I wish Hallmark kept Under The Christmas Sky a little more secret. All of the commercials featured a child in a wheelchair squealing “You’re an ASTRONAUT?!” So we know it’s astronaut-related somehow, right?
Kat (Jessica Parker Kennedy) is an astrophysicist who specializes in the sun. After a terrible car accident leaves her with a blind spot in her vision, Kat is unsure where her life is headed. Her boss gets her a consulting job helping David (Ryan Paevey) with a Christmas exhibit at the local planetarium. Will Kat figure out where her future lies?
I’m not a big science person. However, some of this movie felt really wrong. They frequently refer to David’s place of work as “the planetarium.” But it’s more like a museum with a planetarium inside. Maybe I’m being too nitpicky about that but like a museum and a planetarium are two different things. Right?
I also feel like they are super confused about Kat’s eyesight. Her eye doctor seemed to blow it off with a “Well, if it hasn’t fixed itself by now, it never will.” But Kat said that the blind spot was caused by hitting her head in the car accident. So is it a problem with her eye or a problem with her brain? Everyone keeps having her do these eye exercises but maybe the actual eye isn’t the problem! The issue felt like a tacked on reason that the writers needed in order to dash her dreams of going to the space station.
At the same time, they made too big of a deal about the blind spot. We are given shots that are supposed to be from Kat’s point of view and it looks like a big smudge in her vision. Yet the writers are literally trying to equate her slightly impaired vision with people in wheelchairs. ‘We can’t go to space but we can still work in the space industry!’
It’s another movie that isn’t terrible but it wasn’t particularly good either. My favorite parts were with Kat’s brother Andy (Andrew Bushell) and Celeste (Sydney Sabiston) who also works at the museum. They were a much more interesting couple.
Rating: Failure to launch