Craig Anderson Productions, Beth Grossbard Productions
Madeleine Stowe, James Remar, Ian Ziering, Tori Barban, Phillip Jarrett, Jayne Eastwood, Devon Weigel, Rebecca Gibson
Patty Addison (Madeleine Stow) is a hard working social worker finding foster homes with children that have no place to stay. She recently suffered the loss of her son, but on Christmas Eve, a young single Mom is killed on her way to work and her daughter Emily (Tori Barban) has nowhere to go. Patty tries to find her a foster home, but none of the families want to take her in, so Patty has no choice to bring her home to stay with her in the meantime. Patty’s marriage is on the rocks, and her husband, an airline pilot, is always away. Mostly it’s grief over the loss of their son, but each deals with it in a different way. As time passes, Emily makes a great impression on the couple and is having a positive effect on him. Meanwhile, at the same time, Dr Andrews (Ian Ziering) is searching desperately for the parents of a young man who died in his ER.
This is one of those kinds of movies where several different stories intersect in the end and everything fits together nicely. It’s a little heavy with plenty of sorrow to go around, but it all rolls around the right way in the end. I was not overly fond of this film. It was a little too intense for me, I guess. There are stories of Christmas tragedies that are not so depressing but I guess this works for some people. I am not sure what the “Christmas Hope” is all about, but I guess it that the little girl wished her mother who died in a traffic accident at the beginning of the movie would come back to her for Christmas. Well, I guess she did in a way we would never expect due to a series of coincidences, but that’s what the whole movie is about. Making you wonder how they’ll tie it all together, and then they do.
I just was not a big fan of this film, and am not likely to seek it out again next year.
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