Ugh, guys, I am not great at updating this blog. I’m keeping up with the movie watching, but writing down my entries is tough. This is partially because my baby will only take daytime naps while she is in motion. At night I can put her down in her rocker and she’ll happily stare at the ceiling fan until she falls asleep, but if I do the exact same thing during the day she is like “HOW DARE YOU!” and goes on a sleep strike until I hold her while walking in circles around my house. I’m only typing this now because I tricked her into falling asleep on the car on the way home from the grocery store, and she is miraculously still asleep in her car seat (edit: it has actually taken me three days to finish this entry, but that’s partially because this movie is too bonkers to quickly summarize). Babies are weird, man.
But you aren’t here for my thoughts on child rearing. We are past Thanksgiving, which means that we are getting into the good movies now on Hallmark. And by “good” I mean “starring big name B list actors.” What better place to start than “The Christmas Train” which has FOUR big name B list actors?
My friend Ali texted me on the Sunday after Thanksgiving and said “You straight up need to see the Dermot Mulroney Christmas train movie. You have to.” I asked if she had any thoughts to share so I had a hint of what I was in for, and she said “No, it’s better if you just watch it.” And so I did, and I was not disappointed, because it was straight up crazy town. Instead of taking notes, I sent Ali about 50 text messages sharing my thoughts and feelings in real time. I’m sure she appreciated that unlimited texting is a thing.
In a Nutshell
Dermot Mulroney is getting ready to go on some kind of trip. He has many leather-bound books, and I’m assuming his apartment smells of rich mahogany. We see his award for journalism prominently on the shelf, which is our final clue that he is a Serious Journalist. He heads to Union Station in D.C. (props to Hallmark for getting actual B roll of Union Station instead of just putting up a generic Canadian train station…budget must be higher for Hallmark Hall of Fame movies) and we find out that he is going to board a train to Los Angeles because now he does fluffy human interest stories instead of Serious Journalism (if you think we are going to find out why, then clearly you have never seen a Hallmark movie). Also, something about his dad loved trains? Anyway, he’s taking the train at Christmas to see what kind of stories jump out at him. He’s also visiting a kind of girlfriend who he talks to on the phone. She does not seem to like him very much, and seems mad that he is taking a multi-day train trip instead of flying like a normal person. She (probably correctly) guesses that he doesn’t want to spend too much time with her over the holidays. Dermot does not correct her, and it seems pretty clear that they will break up once he gets to LA.
At the train station, we also see Kimberly Williams-Paisley and Danny Glover standing next to a comically large stack of luggage.
Let’s pause for a second. Danny Glover, if you’re reading this, please find some way to send us a sign that you are ok. I am very concerned that you need money very badly if you agreed to be in this nonsense. I’m assuming there is some kind of gambling debt or blackmail hush money involved. Like, Dermot Mulroney I get, because I feel like he was always just Generic 90s Handsome Man. Hallmark is the sweet spot for aging Generic 90s Handsome Man actors. But you were Murtaugh, Danny Glover! You’re better than this!
Where was I? Oh yeah, comically large stack of luggage. Danny Glover is a famous director, and Kimberly Williams-Paisley is his screenwriter. He has insisted that they fly from LA to DC and then take the train back from DC to LA so that Kimberly can get inspired to write Danny Glover’s next movie, which will be a romance set on a train. This. Makes. No. Sense. Why not just take a round-trip train ride from LA? Why go all the way to DC? Kimberly is skeptical of this plan, but not skeptical enough given how bonkers it is. Kimberly is talking about how she’s not the right person to write the screenplay because she is only good at fixing other people’s screenplays. Danny Glover says she’s like a daughter to him, and he believes in her, etc. They board the train, and we meet a colorful cast of characters. This includes busybody Joan Cusack, a lady train conductor, an old man who used to be a train engineer but now just rides the train ominously foreshadowing possible danger because they made him retire (I recognized this actor of all people because it’s Mac from Window Wonderland!), an old man trying to read “A Christmas Carol” because he promised his wife he would read it before she passed away, some sort of psychic woman who seems very unnecessary to the plot, and a really obnoxious young couple that we are going to get into in a lot of detail in a minute.
Here were the stream of consciousness texts I sent to Ali without waiting for a reply:
Why does Joan Cusack look so old?
Are trains really this nice that they have desks?
Do you think the writer of this movie got super meta and rode the train from DC to LA while working on the screenplay for a movie that is about writing a screenplay for a movie about writing the train?!?!
OK, I’m done for now. Maybe. NO I’M NOT THESE PEOPLE ARE GETTING MARRIED ON THE TRAIN WHAT IS HAPPENING
Is Joan Cusack Santa?
I hope you are on an airplane and you end up with 100 text messages about this dumb movie when you land.
We soon find out that Dermot and Kimberly used to date when they were both war correspondents (Kimberly was also a Serious Journalist before selling out and becoming a Hollywood screenwriter). They start bickering immediately, because seeing each other again brings up all kinds of old feelings. At one point Ali asked me what part I was at, and I said “Kimberly and Dermot just had their fight in the dining car.” Ali replied with “That could be literally any scene.” Danny Glover is immune to the awkwardness and keeps trying to bring the two of them together to write her screenplay/his article, even though this is clearly very uncomfortable for both of them. Joan Cusack observes from a distance and interjects her opinion where no one has asked for it.
There is this very obnoxious subplot going with the young couple that is going to get married on the train that I hated from the very beginning. First of all, they claim they are eloping because “his family is high society Washington DC and I’m just a poor girl from Kentucky.” Nobody talks like that in 2017. She has no Kentucky accent. Second, they are getting married ON A TRAIN because her parents got married on a train. Nope. Not a thing. Their minister is supposed to board at the first stop, but he doesn’t. How do you know a minister in Ohio? Why not just bring someone from DC? Why don’t you just go elope at the courthouse like normal humans? Good news, though, Danny Glover is apparently ordained and decides to marry them and throw their wedding, which actually ends up being in a train station and not even on the train after all of that (but the reception is on a train, so I guess that counts). I’m getting ahead of myself though. The couple keeps taking every small obstacle along the way as a sign that they should not get married, and then they need Kimberly and Dermot to talk them back into getting married. It’s exhausting. At one point the man gets a phone call saying his parents are going to disinherit him, and he tries to leave in a taxi. Dermot tells him he should just follow his heart, and then the dude asks Dermot to be his best man. Kimberly somehow ends up the maid of honor. STOP MAKING STRANGERS YOUR MAIDS OF HONOR, BRIDES. There are just a bunch of super shifty things about this couple. They are talking to each other like they just met, and he has a SAG card in his wallet even though he allegedly works for his father’s firm in DC. Later it all becomes clear with the big twist ending…
So yeah, there’s a train, and a wedding, and Danny Glover, and people writing, and some weird little sub subplot where stuff on the train keeps going missing. It goes on like this for some time. Dermot says more than once “This isn’t the story I expected to write.” I wonder if he was thinking to himself “This isn’t the career I expected to have.”
Are There Obstacles To Their Love/Christmas Spirit?
Dermot Mulroney’s girlfriend randomly boards the train somewhere in the Midwest. Yes, even though they just had a huffy stilted phone conversation where it sounded like both parties really wanted to break up, the girlfriend shows up on the train just as Dermot and Kimberly are rekindling their love and proposes to Dermot. Then she becomes obsessed with getting a part in Danny Glover’s movie (she’s an actress…more specifically, a voiceover actress who is the voice of a cartoon beaver. Could not make this up if I tried). Even though Dermot does not say yes to the proposal and keeps telling Kimberly he doesn’t know why this crazy girlfriend is here, Kimberly decides they should not rekindle their relationship. OBSTACLE!
We also find out that Kimberly left Dermot when they were both war correspondents because she wanted “a house with a white picket fence and a husband who comes home.” Yup, that sounds consistent with the personality of a person who becomes a war correspondent. This is a sidebar, but there is a very dumb scene where an arrogant chess master is beating everyone at chess, but Kimberly beats HIM at chess because of chess skills she learned while a war correspondent. It made me super mad at the lazy lazy writers who wrote this movie, because it was one of the stupider scenes in a movie full of stupid scenes. So yeah, I guess Kimberly’s secret desires to lead a suburban lifestyle end up being a wedge that continues in the relationship? Honestly, I stopped caring about this couple like 2/3 of the way through the movie.
But Do They Find The Meaning of Christmas?!?
So the train gets stuck in a blizzard someplace outside of Denver after all of the retired engineer’s ominous warnings, in a plot twist we all saw coming a mile away. Evidently no one will know exactly where this train is on the train tracks. I don’t think this is how trains work; pretty sure some kind of central control would know exactly where this train was because it is tracking the train remotely through the magic of 2017 technology. We need to ignore this reality though so we can have a bizarre ten minutes where apparently all the people on the train become convinced they are going to die and start giving away the presents they got for their loved ones to the other people on the train because the train is their family now and Christmas spirit. The engineer sends Dermot and Kimberly out into the storm to…get help? I was never clear on this plan and why it required two people from the train to set out by snow shoe. I guess Hallmark ran out of money after paying for all of that Union Station footage, because the snow storm is totally laughable. They are out walking around in a light flurry while the sun is shining and we are supposed to believe they are in peril. Then they run into a log cabin, and the people living there bring them back to the train in a horse-drawn carriage, and I guess the day is saved? It’s not clear why. Did they call Amtrak from the cabin to say “Our train is here, but then you already knew that, because it’s 2017 and GPS technology exists”? Did they expect the horse-drawn carriage to pull the train engine? WHAT EVEN IS THIS PLAN, AND ALSO WHAT EVEN IS THE DANGER INVOLVED???
Sorry, what were we talking about? I just got distracted by the 8000 plot lines I am supposed to be following. Oh yeah, Christmas. The arrogant chess master learns the meaning of Christmas and teaches some young people to play chess, and the old man whose wife had passed away stops stealing things from everyone (oh yeah, the old man was the thief…honestly I’m just exhausted from everything in this movie and I simply don’t have time to address this ridiculous sub subplot) (Just kidding, I will address it because this weird sub subplot led us to the discovery that Joan Cusack is actually so noisy because she is the train marshal, which I guess is a thing? Everything in this movie is so dumb). Joan Cusack meets up with her estranged son again in Los Angeles; her son was an 11th hour plot addition because the writers thought we didn’t have enough stuff going on in this movie yet. The actor playing her son is so terrible that their tearful Christmas reunion did not seem heartfelt. Or maybe it was just that I genuinely didn’t care.
So yeah, Christmas!
But Do They Fall In Love At The End?!?!?!?!
Alright, so the peril of their Christmas rescue brings them back together, and Dermot and Kimberly are in love again. BUT THEN we hit the plot twist. Dermot comes across a script in Danny Glover’s trash can, and it contains some of the lines that the married couple have said to Dermot and Kimberly throughout the movie. When confronted, Danny Glover admitted that he set the whole thing up so that Dermot and Kimberly would fall back in love. He hired the young couple and the psychic (oh hey, psychic, forgot you were a thing) and DERMOT’S GIRLFRIEND to try to get Dermot and Kimberly together. WHAT. IS. EVEN. HAPPENING???? How did Danny Glover know Dermot would be taking this train and that he was Kimberly’s long-lost love? Why did Danny Glover think a young couple getting married would rekindle the romance for Dermot and Kimberly? Only half of the crazy cast of characters were hired actors, I think? Like, Joan Cusack and old man stealing things and retired train engineer were just there and acting zany, but the other zany people were Danny Glover’s creation? Why would Dermot’s girlfriend be actively working to get him together with another woman when they haven’t broken up yet? How did Danny Glover even FIND Dermot’s girlfriend and know they would be on the verge of breaking up? Why did we have to shoehorn in the fact that the actors hired to play the young couple in love actually fell in love with each other? Seriously, this movie was terrible.
Ali and I agree that Dermot Mulroney should receive a special Emmy for Best Staring Wistfully Out A Train Window and/or Best Wearing Of A Henley Sweater.
Is This Worth Watching?!?!
This movie is what shows up in the dictionary under “Hot Mess.” It is easier to follow the rules of True American than it is to follow the action here. The movie clearly stuck with Ali, because she texted me days later to present her theory that the writers made some of the actors so outlandishly bad because they know we are used to Hallmark actors being outlandishly bad, and thus we would not suspect the twist ending where they are actually actors. So you could watch it to try to untangle the meta web that Hallmark may or may not have spun. Or you can watch it to marvel in how far these actors have fallen. Sorry, Danny Glover.
Deck the Hall(mark Movie)s 
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