'All I want For Christmas' is like many movies put together and finding nothing of a story in it. You have scheming Kids from The Parent Trap (thank god they are not twins), Good Santa from “Miracle at 34th street” and divorced mom and Dad from many other movies. So you have the kids trying to reunite Mom and Dad with the help of a department store Santa and a pet mouse. Directed by Robert Lieberman, it stars Thora Birch, Ethan Embry, Lauren Bacall in the main roles along with a assemble cast.
Ethan and Hallie O' Fallon live in a Manhattan Mansion with their mother and grandmother. Both their Mom and Dad are divorced as Mom does not approve of Dad opening a diner. Mom starts seeing creepy Tony Boer (or is it Bore, one never knows) who is hated unanimously by the siblings. Hallie voices her one wish to the department store Santa, to get their Mom and Dad to be reunited for Christmas. So comes the enormous planning of Operation reunification. Step one is to lock Mom's boyfriend in an ice-cream truck which takes him far away to the land where ice creams are made. But are Manhattan ice cream truck drivers taken in to confidence that they pretend not to listen to the loud bangings the poor guy makes!! Mom thinks that she is stood up and break up with him. Step two happens as Hallie feigns illness at Dad's diner to get mom over.
As the things move in one after another there are minor things happening like Ethan falling for a nice girl who helps him and the maid going in to labor on the kitchen floor. You also have many moments of Grandmother, grand daughter bonding over songs which must be avoided for you mental health. Lauren Bacall plays the Grand-mom who was supposedly the Dame of Broadway and thus you wonder the kind of taste people have to watch her. The ending is a real scorcher, with kids walking in, the maid in the throes of child birth, ambulances and other sirens blaring and the boyfriend who has been locked in the ice cream truck running in. So Mom takes one look at the deranged man who raves against the injustice done by her kids and breaks up with him. With Boer cleared out both Mom and Dad reunite. Well there is the appearance of the Santa coming home with Snowball, the pet hamster completing the happy family.
The movie is one of most rehashed ones of the century. There is nothing in this family comedy which would make it a Christmas treat. Ethan Embry and Thora Birch play the roles of the cutesy kids to the book. The adults are typical comic book characters with no depth in their roles. The Mom and Dad are rich and still love lorn, the boyfriend is creepy to the core and the Grand-mom ditsy as you can get. It just does not happen in real world with human's who have real feelings. Sugary to the core this movie is capable of making you a diabetic. So beware!!!
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