Regina Fuller has returned to the small town that she owns after the death of her father and the plan is to sell it, without any care on how it will impact the people who live there. An angel appears to influence everything . . .
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In an attempt to show her that the town really does need her and the bad memories of the place might not actually be as bad as she remembers. It does take quite a while to find out Regina's history and we are supposed to just see her as a Scrooge like character given the angel appearing to help her make the decisions and see things very differently.
It's over the top at times especially with the opening musical number but it fell rather quickly from that level of musical extravaganza. I think that is a reason why I was left a little bit disappointed. We are thrown in some hard hitting moments as well which include teenage pregnancy and the possible death of a child! I know right, not something you are really expecting with this one but given the nature of the film I think it is clear that everything will be ok in the end.
The mixture of music, Christmas time with scrooge like character, bringing up the past and quite frankly a cheesy happy ending is everything that a Christmas film like this needs right? Well that is one thing that is totally spot on. Everything needed to be in place but it just didn't work out all that well at all, which is certainly a big shame really.
I wanted to love this film, I really did which I think ended up making it feel even more disappointing. The trailer makes it look truly wonderful but unfortunately it falls short of that promise. I hit a point where I actually forgot that it was even a musical. The musical numbers seemed to happen more early on and then faded out to then make a little appearance towards the end.
Dolly Parton is an incredible figure that cannot be denied and having her as an angel is quite believable in all honesty and something that I was firmly behind. One downside has to be that Christine Baranski is not given more in terms of the musical number moments, something that should have been utilised a lot more in my personal opinion. One good thing though is that it is very female driven and lead which is a big bonus. It doesn't really have that cheesy romance feel to it either which was refreshing.
Overall, I think it is very clear that my reaction to the film is very mixed and while it had a few good and decent moments it also had some bad and disappointing moments. Firmly on the fence and I guess the main thing is that it is watchable. Despite the cheesiest of endings which became rather obvious after the story unfolded, but predictable is perfectly fine.
