Addy works for a tech company and spends all her time creating Christmas content, the latest example of which is a Christmas Wish app with a ho-ho-ho-ing Santa who pops up on her phone daily. Ironically, her one time of year to get away from the holiday spirit is at Christmas which she spends in the Maldives. This year, however, her brother Connor asks her to come home for Christmas because he's going to propose to his longtime girlfriend Sienna in front of the whole family, so she agrees to postpone the tropical trip until the 26th. (Is that really a thing, proposing in front of the whole family??) She is upset by pressure from her mom to come home more often, and by her father's distant manner (he feels shut out of her life), and even some pressure after a sorta meet-cute with Hunter, an auto repair guy. She makes a wish by her Christmas wish app that there was no such thing as Christmas. Moments later, she's in a minor car accident and when Hunter stops to help her, she discovers that the whole world has gone black & white. She thinks it's a visual injury, but when she gets home, she realizes that her wish has come true: Christmas and all its trimmings are gone. Her mission now is to get people to remember Christmas by sparking holiday memories in them, at which point they turn back to color.
To its credit, Hallmark keeps trying slightly different things. The film is a cross between Pleasantville (mix of black & white and color) and It's a Wonderful Life, with some of the short story Christmas Every Day (or its opposite) sprinkled in. The mix of color with black & white is technically handled quite well and makes for enchanting moments when color comes seeping back into people and backgrounds. The characters, however, are plucked from the same templates as always: Addy (Lyndsy Fonesca) is the woman with big city business pressures, Hunter (Michael Rady) is the grounded small-town guy who works with his hands, and the parents are there to provide both conflict and support. Fonesca is fine though Rady seems to be a little burned out on holiday movies. The handsome Andrew David Bridges shines as the brother, and should get his own Hallmark lead role soon. My favorite moment is a meta-moment that is rare in Hallmark films: in the black & white town, Addy prods her mother to remember the Christmas movie marathons they used to sit through, and Mom replies that, no, it's New Year's movies that are all the rage, and they even start running them in June! [Hallmark]
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