A Golden Christmas (2009)
After a magical summer together, a nine-year-old boy whispers his heart into the ear of a best friend. With a loyal, golden dog by their side, the boy and girl bury a time capsule of keepsakes and then go their separate ways. Years later, looking for a fresh start, a man and woman each return to the place they felt most at home as a child. But a comedic case of unknown identity has them competing for the same childhood memories and Christmas escapades ensue. For the sake of their happiness, they must discover their common past before they turn each other's lives completely upside down. Can a golden dog lead them home?
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How sad is this?
Brilliant and touching
The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.
The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.
As several have already mentioned..the dogs have little to nothing to do with this movie and the lead actress is a person I had absolutely no ability to "find" an affinity to.The two lead characters were completely mismatched for this movie since she ALWAYS seems to have a "edge" and the male lead was just a nice,simply guy. SPOILER ALERT!!!!! The other thing that confounded me was having the dog be pregnant.and yet NO ONE ever noticed?Then this dog gives birth..out in the woods...supposedly in the snow..and the two "leads" look up and SMILE instead of packing her up and taking her home??THEN we have the stupidest ending EVER...the "dog"...who has given birth to pups...simply goes outside and they WATCH her run off into the sunset??? WHO the FLOCK comes up with such inane,unconnected movies and tries to pass them off as "family" movies??
Its Christmas and Jessica comes back home for Christmas. She comes back to the house she loved and that her dad built. Its been 3 years since she's been home. She is excited to tell her parents she decided she wants to give up her life as a lawyer and come back home. She was not ready for the devastating news her parents revealed. She reminisces about her childhood and the young boy she met one summer and the lunch box (time capsule) they buried. Its been rough since her husband passed away, 3 years ago. She meets Michael, a single father, who lives in town. After her parents tells her who he is, she automatically takes a disliking to him. A dog showed up at Michael's doorstep and he took her in. But, the dog always seems to find his way to Jessica's house. Could the dog be trying to get them together? Does the dog know something they don't know? All you have to do is give me a nice story with wonderful actors and I am a happy camper. And that is what this movie has.
I guess Hollywood has to make these to complete the genre at Christmas time, but the over the top selfishness, from the well to do fancy big time lawyer is really over done here. and the DVD cover shows three cute lovable dogs, which have very little to nearly nothing to do with the plot.This is not at all a kids movie, To much anger, to much selfishness from the main character, and yet everyone else seems to understand Christmas.. Drama,Drama, Drama, the cuteness side plot is squashed quickly, and 5 minutes into it you have figured it all out, even my two young daughters did before we jointly agreed to turn off this Yule tide hissy fit.
These comments will not summarize the plot; the reader will have to look elsewhere for that. This is more a meta-comment about aspects of the production.This is the best holiday movie I've seen this year...and the second wherein a wandering golden retriever was cast as the catalyst for precipitating a happy ending. As today is given as the release date, the airing I just viewed on the ION channel must have been the premiere. Consequently, these comments might not be fully appreciated until somebody fills in the plot or synopsis.I just want to say that special kudos should go to the casting director, Ricki Maslar. Every part was "perfectly" cast...the leads were ideal for their parts, the kids were cute (although their characters seemed a bit mature for their age, in the way they "advised" their respective parents about their love lives), and everyone playing a supporting role couldn't have been better.But I want to mention two parts, in particular. It was so good to see Bruce Davison, as the family patriarch, in a sympathetic role (for once), that I wish his part could have been bigger. And Elisa Donovan as Anna, who pokes and prods and needles and knocks her big sister Jessica (Andrea Roth) toward romance is absolutely, positively delightful! The tone and tenor of the production was uniformly appropriate throughout, *except* I didn't care much for the vocal backgrounds in the soundtrack during certain characters' pensive moments. I would have much preferred simple instrumentals.