.

There are multiple "Second Chance Christmas" titles. This one focuses around Caroline, an (initially) disgruntled over-achiever, Jack, her somewhat-slacker husband, and amnesia.

To avoid any spoilers, that's all you get of the plot. But all you need to know is... there are these two protagonists and five secondary characters... an assistant, two best friends (his) and two parents (hers.) Of these, all but two of the secondary characters pretty much lie the whole time. Caroline is the main character, supposed to be the one you're sympathetic towards, and she starts the movie off with forgery, a felony. (Even though he signed, it's still forgery if she mislead as to what he was signing.)

Christmas isn't actually relevant to the movie. It's barely a minor player. If there were "Groundhog Day Parties", this could easily have been "Second Chance Groundhog".

Despite all this, the movie is more about abandonment (or feelings there-of) than deception. This really screams "Ho ho ho!", doesn't it?

Even at the very end of the movie, mercifully less than 100 minutes in, we learn they're still keeping secrets from each-other. And, in a continued break from reality, they celebrate the suddenly-unveiled news rather than distrusting the deception... even though she mentions it.

There are worse movies. But this is pretty bad.

"Second Chance Christmas" is a Drama - Romance movie in which we watch a woman suffering from amnesia after an accident and she tries to remember her life, her husband and her routine. Her husband, family and friends help her as they can in order for her to remember everything as fast as possible.

I liked this movie because it was entertaining and it had a simple but good enough plot to make it interesting. It reminded the movie "The Vow" of 2012 since the plot is mostly the same. The interpretations of both Katrina Begin who played as Caroline and Tilky Jones who played as Jack were good and their combination worked also pretty good. The direction which was made by Danny Buday was average without something worth mentioning. To sum up, I have to say that "Second Chance Christmas" is another average Christmas, romantic movie with some cliché moments but still entertaining.

Jack is lazy, undisciplined, and has an iffy relationship with the truth.

Caroline is demanding, apparently micromanaging, and is unethical enough to deceive her husband into signing divorce papers without knowing.

Jack, in conspiracy with Caroline's parents, continues to lie to Caroline more than a few times. They justify it by saying they are trying not to stress her, but he doesn't have enough love or respect for her to clean up the house even a little before she gets home.

All this in the first quarter of the movie. At this point I wasn't sure I empathized with either one of them. She becomes more likable after the amnesia, but I can't tell he has improved at all. In fact I dislike him more and more because he is so stupid in addition to every other flaw.

In some movies, personalities change 180 with barely any justification for it. This movie does a great job of explaining changes.

The last third or so of the movie disappointed me and I don't want to spoil anything as to why.