My review was written in December 1987 after watching the film on Charter Entertainment video cassette.
"Emanon" is a well-meaning but unsuccessful throwback to inspirational cinema, combining elements that would have fit in a Shirley Temple film in the 1930s with a plot line suited for a "Highway to Heaven" tv episode. Pic, a family effort by two generations of the Paul brood, was self-distributed briefly in 1986 ahead of current home video availability.
Writer-direct Stuart Paul also appears as Emanon (that's No Name spelled backwards), a young Bowery bum in New York, who performs very minor "miracles" such as delivering a baby and convincing a young model (r4eal-life sister Bonnie Paul) not to jump off a church roof in despair.
Emanon is befriended by rich, crippled kid Jason (Jeremy Miller) whose beautiful mom Molly (Cheryl M. Lynn) is struggling to run her late husband's fashion business. With Emanon's help, Molly "creates" a new line of peasant garb to save her nest egg, while Jason miraculously throws his crutches away at the climax. Absurd overstatement has Emanon literally crucified by an angry New York mob, mad that he is not the messiah they thought he was.
Picture is overly saccharine in driving home its message of faith, while the casting of the two leads, Paul himself and Lynn, leaves it sorely lacking in acting skills. Jeremy Miller as the cute kid handles the thesping quota while Patrick right, a familiar face from B pictures, provides comic relief as the kid's chauffeur.
