The Christmas gift (1986)
Don’t get me wrong: I enjoyed “Oh God” and even its sequel, so I know he can act (sort of) but any Christmas movie starring Country crooner John Denver has got to throw up the warning signs from the start. Remember those Humbleton figurines in “The Simpsons”, and how Flanders eventually found the town they came from, and everyone was just like them? Welcome to the Christmas version, or, given that this was written about two decades before that episode, to the genesis of Humbleton!
A widowed New York City architect and his young daughter take a Christmas vacation and end up in a small mystical town in Colorado where everyone believes in Santa Claus.
Of course they do. And that’s why they live in a small, mystical, magical town which no doubt only appears on Christmas Eve and after the Christmas period returns to the sickly-sweet saccharine dimension from whence it sprang. You know what to expect, and I’m sure ol’ John gets in more than one of his favour-ite choons too before the thing mercifully draws to a close, no doubt with some big moral and message for the holidays about how Christmas is with us in our hearts every day, or some such nonsense. Stick to the singing, cowboy!
Other than Denver there’s Jane Kaczmarek, from “Malcolm in the middle”, someone called James T Callahan --- presumably the “t” is in case we mistook him for the former Labour Prime Minister! --- and someone entertainingly named Twirp. Says it all really.