A Town Without Christmas

A thoroughly enjoyable film, that hopefully will become an annual event. The network was wise enough to run it the following year, & let's hope that in 2003, they show it again. I'd love to see this one come out on video, as it's a jewel. Of course, Peter Falk steals the show.

What a lovely movie. Not the standard Christmas movie (though I like those as well). We can often get caught up in the busy-ness (is that a word?!) of life, and especially at Christmas, and forget to remember the real meaning of Christmas. And Rick Roberts, as always, was adorable.

A Town Without Christmas is just that. Warm. Plus, it's always great to see Peter Falk. The rest of the cast is great also. I'd recommend it for all families looking for something sweet and fun. My rating: 9 of 10.

Loved the first 60 minutes of this movie. We have mystery, fun and excitement. A reporter sent, wonderful paintings predicting future events, a kind act by the reporter for which the lady gave her a red coat and she twirls. Then the story sort of falls apart for me, it gets real weak. Now we end with this pageant which is going to be canceled because the power is shut off. Our hero finds Peter Falk as the magical Max and gets candles so we can have Christmas. This confusion put me to sleep. My wife agreed that the candle part was pretty lame but she would rate the movie a little higher. I am just disappointed they weren't more creative about the ending. Actually they may have been a bit lazy about the ending.

This is a fairly good mystery story in a Christmas and some romance jammed in. Several seemingly disjointed scenes begin the movie and start us on the mystery journey. There are actually a couple of mysteries going on revolving around each other. There is the little boy, Chris, who is apparently missing or hiding despite the fact that no parents show up to join the hunt that has become a huge circus in town. The second mystery is David's past. He too was lost as a little boy but he's not quite sure how he was rescued.

The acting is solid. Patricia Heaton and Rick Roberts work well together, but there really isn't much screen time devoted to developing any romance. Most of the screen time revolves around the mysteries. I thought the ending would be something else, so I would say the mystery wasn't overly predictable. Some of the results at the end were generally predictable, but after all it is a Christmas romance movie. (I saw it on a Hallmark channel, but the beginning didn't credit Hallmark.)

The story has some unnatural elements. Peter Falk is Max who seems to show up in interesting places to give them clues, but he can span distances in what seems like magic. He also paints pictures of mundane events in David and MJ's life and some of the paintings are in their possession before the events happen.