On the 2nd Day of Christmas (1997) (TV)

User Rating:

5.7/10   

Director:

James Frawley

Writer (WGA):

Brian Hohlfeld (written by)

Release Date:

8 December 1997 (USA)

Genre:

Comedy | Family

Plot:

Con-woman Trish and her niece/ward Patsy are caught trying to steal from a department store right before Christmas...

Cast

Mary Stuart Masterson	...	Patricia 'Trish' Tracy
Mark Ruffalo	...	Bert
Lauren Pratt	...	Patsy Tracy (as Lauren Suzanne Pratt)
David Hewlett	...	Mel
James Purcell	...	Bill
Lawrence Dane	...	Mr. Limber
Howard Hesseman	...	David
Arlene Meadows	...	Mom
Ed Sahely	...	Mickey
Judah Katz	...	Pruitt
Richard Blackburn	...	Jerry
John Boylan	...	Man in Overcoat
Domenico Fiore	...	Ed the Bartender (as Dom Fiore)
Patrick Patterson	...	Uncle Don
Victoria Snow	...	Mindy

Runtime:

120 min (including commercials)

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Company:

ABC Pictures

Quotes:

Trish: Are you hurt?
Bert: No! How can I be hurt? I just threw my family jewels full force against a freezing metal fence!
Trish: Oh good, as long as you're not hurt

Stupid, but somehow won me over by the end

I watched this for one reason only - Mark Ruffalo. He's a fantastic actor with a funny, velvety, real-sounding voice. Ever since seeing him in the so, so sad "You Can Count on Me" I've forgiven every bad movie he's been in. And there have been several of them. Mary Stuart Masterson I've never much cared for. She always seems like a tomboy, which would be o.k., but there's no charisma there. But, I can overlook that. She was good in "Fried Green Tomatoes." This movie was hard to get with the program on because how can you feel like you should root for a woman who uses a child to pick pockets? That's absurd. It was a habitual thing, too. If she had only done it this one time out of desperation, we could've worked up empathy for her, but the writer didn't think of that obvious point. Really dumb. The child was pretty good. Not sticky sweet like I expected. Of course, the plot point of making Ruffalo's security guard take them home to watch the two of them over Christmas was beyond even the most whimsical storytelling.

Without going into the whole silly thing I will cut to the end and say like most Christmas movies they wanted to inject some "magic" in it with the Howard Hesseman character which actually helped because he played it so dryly, as he usually does. Then the romance, much to my relief was played in a laugh-it-off way shouting "I Love You!" at each other on opposite escalators and then meeting at the top for a kind of send-up of a move kiss instead of some overly cornball scene. Thank heavens. That saved it really. In the end, I was surprised I liked it, but glad I stuck with it. No masterpiece but a pleasant diversion. Isn't that enough, really?