Tockinit not horrible nor great

Tedfoldol everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Comwayon A Disappointing Continuation

Delight Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

rebekahrox A lower tier Hall of Fame caliber movie, but Hall of Fame worthy none the less. The cast was strong and the main actors well known and respected. Dermot Mulroney and Kimberly Williams Paisley made an attractive and likable couple. I personally find Danny Glover incredibly annoying, but I love Joan Cusack and enjoyed her role in this movie. The setting on the train to California? I loved it, but I'm prejudiced. I was lucky enough as a teen to travel from Chicago to Los Angeles on the El Capitan and The City of Los Angeles and back again during the Christmas Season. The plot was OK and benefited from being based on a David Baldacci book. The twist at the end really saved the story, though. After reading another reviewers comparison to the book, I really am considering reading the book upon which this was based.Reviewing Hallmark Christmas movies are kind of a stupid hobby of mine, and I like to review the dreadful ones and the enjoyable ones or if I think I have something valuable to point out. I am jotting down a little review of this one because it's a cut above the usual.

jclampett-25271 This movie was nothing like the book. Sorry, but If I didn't read the book, maybe I could deal with Hallmark and put up with the heavy sighs and "pregnant" pauses during the movie. The acting is generally OK and the movie is worth watching, but for me, I was disappointed. In addition, the ending left me wondering, huh, is this it?

brysoncole Only reason for writing this review today is because in one of the scenes they stop in a town called La Junta, Co. now I'm born and raised in that neck of the woods and i sure can't remember being able to see mountains from La junta. If you would like to know La Junta is a small town located in the Arkansas valley. It is a very rural community and a main train depot on the plains.

eapepin-01129 Having watched many Hallmark Christmas movies and reviewed a few of them, I realized my mistake with this one was that I read the book first. Well, listened, to be accurate. I use Audible and I listened to this book over the course of a two day drive. Hallmark is good, but trying to edit a David Baldacci book into a 2 hour movie and still keep the plot and the characters true is impossible. If you've ever read Baldacci, you know his plot lines are very, very detailed, convoluted and constantly shifting. So are his characters. You can read for two hours and be on the same character. By the time the book is over, you feel an intimate connection with all of them... even the truly nasty ones. None of that works in the movie. Had I not listened to the book, the movie would have been adequate. Not the most entertaining they've ever produced, but adequate. The fact is I did, and you can't go back and un-know what the movie left out. You can't realize how badly the plot line has been chopped and characters replaced and some not appearing at all. Casting wasn't bad, although Danny Glover didn't seem the right fit for the director. Conspicuous by his absence was a pretty main character, that of Danny Glover's assistant, who, by the way, end up with Lelia at the end. He is completely written out of the movie. Scenes that are glossed over or last no more than fleeting minutes take up hours in the book's plot Line. I found myself shaking my head wondering what parallel universe I had just been shot into. The snowshoe scene in the movie lasts 2 minutes and plays like an afternoon tea party with the most dangerous event being snowflakes landing on his nose. In the book, it spans into 30 pages of an overnight adventure that almost costs Tom and Elanor their lives. Everything item, character, and event is compressed, and granted, had you not read the book, you probably might not realize that fact. What you might notice is how the threads don't weave into a story that has any continuity. The long threads were shortened, cut and tied to the ends of other threads that were similarly cut. Character development, one of Baldacci's strong suits, is completely eliminated. You find yourself not connecting with any of them. Agnes, Roxanne and Regina make up 30% of the plot line. Their characters are so fully developed, you feel every emotion she possesses. In the movie they are almost an afterthought. In fact, I don't remember Regina having any dialogue at all. If you read the book you would have realized Berta, from Two and a half Men, would have been the perfect Agnes. Joan Cusack didn't come close to capturing her.I'm usually a pretty big cheerleader for Hallmark Christmas movies, but this one just didn't make the cut. I tried watching as if I had not read the book, but even in that mindset, there were too many holes and too few interesting characters. Actors too wooden; dialogue too basic and too many Christmas songs that just had no bearing on the movie or the plot. Sorry Hallmark. The commercials you ran during the movie were produced better.