Wish for Christmas

Obviously taken from It's A Wonderful Life, it's turning out to be a bad wish for Christmas that young teen Anna Frick asks for and gets. Her father and mother Joey Lawrence and Leigh Allyn Baker are both attorneys and are most generous with time and money donating their services in a lot of pro bono work. But purportedly it's because of their faith. When their daughter begs off going to church Christmas Eve because she's on the dance committee for the Christmas school clambake also scheduled for Christmas Eve, they say no.

Like Jimmy Stewart who wishes he had never been born and gets an alternative universe, Frick's wish is that her parents never became Christians. Guess what, the next day they are money grubbing secularists and real shysters. Among other things they are retained as counsel to a bank that is busy throwing people out of their homes including the parents of a boy Frick has her eye on, Ryan Boudreau.

Gradually she comes to the conclusion she does not like how her world has changed. Given this is a Christian Christmas movie with certain parameters all of course gets righted in the end.

The cast is a likable one, a good ensemble has been assembled. Get the bathtowels ready folks though you're in for Johnstown Flood type crying jag.

Thank you for the beautiful perspective in a world that is so materialistic and selfish. It was well directed/produced and my husband and I really enjoyed the message sent through the movie.

I'm a big fan of Joey Lawrence. It's a pretty good movie but have a real issue how it makes it look like you have to be a religious fanatic who expects a prayer to solve all of their problems instead of of making things happen yourself. That if you're an atheist you aren't caring, sympathetic, helpful. Which isn't true at all. Atheists are just as caring, sympathetic, and helpful as religious people if not more so as we do it because we care not because we fear a imaginary being. This movie makes it look like you either got to be a fanatic or a selfish, uncaring jerk. I wish they could have swung it with some kind of middle ground.

The idea is interesting. The acting is acceptable. The story is a bit weak and the ending a bit anticlimactic. However it makes a good family, Christmas flick. Like a lot of Christian movies the foundational ideology and philosophy is assumed rather than built, which may leave non-Christian viewers a bit confused. Nonetheless, it's actually a bit better than many Christmas movies I've seen.

I agree with the other reviewer that it would be a shame to listen to religiously bigoted folks and miss this delightful movie. It may have elements slightly reminiscent of other films, but they are remotely similar, at most. A fabulous reminder that what the world truly needs all year long is less Santa and more Jesus. If you think that we're all here due to an illogically intricate bunch of cosmic randomness and genetic mistakes, you'll probably hate this movie. But if you're convinced there is eternal wisdom at work and it affects everyday life, enjoy!