Today's Feature: The Christmas Gift
A Journalist decides to write a holiday piece about her search for a childhood "Secret Santa".
John Wesley Hardin was a notorious outlaw in the American West back in the late 19th Century. When he was sentenced to 25 years in prison on murder charges in 1877, he claimed to have racked up a body count of 42 men in his time, although records could only confirm up to 27 of those murders, which is still damned impressive. There are many outlandish tales surrounding the life and times of John Wesley Hardin, tales that only grew more spectacular with each telling, eventually turning the man into something of a folk hero west of the Rocky Mountains, but it's impossible to prove the veracity of most of them due to Hardin's well-known proclivity for spinning wild yarns to entertain any willing audience.
While in prison, he wrote an autobiography (published posthumously) that he claimed would set the record straight regarding his nefarious past, but even at the time of its publication most semi-educated folks who bothered to read the book could tell the man was embellishing a great many details. Having studied law during his stay in Texas' Huntsville Prison, Hardin was released after only serving seventeen years and became a lawyer in El Paso. Less than a year later, the angry father of a lawman Hardin had publicly humiliated found the ex-outlaw in a saloon and shot him in the back of the head while he was shooting dice. Hardin never saw it coming.
This really has nothing to do with the Lifetime original movie The Christmas Gift, but the story's male lead is named Wesley Hardin Johnson, which seems to me to be an obvious homage to the infamous outlaw, because why the hell else would any fictional character ever be given that somewhat awkward moniker? Wesley Hardin Johnson isn't a hardened outlaw in The Christmas Gift, but rather the kindly proprietor of a children's home, so no parallels, there. He's not a gifted storyteller, either, just a nice dude. So the homage is of the in-name-only kind, I guess. Truth be told, I'd rather just keep talking about John Wesley Hardin for the rest of this post, because he's a truly fascinating character, and there are none of those in The Christmas Gift, which is an okay movie, but really nothing special.
Michelle Trachtenberg, she of The Adventures Of Pete & Pete and latter days Buffy The Vampire Slayer fame, stars as Megan, a staff writer for some stupid magazine with a name like "Night Life" or "Night Style", or maybe "Knife Style", and she wants to write that big article that will make her name in the industry, catipulting her to the next level where she will share the rarified air of the elites of modern-day journalism, who mostly work at Teen Vogue. Seriously, Teen Vogue is doing some amazing and eye-opening work with their political coverage, and they deserve some recognition for that. I know you think I'm joking, but take a look!
Anyway, Megan's looking for that special hook that will help her write the article of the year, but it's close to Christmas and she's completely bereft of big ideas. Luckily, her aged Aunt Jabez (which I know is traditionally a boy's name, but that's not important) found an old Christmas gift of Megan's in one of her old boxes at the retirement home in which she lives, and she sent it along to her niece as a favor. The gift was a journal that she was given via a young boy she never met when she was ten years old, a young boy who signed the journal's first page with a personal wish that whoever received the journal would be inspired to write something great within its pages. That boy's name was Wesley Hardin Johnson, a child who came from a family of means and wanted to do something good for the less fortunate at the holidays, so he arranged his own personal "Secret Santa" campaign, gathering small gifts and delivering them to various charitable organizations with the help of his beloved mother at Christmastime.
Megan was so inspired by the touching gift that later it drove her to pursue a career in journalism, and upon rediscovering her treasured journal, she decides her big story will be a profile on the grown man who gave her the journal all those years ago. After arranging a meeting with Wesley, who runs a children's home, she decides to keep the "Secret Santa" connection from her subject because... well, there's never any concrete reason given for this deception, but I suppose co-writer and director Fred Olen Ray thought his movie needed some kind of dumb secret, because most of these movies seem to revolve around some kind of dumb secret, so no need to buck tradition.
Oh, and the retirement home in which Aunt Jabez lives is due to be closed in the new year as part of a project to revitalize the old neighborhood with state-of-the-art apartment complexes and shopping centers, a project spearheaded by Wesley Hardin Johnson's shit heel architect father, Wesley Hardin Johnson, Sr. So Megan campaigns to save the retirement home on her sweet Aunt's behalf, because Jabez raised little Megan like her own daughter after her mommy died and her daddy lit out for the territories when Megan was a tiny tot, and Megan feels like she owes Jabez a big favor for being such a swell lady.
Dead parents, dead parents, as far as the eye can see. Please, please, please, for the love of all things sacred, let me see one of these fucking movies where everybody's parents are still alive before I die. Just one. We don't always need such tragedy to tell a feel-good story. It's not always necessary. Both leads in this movie have dead, sainted mothers. At least we get to briefly meet Wesley's devoted mother in the film's prologue, which is more than we can say for Megan's mother, who was six feet under before the events of the movie began. I don't know how much more of this dead parent bullshit I can stand. I only have three more of these reviews to write, but I don't know if I can handle three more dismal, dead mommy stories.
To make a long story... not so long, Megan's completely unconvincing plea to Johnson, Sr. to save the retirement home somehow persuades the crotchety elder Johnson to move his revitalization project to another, even more run-down part of whatever city in which this movie takes place, Megan comes clean to Johnson, Jr, about their "Secret Santa" connection, and they smooch at an outdoor Christmas party in this strange place where everybody sweats through their scarves and sweaters in clearly sweltering heat.
The Christmas Gift sure was a movie. It ran around ninety minutes in length without commercials, and it was only boring for around half of that time. The other half of the time, it was marginally entertaining without ever becoming engaging. Michelle Trachtenberg is an underwhelming lead, her performance too often reading as robotic and stiff, never truly connecting with the story's admittedly subpar material. She just has the cold, unfeeling gaze of a sociopath, which is problematic for a romantic lead. Sterling Sulieman, who portrayed Wesley Hardin Johnson, was a much more game performer, bringing a sense of playfulness and geniality to his role that was lacking in Trachtenberg's icy portrayal. And he doesn't have the eyes of a corpse, which is a plus. The Christmas Gift is ultimately just another forgettable product, something to be watched and immediately forgotten.
But I'm not mad at you, Fred Olen Ray. He can coast to his dying day making crap like The Christmas Gift, and I'll still be his devoted admirer for making Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers. No amount of mediocre family movie pablum will ever tarnish that shining star in his filmography.
VERDICT: IT'S NO HOLIDAY ROAD TRIP!
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