Rent Last Train to Christmas (2021)

Surprisingly Enjoyable - Last Train to Christmas review by GI

Although this is not very 'Christmassy' it does cleverly use the season to open the door to some magic and allow the main character to achieve redemption similarly to Scrooge in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol where he can sort of travel through different realities to find some moral happiness. Michael Sheen is fantastic here and funny too (especially with the various daft hairstyles he carries off with aplomb) as Nottingham based club owning entrepreneur Tony Towers. Tony is a shallow, fame loving man who is on a train from London to Nottingham going to a Christmas family reunion. It's 1985 and Tony is joined by his much younger fiancée (Nathalie Emmanuel) and his less successful brother, Roger (Cary Elwes). Then Tony finds that when he moves into different carriages of the train he is either in the future or in his past where he sees how his life decisions affect him and his family. Director Julian Kemp manages this concept so well even allowing for the viewer to be as confused as Tony but once we grasp what Tony is experiencing the film holds the attention and gives the audience the chance to root for Tony, a shallow man who can be saved by this experience. And of course it's an experience that we all wish we could have, the chance to go back and change our mistakes and/or see how things will turn out in the future. This is a film that really works, it's not a schmaltzy Christmas film but a humorous look at life with a good message.

Highly-enjoyable and watchable time-slip Christmas TV movie - Last Train to Christmas review by PV

This was great fun to watch - and will appeal especially to those of a certain age who remember the 1970s and 80s and 90s.

It is all a time-slip drama really and in that genre - SCROOGE/S Christmas Carol was an early timeslip drama of course and the ultimate Christmas timeslip experience.

It is all very cleverly handled re the times/eras (NO SPOILERS) and the changes in fashion/music are great fun. It works best on that level. People may compare it to SLIDING DOORS which I found annoying. I much prefer THE TIME MACHINE (1961). Or early DR Who from 1970s.

I do not always like local south Walian boy Michael Sheen but he shines here (see what I did there?) LOL. Who'd have thunk all this was mostly filmed in fake trains in the Bay Studios shed in Swansea? After its time as a Nightingale hospital in the 2020 pandemic, that is. Caricatures of buffoon men from the era are not new - a recent TV sitcom about an electronics shop owner in 1980s northern England ploughed the same furrow. And middle-aged white males are SUCH an EASY target. But Sheen does well to convince with what could have been a 2-D cartoon character. He makes it more than that, as does the writer 9also director).

Eton-educated Cary Elwes amazes as the brother with a decent Nottingham accent (he's known now for the SAW movies but starred in Another Country as Rupert Everett's lover in ANOTHER COUNTRY based on the schooldays of spy Guy Burgess and based on Julian Mitchell's play; Colin Firth stars in that too and the whole dreamy Eton English schooldays shtick inspired the Style Council's LONG HOT SUMMER song and video and Paul Weller got all Eton-esque, for a while anyway...)

The weak point is the ending which, even though it means to be 'progressive', ends up being really rather pofaced and puritanical, making HUGE assumptions about what is best for a child BUT... I suppose it had to end somewhere, but the fingerwagging moralising annoys.. THE MESSAGE is rammed home with tears. My eyes rolled...

This works best as pure time-slip fun. 4 stars

The end credits promise a sequel I think... or similar, YESTERDAY TOMORROW or something...