Tom Langdon, tired and cynical journalist, travels by train so as to get story ideas for a book. He meets up with Eleanor Carter, his ex-lover and partner, who left him long ago in another country when they were covering a war. One thing leads to another, and they end up about to get married. What else?
This is a Hallmark movie, the video version of Harlequin Romance. Like any such romance, it focuses almost entirely on the character's feelings, which are sketched in with cliched dialogue, portentous glances, one world-weary sigh after another, and so on. These books and movies are designed to enable the audience to fantasise a life- and love-style. I recorded it last December for later viewing because it was set on a train.
The movie's adapted from a novel by David Baldacci, a shlock writer of considerable skill. He has the formulas down pat, and knows how to plot the story so that it's just over the line of reality, which makes suspension of disbelief easier. Unless, like me, you happen to have technical knowledge that spoils the illusion. There were too many small inconsistencies in the railroad setting, along with a major plot-flaw involving an avalanche and an inability to radio the dispatcher. At that point, the train mysteriously morphed from a streamliner to a short string of BC Rail Budd RDCs.
I have a copy of Baldacci's book. It begins, "Tom Langdon was a journalist, a globe-trotting one, because it was in his blood to roam widely." That vapid sentence captures the tone of the movie perfectly. I enjoyed the silliness of it, and was, I confess, hard put to resist the mawkish sentimentality of its Christmas spirit. Nevertheless, I rate it only *½ (6/10)
Review of The Christmas Train
The Christmas Train
(2017 TV Movie)
Charming Christmas Silliness - if You're in the Mood for it
14 April 2020