Three Wise Women (2010)

I wondered when someone would think of a movie plot that brought people out of the past and future together with the present. Well, "Three Wise Women" is such a film. That it's the same person at three different periods in Liz/Ellie/Beth's life only adds to the bizarre aspects of this sci-fi fantasy. By its title and time of the year this is supposed to be a Christmas movie. But in reality, it's a far-fetched fantasy plot that is more sci-fi than Christmas (think of "Back to the Future," "Doctor Who," etc.). The film starts out with the date 2040 and all kinds of traffic in the sky. This is the old Hollywood approach to showing futuristic developments. Then it bounces back to 1989 - before the Internet. Then forward another 16 years. All of this time travel is allowed - outside of the screenplay calling for it of course, by the power of a guardian angel. Naturally, as with other modern renditions of angels, this one has to be funny and frustrated. It's hard to judge the acting in this TV movie because of the far-out plot and all the bouncing around. The screenplay is terrible. One thing that stands out as not being very accurate is the make-up for Dr. Liz (played by Amy Huberman). The film repeatedly shows her not sleeping at night. Yet she looks to be a beauty queen each day. Anyone who misses that much sleep is going to show big shadows under the eyes and have a lack of energy -- no matter how much coffee they drink. The idea that this film is a modern rendition of Charles Dickens's "Christmas Carol" is laughable. This isn't an old-fashioned type of Christmas film by any stretch of the imagination. It fits in that category of romance films released during the holiday season. It's not a very good movie - I watched it only because it came in a multi-film DVD purchase.

I really enjoyed this movie, perfect to watch with the family when I was home for the holidays. I thought a great cast, the always fantastic Fionnula Flanagan, Johnathan Rhyes Davies, Hugh O'Conor, Brendan Patricks and the young lead who plays Liz, Amy Huberman.What more would you want than guardian angels helping out at Christmas? Especially when the lead character, Liz, has a wedding set for around the holidays to the wrong guy. Everyone else can see it but her. Lots of textures to this film, we see the lead in the past as Ellie,Lauren Coe, as she is in the present Liz, played by Amy Huberman and then in the future as Beth, played by Fionnula Flanagan. I loved the romantic element of this movie, will Liz marry the wrong guy or Mr. Right? Then there is her family situation. Liz has never forgiven her father for having an affair, causing her parents to break up.I thought a great Christmas movie and one I'd like to see next year!

Like most made-for-TV holiday movies, this one is a generally harmless, family-oriented feel-good tale of what happens when people thoughtlessly swear to never love another person again.Ellie is a young girl who, at the age of 12, is riding her bike home from her boyfriend's house when she witnesses her father kissing another woman on a bridge. Overcome with emotion, she shouts at a magic fountain that she will never love again, and blindly rides her bike across a street, where she is struck by a car.Many years later, her guardian angel, who was forced to abandon her when she swore to never love again, is given a chance to save Dr. Ellen Kilcarten (as she is known now) from the miserable - but commercially successful - life that she is destined to live. But, he is given one stipulation: Dr. Ellen must not see him, feel him, or hear him. To get around this obstacle, the angel goes through Time to recruit 12-year-old "Ellie" and 62-year-old "Eleanor" to pose as Ellen's new assistant and a senior nurse (respectively) at Dr. Ellen's hospital.What follows is a light-hearted tale of romance lost and found again, as the angel, Ellie, and Eleanor try to persuade Dr. Ellen to rekindle a romance with an old boyfriend (who is now an architect leading a renovation at the hospital where Dr. Ellen works) and find her true self that she had buried that fateful night when she swore to never fall in love again. Complicating things are her new boyfriend, a shrewd businessman looking to capitalize on Dr. Ellen's miracle formula for curing spinal injuries, whom Ellen thinks she is in love with and who she thinks loves her, too. She must also learn to forgive her father and reconcile with him before Christmas Eve. On top of this, she is slated to be wed to her boyfriend on Christmas Eve and has begun making preparations.After a powerful pharmaceutical executive forces her to skip her wedding in favor of presenting her miracle formula to investors, she begins to slide down the slippery slope of favoring her career over her true self. As she is presenting her formula to a room full of the pharmaceutical company's executives, she announces that her research is too valuable to keep to herself and offers her research materials - and the formula - for free to whomever wants to continue to develop the serum. This renders the formula worthless to the pharmaceutical company, who had hoped to cash in on licensing rights to other companies. In the confrontation that follows, she realizes what her new boyfriend's motives for being with her really were and has an epiphany.She goes home to her parent's house and tearfully tells her father why she had hated him for so long, and forgives him. He accepts her apology and admits his wrong-doing, and says he never stopped loving her mother.We then see her being married to her first love, Bobby, in a beautiful spring-time ceremony months later.Generally, the acting is good and the pacing is keen. Even the bit supporting actors do a good job in their roles, and you never really see the ending coming even though you pretty much can predict the outcome. It would be easy to make this movie sappier and "heavy on the schmaltz", but the producers dial it back before it gets too thick, which is almost a shame because a good cry is why some people watch these movies. You never really hate any of the characters - nobody is evil, they just have different agendas - and so you never really cheer for one possible outcome over another.

I know that Hallmark have a very specific audience they are trying to reach, so please forgive me if I am biased by not being in their target demographic.Basically, the movie is a retelling of A Christmas Carol (you know, Scrooge visited by 3 ghosts to help change his ways - Charles Dickens), only it's three Irish women (supposedly) and it's a Guardian Angel instead of a Ghost. I'm not really sure, but anyway.Did it work? No it did not. The script was laughable, and aside from Fionnula Flanagan (this movie was far beneath her) the acting was awful. It was a good plot idea, but it fell flat. Dickens must be turning in his grave. We switched over to "Scrooged" half way, a much better reworking of Dicken's classic novel.Hallmark have made it their business to do heartfelt uplifting movies every Christmas, what they lack is the ability. I think reruns of other classic movies in this genre would make much more sense at this time of year. There's many, many to choose from.