Sunday 29 August 2021

THE BEST CHRISTMAS MOVIES EVER – PAPER ANGELS

 

Paper Angels is by far the best Christmas movie of the last 30 years.

It is possessed with all the usual ingredients for a seasonal film, romance, humour, schmaltz, pathos and a strong Christian message but this one has something else, a surprise ending.

And that’s not something that’s easy to pull off in a Christmas movie.

Lynn Brandt (Josie Bissett) is an abused wife who leaves her alcoholic husband Darryl (Russell Porter) on Thanksgiving and moves with her children Thomas (Rustin Gresiuk) and Sara (Farryn Van Humbeck) to another town.

A year later and Lynn is working hard but getting nowhere financially and has to tell her son Thomas that they can’t afford a tree, decorations or presents.

Thomas is already having problems of his own as he’s still the new boy at high school and is being regularly bullied.

Their lives slowly become entwined with another family in trouble Kevin Morrell (Matthew Settle) has a failing business and his wife Jenny (Kendra Anderson) is heavily pregnant.

Thomas and Kevin become friends on the basketball court at a church youth club while Jenny’s pregnancy takes a turn for the worst.

Lynn finds a solution for the lack of Christmas presents and signs up the children for the Paper Angels which allows those on low incomes to write their child’s name and the desired gifts on the back of a Paper Angel hanging on the Christmas Tree at the Mall.

The school bullying soon turns to cyber bullying when another student puts up a Facebook appeal to help a poor kid namely Thomas.

But after he is befriended by popular girl Cassie Bale (Anja Savcic), Thomas uses the cyber bullying to his own advantage and turns the Facebook campaign into a charity collection for the Salvation Army.

Predictably perhaps Kevin gets Thomas’s angel from the tree, but the gifts he asks for are far from predictable.

 

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