Call Me Mrs. Miracle (2010)

I saw this movie several times and always enjoyed it. I liked everything about it, except the annoying Jewel Staite. The plot is great!...quite refreshing!.....Doris Roberts is always fabulous!...the supporting players, the lines, directing, and scenery was great!....very appropriate!..A very nice Christmas movie....a very safe Christmas movie................ However, someone much better could have played the part Jewel Staite played. She can't act...she has an annoying voice AND an annoying appearance. Her clothes and hair were sloppy! But that is how she appears in another movie too...so it seems that SHE chooses her clothes for on the set.....and has a fear of hair stylists!................ No, that's not the "every day" woman look and the "natural" look. That's just plain poor taste and sloppy!....Handsome, decent, wealthy "Finlay" had to do some hard acting to try to convince movie-watchers that he would fall head over heels for her!

To my surprise, this turns out to be one of my favorites among the many "Made for Television" holiday movies. The cast is an ensemble that does this heart warming story justice. It has a number of inner stories that all seem to get tied together in the end. Obviously, the love interest, but also the father who has stopped celebrating, the child taken away from a father by the war, the up and coming designer trying to make a go of it, the son who is trying to show his worth, and a number of other little threads to get tied together. And, you cannot miss Lauren Holly as the fashion designer. She is hilarious. There is a little something for everyone. Just a simple Christmas story to sit back and make you appreciate the holidays and bring a smile or two. If you don't like this one, you should probably be celebrating a different holiday.

Frankly, I wanted desperately to like this movie because I like the premise of these types of "family miracle" movies. Classics like Mary Poppins, Nanny McPhee, the original Miracle on 34th Street charmingly offer faith, hope, and love via carefully crafted story lines and believable dialog, all the while asking the viewer to check "reality" at the door and make a magical journey with the characters. HOWEVER, with "Call Me Mrs. Miracle", Debbie Macomber's plot is just tediously predictable. Further, the screen writer's stilted dialog and the plastic acting courtesy of the director creates a cringe-worthy movie on every level. It's not even about suspending belief (as suggested by the one and only positive reviewer) ... it's about the quality of the story and it's presentation. There's just no miracle here.

This is a sweet story, but there was a theme throughout of returning to a more slow-paced, old fashioned type of holiday. The movie suffers from an seriously saccharine script that is so sugary sweet, it's practically coma inducing. Even when I agreed with the sentiment being stated, I had to roll my eyes at the dialog that was about as subtle as a frying pan to the face.I actually felt bad for Lauren Holly. Her character was such a ham-fisted caricature of a shallow self centered individual, she occasionally seemed on the verge of cringing while delivering her lines. I'm sure her character was intended to be so over the top as to be humorous, but instead it was just plain awful. I was embarrassed for her.This movie is okay for what it is - a Hallmark Christmas movie. It's sweet, incredibly simplistic, rather vague on the conflict, and the resolutions are quick and easy. In fact, some of the resolutions are so quick, they're instantaneous. I wouldn't say it's a complete waste of time to watch, but it's such a shallow and frothy piece of fluff that your syrup tolerance level will need to be pretty high. There is so little substance, you will probably forget it thirty minutes after you've viewed it.