Okay, here we go: Time to ruin the holidays for everyone with a bah-humbug moment; we all knew it was coming anyway, so might as well just put it out there to get it over with: I hate the ideology that perpetuates the notion that kids, especially really little ones, don't have to do anything to be cute. There, I said it. I think it's lazy, and furthermore, I don't subscribe to that idea. Yes, I think my child is adorable, even when he does things that annoy me (which, let's be honest, is quite frequently). The vast majority of parents think the same thing about theirs. That's just healthy and normal. But I don't expect other people to think the same way about my child as I do, and I sure as hell don't think other peoples' children are cute, just by default.
This translates to media, where one of my biggest pet peeves are movies that center themselves around small children, but don't give them anything meaningful to do; they rely solely on the fact it's a child to carry it across the finish line, and people gobble it up the same way they do animal videos. Angela's Christmas is that kind of movie, where we're supposed to find it so adorable that a child steals a Jesus statue from a church nativity scene “just to keep it warm” that we're just automatically involved and invested emotionally for thirty whole minutes, no matter how void of substance the rest of it is.
I get the feeling the only reason movies like this exist is to allow the writer to run on auto-pilot; they can basically phone in a sappy story with a child at the center, exert little effort, and rake in the cash. Our inherent ability to immediately identify children as the picture of innocence means the average viewer will automatically love any positive child character, without the need for any unnecessary literary obstacles, such as character development. So in this case, the entire movie is narrated by the little girl's future son, as an example of how perfect and angelic and pure she was, and presumably still is. How this story, which would be just a cute anecdote within the annals of most families, is somehow the one that most completely sums her up as a person, sixty years later, really just speaks to how boring the rest of her life must have been.
Of course her family, which consists of single mother (cue another lazy emotional checkpoint!) and three brothers, eventually find out she stole it, and the mother makes her take it back to the church. This leads to the only unpredictable sequence in the whole affair, in which the priest, so maddened by this child's theft, actually expects her to be arrested and taken to jail. A small child. On Christmas Eve. Granted, it takes place a long time ago, so maybe children weren't automatically revered for every little thing they did back then; either way, the thought that a man of the cloth could react with such vilification toward a little child who is voluntarily returning a doll she stole under cute pretenses is rather bewildering, and completely nonsensical. But of course it functions as yet another cheap emotional payoff; we are relieved that the officer decides not to arrest the little girl, thus returning her to her family for Christmas, and more heartstrings are plucked! I'm surprised they didn't give Angela a disability just to exploit another emotional loophole in human nature while they were at it!
At least even the worst Hallmark-style romance movies know they're bad from the outset, and the audience knows exactly what to expect going in. But the most offensive kind of movies, are trite movies that somehow think they are making some kind of profound, poignant statement, even though they offer nothing of substantial value. I know, I know, families want formulaic movies for the holidays; I get that. They want positive movies that can make them feel good about Christmas traditions, and nothing is better than a poor family (did I not mention the family of four with the single mother is poor?) showing that materialistic wants are trumped by the good inside all of us. And it will no doubt succeed, given that it checks off all those requirements, and is being peddled by Netflix. It also may very well may fit the bill for families with young children (our two year old loves it), who are too young to understand its meaning, yet are taken by its animation style.
But aside from the music, which is simple and effective and features a lullaby-style vocal track that hits all the notes the movie fails to hit, for me, the most positively life-affirming thing about Angela's Christmas, is that it's only thirty minutes long.
RATING: 2.5/10
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