12 DATES OF CHRISTMAS (2012)

It's Christmas Eve and Kate has a plan. She heads to a department store to pick up a gift for her ex-boyfriend Jack to give him when they meet later when she hopes she can rekindle their relationship. Her stepmother has set her up on a blind date with a nice boy named Miles and the two of them are supposed to head over to the family home for dinner, but she's fully prepared to blow that off when Jack sees the error of his ways. However, at the department store, she gets perfume spritzed in her face and passes out. She comes to with a concerned older guy standing over her but seems to have no ill effects so goes on her way. Stopping at her apartment, she is brusque to her friendly neighbor who has baked her some bread. At a bar, she mistakes a nerd named Toby for her date and is rude to him. She meets Miles, who is handsome and pleasant enough, but disses him to meet Jack. Unfortunately, Jack has brought along his new girlfriend whom he is taking off to a cabin for a romantic Christmas Eve. She agrees to take Jack's dog for the weekend (the one nice thing she does) and falls asleep alone, but at the stroke of midnight, a spark shoots out of her TV set, turned to a shopping channel selling an Christmas partridge ornament, and she is whooshed back in time to earlier in the day when she wakes to find herself on the department store floor, and is soon reliving her disappointing Christmas Eve--and she'll have to go through it twelve times, as we know from the title. 

Yes, it's Groundhog Day set at Christmas, which means that slowly, the selfish Kate will learn lessons in relationships, humility, friendship, and generally being a nice human being. But Groundhog Day itself was clearly inspired in part by Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" in which someone is forced to relive the past to become a better person. Also in the mix is a classic short story called "Christmas Every Day" in which a boy's wish that everyday could be Christmas is granted--bad things happen and lessons are learned (and that story was made into an ABC Family Christmas movie back in the 90s). So I didn't hold the rip-off against this film too much. At first, Kate focuses on winning back Jack, but she also begins paying attention to the people around her--her neighbor, the loser Toby, the helpful man in the department store--and each relived day, she becomes nicer. But there's still the matter of accepting that Jack is out of the picture, and that maybe Miles is a nicer guy than she gives him credit for. 

The acting is fine, with Amy Smart as Kate and Mark-Paul Gosselaar as Miles. I like that the ex (played by Benjamin Ayres) is presented as a nice guy, not a jerk as in so many Christmas romances. And I really like the final Christmas Eve which involves a gathering that would have been unthinkable on the first of Kate's Christmas Eves. But twelve eves are too many. I know twelve goes with the Christmas carol, but things would have played out more compactly and smoothly with just maybe six relivings. Still, the movie's heart is in the right place, and while I might not want to rewatch this twelve times, I could stand to see it again sometime. [Amazon Prime]