Robert Redford doppelgänger Wall stars as a stony faced, self-confessed misanthrope Catholic priest Father Keene sent to wind-up an underperforming parish the week before Christmas. But after meeting the mysterious local librarian (real life wife Wall) he begins to realise there's more to living than fire and brimstone. It soon becomes apparent that Father Keene is harbouring a deep secret that is fuelling his social withdrawal, but a little Christmas miracle might just be able to coax him from self-imposed emotional exile.
Faith films are fine, but this was just tedious and boring. Listening to the locals audition for their Yuletide stage show is only slightly less painful than watching Wall and local pastor Brennan engage in dull, semi intellectual conflict about what the local community need to fulfil their spiritual quota. The epiphany Wall's character undergoes transforming him from supercilious razor man into a born again believer, is a decent enough plot, but it's hard work getting there.
Is it a Christmas movie, a human drama, a galvanising of moral fibres or just righteous bilge I couldn't decide. What I am confident in saying is that the relatively minor moral dilemmas it presents and the heavy-handedness with which they're dramatised made it feel more like Sunday school than supposedly modest matinee entertainment.
Faith films are fine, but this was just tedious and boring. Listening to the locals audition for their Yuletide stage show is only slightly less painful than watching Wall and local pastor Brennan engage in dull, semi intellectual conflict about what the local community need to fulfil their spiritual quota. The epiphany Wall's character undergoes transforming him from supercilious razor man into a born again believer, is a decent enough plot, but it's hard work getting there.
Is it a Christmas movie, a human drama, a galvanising of moral fibres or just righteous bilge I couldn't decide. What I am confident in saying is that the relatively minor moral dilemmas it presents and the heavy-handedness with which they're dramatised made it feel more like Sunday school than supposedly modest matinee entertainment.