I just finished this movie on Hulu. Yes, it's about a Chicago reporter having a bad time, even his pregnant wife is keeping potentially happy news from him. The movie starts off with the evils of the big city, where even the Christmas music is about a man wanting remain warm with his babe to a singer wanting nothing but money for Xmas.
The reporter returns to the small town in Texas where he was born. It's got your token jolly fat person (Vanessa) to the moody Sheriff out for our unemotional hero. By the time the movie ends, you really don't emphasize with any of the characters at all. There's no hint on why the Judge.hit the seal adoption records to begin with? You get a 5-second spot when the Judge brings Jack to his birth mother's grave, but the scene does absolutely nothing about helping the view feel that special moment when he sees his mother's grave for the first time.
I come from a family full of adoptees and I know the personal journey of wanting to find birth family or not. One birth was teenaged parents who had a child in the middle of the depression, to another where the older guy lied to the young woman that he was divorced but he wasn't. She had to leave her home to hide somewhere to give birth. I had stood at the headstone of my birth grandmother, next to her brother and her parents, feeling a rush of joy and sadness at finding her and where she rests now. The movie didn't even touch on that strong emotion that could have helped give the film more emotional range and really could have touched the viewers' hearts in so many ways.
The movie got 4 stars because of the music and the good performances of Naomi and the Preacher. The rest was as wooden as the nativity scene that was supposed to be a major plot point.
Oh on Hulu, be careful, the next movie the program wanted to play was "Kirk Cameron Saves Christmas". I've seen that one do, DO NOT WASTE your valuable time with one at all.
The reporter returns to the small town in Texas where he was born. It's got your token jolly fat person (Vanessa) to the moody Sheriff out for our unemotional hero. By the time the movie ends, you really don't emphasize with any of the characters at all. There's no hint on why the Judge.hit the seal adoption records to begin with? You get a 5-second spot when the Judge brings Jack to his birth mother's grave, but the scene does absolutely nothing about helping the view feel that special moment when he sees his mother's grave for the first time.
I come from a family full of adoptees and I know the personal journey of wanting to find birth family or not. One birth was teenaged parents who had a child in the middle of the depression, to another where the older guy lied to the young woman that he was divorced but he wasn't. She had to leave her home to hide somewhere to give birth. I had stood at the headstone of my birth grandmother, next to her brother and her parents, feeling a rush of joy and sadness at finding her and where she rests now. The movie didn't even touch on that strong emotion that could have helped give the film more emotional range and really could have touched the viewers' hearts in so many ways.
The movie got 4 stars because of the music and the good performances of Naomi and the Preacher. The rest was as wooden as the nativity scene that was supposed to be a major plot point.
Oh on Hulu, be careful, the next movie the program wanted to play was "Kirk Cameron Saves Christmas". I've seen that one do, DO NOT WASTE your valuable time with one at all.