"The Gift of Love: A Christmas Story" is a TV film that is a big draw because of the cast. But the plot and screenplay for this film just don't work. The very long dream that Lee Remick's Janet Broderick lives through drags on and on. In one scene after another there's just a little dialog and then long periods of silence. That's supposed to convey Janet or Aunt Min as pensive and thinking. Well, it doesn't take long or much acting or camera work to get that idea across. Audiences can pick up on things like that very fast.
So many strange and far-out things happen that together make this such a hokey story. An out-of-town stranger proposes on first sight, and the couple marry at some time later. A bell-ringing Santa and helper, after the first person of the morning drops some money into their bucket, decide to pick up and move "to the mall." Dad in the dream shows up with a horse-drawn sleigh and carries the family back home. The sleigh crosses a small town in front of the town's Christmas tree and large church, where there are no apparent streets or sidewalks. A young boy falls through the ice of the mill pond, and is later found alive and dry under a big fur blanket in an abandoned cottage in the dead of winter. A grandfather finds a boy's hat floating in a small hole in the mill pond ice and returns home saying the boy is missing.
This is a hodgepodge of a screenplay that seems to have a bunch of small incidents just thrown together. It doesn't link events in any semblance of continuity of a story. The two kids get in fights in two places that seem overly contrived. They go to a costume party before Christmas and are the only ones in costume, and after they are made fun of, the next scene shifts to the adults at home with nothing further about the kids and their experience.
I have seen any number of good Christmas and holiday films about love, and redemption, and courage, and change, and loss, and love rediscovered. But this one is flatter than a pancake. Except for Angela Lansbury, the acting is subpar by everyone, starting with Remick and including all the rest of the cast. The story is hokey, and without any really redeeming aspects. It was a challenge to sit through this film. From the midpoint on it was boring and even aggravating - as though Remick could never get it together to finish her dream.
Very few people have rated this film nearly 40 years after it appeared. My guess is that some have started it, given up halfway through and just not bothered to weigh in on it. Even many of the sappy holiday romance and other films that are standard fare for the end of the year are more tolerable to watch than this very slow and dull film. When the kids' fights seem hokey and phony, one can't expect much of a heart-warming or meaningful story.
My guess is that nine out of 10 viewers wouldn't care to stick with this film to the end. This TV film was made for annual viewing and apparently was shown by CBS a few years. I'd never heard of it before this year, and my family used to watch all the Christmas movies that appeared on TV. That included some that were not so good and that we probably forgot and never watched over successful Christmas holidays. We may have watched this film one year and completely forgotten it - for the impression it left.
Many an old Christmas story is repeated annually on TV, but this isn't one of them. "The Homecoming: A Christmas Story" was made 12 years before this film and it's become a holiday classic. One can buy a DVD of that film for half the price of this poor film. And many more people - young and old, will watch and enjoy "The Homecoming" story for decades to come. But this movie is truly a Christmas turkey.
1 out of 2 found this helpful