Angel Dolls
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.
