Kind of middle of the road. Saw this in the program guide. Set the dvr for it. We watched it last evening with our 11 yr old daughter. We definitely felt it was more depressing than heartwarming.
As we watched for awhile, we kept thinking, what kind of movie is this? Is it going to get better? When Prancer runs through the house, my wife said, oh finally something to lighten the mood a little, only to be followed by the Dad grabbing his shotgun, ready to finish off Prancer.
There were sprinkled funny and light moments, many not so happy times. After watching this, my daughter said she was not too crazy about this movie.
The one line that made us laugh the most, is when the girl goes to break out Prancer, she tells her brother something like, "Now that Prancer is gone, there is nothing left in this town for me." At that point, my mind totally started drifting. As the kids are trying to bust Prancer out, I kept thinking, this would be great for Mystery Science Theater 3000/Cinematic Titanic. As we see the kids working on the cage, Tom Servo and Crow start making guitar noises, then singin Jailbreak from Thin Lizzy.
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kathykato
13 years ago
This was a depressing movie from start to finish. I felt cheated and angered by the ending-- it completely destroyed the value and helpfulness this movie might have had for some people, especially children dealing with loss and grief. The story was a coming of age story about a girl who has lost her mother and is dealing with grief issues. She tries to escape from the pain of her situation by caring for the deer and believing in an imaginary world where Santa exists. At the end, she's finally come to terms with the reality of her losses, accepts that the deer is not one of Santa's deer, and reconciles with her father. They release the deer into the wild....that should have been the ending right there. Conflicts resolved. Instead we get the sappy scene of Santa in the sky? In other words, she's escaping back into an imaginary world.
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