Go into this with the understanding that there’s a magic phone, one that allows our main character (Georgie McCool) to communicate with her husband back before he was her husband, back during a terrible week in which she thought she would lose him forever. Understand that you will never get an explanation for the magic phone. Think of the magic phone like Clarence showing George what could have been, or the ghosts giving Scrooge a tour of things. Accept that, and it’s a wonderful little story.
“Nobody’s lives just fit together. Fitting together is something you work at. It’s something you make happen – because you love each other.”
Georgie McCool has been married for years to a wonderful, understanding, patient man named Neal–one whom she’s probably been taking advantage without realizing it. They have two small children that he stays home with while Georgie works her ass off writing for a show she hates, and dreaming about the show she wants to create. Just before Christmas, she gets an opportunity to make the dream show a reality. This leads to a fight, which ends in the husband taking the kids home to Nebraska and Georgie crashing at her mom’s house…where the landline somehow allows her to talk to her husband, pre-marriage, and circa the last major fight they had.
You have to accept a lot. The magic phone, Georgie’s inability to keep her cell phone charged (thus forcing her to use the landline), the fact that Neal never even tries to call Georgie while he’s gone. If you can get past that, it’s really a great story about how marriages change with time, how having kids and a career affects how people live and love and communicate, and how that magic can be brought back. You just have to figure out how. It’s also a good lesson about some advice I got when I first got married–the first fight you have will be the same fight you have every time, whether it’s about money or family or time or what. You just have to decide if that person is worth that fight.