A Little Family Expands and Changes in The Christmas Box

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.

A More Adult Clark Makes New Friends and Enemies in Smallville's Sixth Season

Three years ago, my brother Nathan got me hooked on Smallville, the CW show that re-imagines the adolescence and young adulthood of all-American superhero Clark Kent. Within one year, we'd watched the first five seasons, but we only just finished season six now, which leaves us two seasons behind and despairing of ever catching up before the series concludes. Whether or not we manage it, we'll certainly be sticking it out to the end on DVD.

Every season of Smallville finds Clark and company with different preoccupations. This time around, Clark (Tom Welling) has a doozy of a problem on his hands when he accidentally releases several of the most heinous criminals in the universe from the Phantom Zone where he was trapped by Zod, the evil entity whose possession of Lex Luthor (Michael Rosenbaum) set up the season five cliff-hanger. Rounding up the rogue Zoners becomes his top priority, though he also has his eye on Lex, who is secretly experimenting on meteor freaks while getting uncomfortably cozy with Lana Lang (Kristin Kreuk), who, much as he hates to admit it, is still the girl of Clark's dreams.

For the most part, Lex's devotion to Lana seems to be the only thing keeping him from fully succumbing to his devilish destiny, though there are still flickers of decency that come across elsewhere, particularly in a powerful late-season moment with Clark. Their interaction is limited, however, and generally bristling with animosity. It's clear that Lex hasn't far to go to become Clark's nemesis, just one indication that the series must be nearing its end. I get the sense that if Lana had embraced Lex's advances a season or two earlier, it might have been enough to curtail his villainy; by this point, he's just in too deep.

Another indication that the series is moving into its endgame is the relocation of much of the action to Metropolis and the addition of both the Justice League and bumbling photographer Jimmy Olsen (Aaron Ashmore). As a long-time fan of Jimmy, I was tickled to see him join the cast of characters, though I had mixed feelings about the manner in which he was introduced as an old flame of Chloe Sullivan (Allison Mack), since he turned up just when it was beginning to look like Clark might actually return Chloe's long-unrequited affections. Since we know that Clark has to end up with Lois Lane (Erica Durance), though, I guess there's not much point in throwing him and Chloe together now and risking the strength of their friendship. In that light, adorable Jimmy is most welcome as a sincere suitor and a consistent source of comic relief.

The season drops occasional hints at the future Lois and Clark romance, especially in Crimson, the Valentine's Day episode in which Lois applies some aphrodisiac lipstick with disastrous (but largely hilarious) results. But Clark is still mooning over Lana throughout the season, while Lois spends half the season getting acquainted with charming billionaire Oliver Queen (Justin Hartley), a prep school rival of Lex who turns out to have as many secrets up his sleeves as Clark does. Their sassy repartee reveals a couple well suited to each other, but like most of the romances on this show, their blossoming love is threatened by the things they conceal from each other.

Even Martha Kent (Annette O'Toole) has a romantic prospect on the horizon, though in this first full season since the death of the Kent patriarch, her grief is too fresh for her to consider anything beyond friendship with the ever-enigmatic Lionel Luthor (John Glover). He is a powerful ally for her as she strives to serve honorably in the senatorial seat Jonathan won at such high personal cost. At this stage of the game, Lionel may be the most fascinating character for me simply because he's such a wild card. Chloe is the only other major player without an established destiny in Superman mythology, but it's a pretty safe bet that Clark's best friend isn't suddenly going to turn evil. Lionel, on the other hand, started out pretty rotten, and some of his actions in this season still seem reprehensible. But he also appears to be fighting for the side of good at times, and if nothing else, his affection for Martha is genuine. While his redemption would be ironic in the face of Lex's ultimate villainy, it would lessen the sting of that terrible transformation. Like Michael Emerson, who portrays the inscrutable Ben Linus on LOST, Glover constantly keeps us guessing with his complex performance.

In some ways, this is a very dark season. Lex's plans grow more and more grandiose and grotesque, and we learn in a flashback of a disturbing chapter in his youth. The Zoners wreak major havoc on some unsuspecting humans - not to mention the fact that there are still troublesome meteor freaks to contend with. The hustle and bustle of urban Metropolis can't match the comfort of bucolic Smallville, and an intrusive, oppressive score often ensures a skin-crawling sensation, especially in any scene involving Lex. On the other hand, new situations and characters inject freshness into the series. Many of the scenes with Lois and Oliver and Jimmy and Chloe are just plain fun, and it's a kick to see how the writers find ways of paying homage to these characters' forebears. Noir, an episode late in the season in which Jimmy dreams his way into a film noir version of his life, plays like a love letter to The Adventures of Superman. Clark has his own alternate experience with reality in Labyrinth, a much less aesthetically pleasing episode that finds him cooped up in a mental institution; reminiscent of LOST's Dave, in which an old friend of Hurley's turns up to inform him that the Island is all in his head, it allows us to see these familiar characters from an unusual perspective.

While I started getting tired of Lana's drama queen ways back in season two and always faulted Clark just a bit for overlooking the intrepid Chloe in favor of whispery, whiny Lana, giving her such intimate access to Lex puts her in an interesting position this year. Though she shows an alarming capacity for duplicity and vice, she also reveals the depth of her feelings for Clark, taking the character in refreshingly tender directions as she comes closer to figuring out just what he's been hiding all these years. Having Lois follow in Chloe's footsteps by writing for a tabloid is a fun way of bringing her closer to her journalistic future, and Chloe's bond with Clark is as solid as it's ever been, with one late-season development giving her role as his most reliable wingman even more creative possibilities.

Smallville grows more complex every season, sacrificing some of the innocence of previous seasons but creating a more intriguing web of plots and characters so that each episode is an important piece of the puzzle rather than being just a showcase for the meteor freak of the week. Will Clark ever don the famous suit and take to the skies? I can't wait to find out!