Christmas movies, while not strictly a genre of their own, have certainly become a distinct subset of films. Since the late 20th century, Hallmark and more than one other television channel have run movies set around Christmas for the holidays. And, Hollywood produces an occasional Christmas time film. They can cover the full range of genres - comedy, drama, musical, mystery, tragedy, war and Western. The most prolific are the romantic dramas that often include some light comedy.
The latter are so formulaic that one after another of such films seems a repeat or copy with just slight changes from the previous one. Many of these can seem like daytime soap operas, and after a while the films of this type become mundane and hardly interesting. The challenge for these films, to hold interest of viewers is to provide something new and different enough - still keeping their romance theme.
This TV movie for 2012, "Christmas Angel," fits that bill. There is enough difference in it, that it's almost too complicated a story to tell well in just under 90 minutes. A single mom and a daughter live next door to an old abandoned house with boarded windows. Melinda works as an events coordinator for a bakery, bistro and catering shop owned by her friends, Jeb and Daphney Conroy. The setting is in Louisiana. Daughter Olivia's best friend is the son of the Conroy's, Lucas. One day, he throws a stone at the old house and makes a wish as some sort of superstition that I never heard of.
Soon, Olivia sees blue light shining through a window of the old house at night. She is curious and goes snooping. An old lady lives there - Elsie Waybright, a one-time famous singer, Olivia discovers, who chooses to live in seclusion. Olivia also bumps into Dr. Nathan Davis leaving the house one day. She and her mom learn that he owns the house and had lived there at one time. As they all gradually get to know one another over time, and Olivia and Elsie hatch a sort of Christmas angel plan to answer wishes that people drop by in a box they put at the front gate, the mystery of who this woman is, who Dr. Nathan is, who Olivia's teacher is, and the unusual relationship of all of those people, unravels. And that is the key to this film keeping one's interest up. The romance between Melinda and Nathan is a foregone conclusion and is a small part of the story.
There are some plot holes in this film - there's no accounting for Olivia's father at all. Did he die? There's no mention if Melinda was a widow or divorcee. Or, was Olivia born out of wedlock? In time, one learns that Nathan is divorced and that his wife left him several years earlier because he couldn't have children. He wanted to adopt but she wanted to have her own children, so she left him and was now married and had three children.
There are more surprises about Elsie and a heart-rending moment for her toward the end. Izabela Vidovic is very good as the young Olivia - about 11 or 12 years old. Her persona with her quickness, smarts and frankness reminds one of that young girl, Addie Miles, in what has become a Christmas classic, "The House Without a Christmas Tree" of 1972.
At times, the acting with the two children, Olivia and Lucas, seems a bit forced and overly done. So, it doesn't come across quite real for kids. Maybe the producers were trying to impress on viewers that this was really a Christmas movie about kids.
Well, the story is different and interesting enough, and the cast and acting for the most part are good enough. So, this turns out to be a notch above the average film of this type.
