I love Ashley Williams. She may be the perkiest of a host of perky Hallmark actors. Some see that as her flaw, but I enjoy it. In this movie, she tones that done to almost normal and deals with some more serious themes and does it well.
Nikki DeLoach makes an appearance as a seminar teacher and is not credited by IMDb as of this writing. It is a fairly brief appearance but not a total walk though. The significance of this is that DeLoach was the star of the original Five More Minutes.
It was tough to beat the original story and a viewer who saw that will figure some things out quickly. These things were played as a twist in the original (although a twist that isn't hard to guess). That steals some of the thunder of this movie. Also, other than the device used in both movies, this movie is a lot like most of the common rom/coms on Hallmark Channel, which is a sister channel to Hallmark Movies and Mysteries. HMM usually has stories that are less fluffy than HC, but this movie disappointed me because I feel like it fit more in tune with HC than HMM. I say this because so many of the story devices in the usual fluff are in this movie right through to the conflict and climax.
The acting is decent and the dialogue is slightly better than some of the dozens of Christmas rom/coms this year, but also not nearly the best. I already commented sufficiently on the romance story. The story of the son is nice, but should have taken a larger share.
I was looking forward to this because of Williams and because the original 5 More was good and I really hoped that this would be a fitting climax to 2022's Miracles of Christmas. It was not. This movie will not go on my must rewatch list.
