One Christmas ten years ago, my gifts to my immediate family members
included a video for each of them. Little did I know that we would
receive a DVD player that Christmas, making the videos I bought the last
ones that would be added to our family collection, aside from a few we
couldn’t resist snagging from video store close-out sales. One of those
movies was The Christmas Box, which I got for my mom despite the
fact that neither of us had seen it. The warm-and-fuzzy back-cover blurb
and the presence of The Waltons‘ Richard Thomas were enough to convince me this was Mom’s kind of movie, and mine as well.
We watched The Christmas Box
that year and enjoyed it, but we never pulled it out again until this
year, when my friend Libbie came over on Christmas and was in the mood
to watch a holiday movie. Out of the many in our collection, this one
jumped out at her, so we popped it in. While it’s not iconic like A Christmas Carol or It’s a Wonderful Life, it’s a very enjoyable film.
Directed by Marcus Cole, written by Greg Taylor and based on a book by
Richard Paul Evans, this made-for-TV movie focuses on the Evans family,
which includes workoholic dad Richard (Thomas), compassionate mom Keri
(future Supermom Annette O’Toole) and adorable Jenna (Kelsey Mulrooney).
Richard owns a moderately successful ski shop and is on the verge of
expanding, but at the moment finances are tight, so Keri convinces him
to let her apply for a job as a live-in housekeeper for elderly, uppity
Mary Parkin (Maureen O’Hara). This means a move for the whole family
into her mansion, but Richard doesn’t much like it because a shiver runs
down his spine whenever she casts her imperious eyes upon him.
This is a very quiet movie in which there are essentially only four
characters to keep track of. Some side characters, such as Mrs. Parkin’s
lawyer and Richard’s business partner, turn up briefly, but they are of
little consequence. This is all about how the Evanses and Mrs. Parkin
relate to each other.
As Martha Kent on Smallville,
O’Toole very quickly became one of my all-time favorite TV moms. Here,
she displays most of the qualities that make Martha so endearing. She is
devoted to her child and her overworked husband, though she has no
qualms about letting him know when she thinks he is in the wrong. A
naturally kind and considerate woman, she quickly develops a rapport
with her employer, even as Mrs. Parkin maintains a professional
distance. Little Mulrooney’s part requires little of her beyond being
cute, and in that she succeeds entirely. A sweet little girl, Jenna
seems to have inherited her mother’s way of looking at the world.
But it’s Mrs. Parkin and Richard who change the most over the course of
the movie, so their roles are the most compelling. O’Hara offers a mix
of intimidation and Irish wit as she adjusts to her new boarders and
tries to knock some sense into Richard, of whom she makes a special case
once she grows attached to the family. Thomas, meanwhile, retains some
of that old John-Boy charm, but it doesn’t manifest itself much until
the latter portion of the movie. In the beginning, his obnoxious manner
is thoroughly convincing.
It seems to me that after I watched this the first time, I read The Christmas Box,
and I found that the titular object was much more integral to the plot
of the book than the movie. I think that Taylor could have more
effectively incorporated that. On a related note, the trippy sequences
involving Richard’s dreams of a youthful-looking angel almost feel like
an afterthought.
Mostly, though, The Christmas Box is
an engaging, intimate look at four people in a difficult situation
coming to a more peaceful state of mind with one another’s help. If you
like your Christmas movies warm and tender, this is one box you’ll want
to open.
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