Scanner Colleen is on the road today, and like everyone else "working" on Christmas Eve Eve, is as they say, "phoning it in." But she could not be more insistent about her post title.
So, I realize that outside of Cute Overload, it's unpopular on the Internets to voice sincere affection for anything wholesome, but I feel very strongly about the purity and goodness of the film It's a Wonderful Life. It's one of my all-time favorite movies. I'm already dreading the loathsome Hollywood remake that, let's be realistic, is surely in the pipeline (Tom Hanks in a "triumphant" performance, anyone?), and I just as surely will refuse to acknowledge said remake.
However! Someone beat them to it. Sort of. That someone was Disney, the year was 1985, the movie involved a creepy angel played by Harry Dean Stanton, and the results were: FAIL.
The movie was called One Magic Christmas, and I'd heard the name mentioned as a sort-of IAWL remake. I caught it this year on the Hallmark channel, and rightly so-- it's very much Hallmark/Lifetime fare. Strike one against it.
Mary Steenburgen plays the mom who doesn't have Christmas spirit, some guy plays the dad who's been out of work since June, and there's a cute little boy and girl who just want to have a special Christmas like all little brats do.
Harry Dean Stanton, who you might remember from Red Dawn, Paris, Texas, or The Last Temptation of Christ, plays the creepy gaunt angel Gideon, who lurks around watching the kids like a grade-A prevert. In one scene, he appears in the little girl's bedroom in the middle of the night, then he smashes her special North Pole snowglobe. Then -- just kidding!-- he magically reassembles it. Gee, what a great angel! Don't you want him to appear in your daughter's bedroom late at night?
I'm not too sure what happened after that because I fell asleep, as I do during 85% of movies I attempt to watch on TV, but I do recall waking up to see that the dad had DIED. Merry Christmas, kiddies!
Related:
