Comfort and Joy (2003)

I have been a fan of Nancy McKeon since her "Facts of Life" days. She always made interesting films and this was no exception. Now I know people get sick & tired twists on "It's a Wonderful Life" but this in reality isn't that. What this is about a modern woman who is riding high in her career and she doesn't ever see herself married with children. Then On Christmas Eve day she gets in a car wreck and wakes up to find herself married to a man she has never met. She also has 2 children. The film is worth watching because the cast is great and they make the materiel pop. The dinner table scene at the end makes this worth watching. I cried because I have been in situations with a parent criticizing everything about my life and someone that I loved having my back! Seek this film out. It is a winner

This is a lovely and charming Christmas movie. It's well written and well acted, with a clear storyline from beginning to end. No, you don't know why and you won't know why or how Jane remembers this other life she never lived, but you don't know the how or why of the fantasy of It's a Wonderful Life or A Christmas Carol either - or of all the other movies that feature a character who has some kind of awakening on Christmas Eve.Comfort and Joy is a thoroughly enjoyable movie about finding the life you never knew you really wanted. It has a positive message, but it isn't the slightest bit sentimental or sugar-coated.I'm delighted to have found Comfort and Joy; it's a great addition to our Christmas movie collection. I look forward to watching it every year along with all of our other favourites.

The intention was to make a Christmas fantasy, sort of like "It's a Wonderful Life." But, whereas "Life" had its angel (Clarence) to warn you up front that it was a fantasy, "Comfort" played it straight, inviting you to expect a rational explanation for the time travel. There was no explanation, because this is a totally incoherent screenplay. Worse, the film tries too hard to send PC messages. I'm all for films with morals and for films that uplift, but when the overriding message is that career women are nice but home-making women are nice, too, straights are nice but gays are nice, too - well, you get the idea. The first priority of a screenwriter is to tell a good story, not to send messages. This is a badly flawed story, because it is neither pure fantasy nor pure realism, and it leaves you feeling cheated at the end. The leads are good actors who did the best they could with the sappy material. The writers deserve the blame. The movie was obviously made on a shoestring, which was appropriate.

Let's see, we have a workaholic overachiever who we just know is going to learn a big lesson about how she should want a husband and children because that is just the be-all, end-all of a woman's existence. Okay, it's not that sexist. But the way this TV movie goes about presenting the concept of a fulfilling personal life over career have barely a whiff of originality. The husband and kids, whether real or imagined, are so wholesome you just want to shoot them. But the absolute worst was a scene in which McKeon's character shows up at a get-together with four gay men, who are the gay version of minstrels. This cartoon-like depiction was the point at which I knew that there would be nothing redeeming about this. It's just another shameless plot line implying that a woman must choose between career and family. (Let's just say the suspense won't be killng you as to which lifestyle comes out on top.)