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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