I was home, alone, recovering from a serious week-long chest cold. Still contagious, I knew that both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day would be spent with Kleenex, Campbell's Chicken Soup, and the remote. Being a HUGE FAN of ALL Christmas movies, it was tough to find one that l hadn't seen. The name Amber Riley jumped off of the cable network, on ASPIRE network, which I'd never heard or seen. I've loved Amber since GLEE and followed her to DWTS, where she won...Go Amber!
I was completely absorbed in the plot, acting and non-traditional Christmas formula that 90% of ALL Christmas movies follow. Not saccharine nor predictable, I will be looking forward to seeing this film for years to come. Not until the very end was I aware that this was a true story. I also deeply appreciated that this was a mixed race film, showing that race has NOTHING TO DO WITH HAVING A MISERABLE CHILDHOOD.
I'm Caucasian and grew up like Amber's character: addicted mentally ill mom, too many abusive boyfriends of hers to count, and I ran away from home three times...from a lily white farm town in Michigan. Only by my strength and the grace of God did I survive and thrive. This movie showed how the same incidents can be treated vastly differently by the individual. Some rise above their past, some use it as their gravestone.
