One Magic Christmas


One Magic Christmas is a 1985 American/Canadian Christmas fantasy film directed by Phillip Borsos. It was released by Walt Disney Pictures and stars Mary Steenburgen and Harry Dean Stanton. It was shot in Meaford, Ontario with some scenes in Owen Sound, Ontario, Canada.
Harry Dean Stanton was one of my favourite actors who sadly died in September combine that with Mary Steenburgen and I had to watch this rather old Christmas film.
Ginnie is not in the Christmas spirit at all and you can’t blame her, her husband has been out of work for six months, they are being evicted from their home after Christmas and she works as a checkout assistant in a supermarket where she has a miserable boss. Money is tight and she sees other people struggling without the wherewithal to make ends meet.
Lurking in the background is an angel tasked with bringing her the spirit of Christmas. Enter, Harry Dean Stanton looking more like a serial killer than an angel.
The children in the story are like soft centred chocolates. Too sweet to be true of course. As the lights go out on all the houses, life takes a tragic turn for the worse, a bank robbery, Dad is shot dead, the children are kidnapped and the car runs off a bridge into an icy river. Death and misery abound.
It all is a plan by Gideon, a plan used in countless films, to make people see what’s really important in life.
The lights go on again and the day is rerun and Ginnie is able to see what really matters and rejoices in Christmas.
It’s utter pap of course, the overly sentimental hogwash beloved in Northern America. Yet if you remove your critical faculties for ninety minutes and curl up on a horrible wet afternoon, you find you have learned a lesson yourself about what’s really important and ninety minutes of your life have slipped by, with perhaps a little nap along the way.
Three stars

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