A TIMELESS CHRISTMAS (2020)

On a December evening in 1903, Charles Whitley, a wealthy engineer and inventor, has bought at auction an antique Christmas clock for his fiancée Eliza, beating his business rival Harold Moran, whom he also suspects of being a rival for Eliza. In truth, Charles isn't really in love with her, but he thinks a man of his age and social standing should be married. The two have a spat about attending a party that night; he refuses to go, thinking it trivial and distracting, and she leaves in a huff. Charles' maid Rosie notices an inscription on the clock: "Wind once at Christmas moon, true love will find you soon." After she leaves, he does indeed wind the clock and he immediately passes out on the floor. When he wakes up, he is in his study, but things are very different. It’s now 2020 and the Whitley mansion has become a museum (Charles vanished mysteriously that night in 1903 and was never found) in which tours are given and actors dressed in period costumes play the parts of Charles, Eliza and Rosie. When an understandably confused Charles comes downstairs during a tour, he tries to order everyone out of the house. Megan, the woman playing Rosie, who also runs the museum, manages to make everyone think that his anger is part of the show--and later when the two figure out what has happened, Megan agrees to help him find the long-lost Christmas clock so he can reverse its actions and get back to 1903. However, there are complications. For one, after Charles disappeared, Eliza married his rival Harold and seemed to have led a happy life. Second, Megan, who is the great-granddaughter of the original Rosie, finds herself falling for the handsome and gentlemanly Charles.

This is an unusual story for a Hallmark movie: it opens with a ten-minute sepia-toned sequence set in the past, and the usual big-city/small-town conflicts aren't present--there is a small subplot about Megan applying for an academic job at a local university, but that takes up about three minutes of screen time. However, if you worry about Hallmark straying too far from their templates, the narrative settles down into the familiar plotline of one romantic lead who needs to come to the realization that he or she needs to give something up and stay with the other romantic lead. This is helped greatly by the handsome Ryan Paevey who does a nice job as a man uncomfortably out of his time. His way of indicating that he's from the past is to speak in complete sentences and to use formal, slightly stiff body language. There is some humor as he runs into things like cell phones and the Internet, but surprisingly that is kept to a minimum amount of comic relief. It also helps that Peavey has good chemistry with Erin Cahill who plays Megan as though she has some brains and common sense--not always in evidence in Hallmark heroines. A secondary romance involving two of the other actors in the museum is neither irritating nor especially involving. The device of the "Christmas moon" is explained as happening when there are two full moons in December. That doesn’t actually seem to be a "thing," but it’s clever. Overall, quite watchable. [Hallmark]