O Anjo Mora ao Lado

The year is 2015, its X-Mas, and your humble reviewer has been slogging through one horrific made-in-Canada "holiday movie" after another because (explained in my other reviews) the lower-cost Loonie, and the taxpayer-subsidized Canadian film industry, have more or less taken over the entire "holiday" genre. Most films in this class now unabashedly feature terrible scripts, minimal budgets, and the same familiar set of Canadian faces (the so-called "character actors", all five of them) in each production.

Against this backdrop I was positively in heaven to stumble on Christmas Angel. A solid script. Great acting, especially the little scene-stealer Izabela Vidovic. Even Kevin Sorbo gives what might be the best performance of his one-note career. And to see Della Reese in front of the camera again is always a pleasure.

Good direction, engaging, nice twists, keeps you interested until the end.

Would recommend.

What a pleasant surprise amidst the onset of Christmas TV movies which appear this time of year without much substance or that are just plain silly. A gem of a story, well acted and filled with truthful moments about the true meaning of Christmas. Great entertainment for the whole family. Kevin Sorbo as well as Teri Polo, Della Reese and young Izabela Vidovic gave wonderful performances. I foresee a bright future for young Miss Vidovic. Hats off to writer Andrea Gyertson Nasfell for a heartwarming script. Two scene standout moments for me occurred first, with Ms. Reese's character, Elsie Waybright and Izabela Vidovic's character, Olivia Meade, as Elsie's character opens up to her young, new and very inquisitive friend Olivia about her daughter. The second scene was when Kevin Sorbo's character shares his story with young Olivia in the church. The thoughtful writing of both scenes and honest performances moved me very much. Well done and thank you as a viewer.

I watched this on UP Channel last nice. The story is about a little girl named Olivia played by Izabela Vidovic who wants to help people that need help. She was raised by a single parent.

She does not know what to do and she meets a older female neighbor who she befriends. The neighbor Elsie Waybright is played by Della Reese. Elsie has a basket to put in written requesting asking for God's help for these request. They are prayer request and Olivia puts her request in Elsie's basket. They talk about God and his love.

Many of these request are answered so Olivia thinks Elsie is an angel.

Elsie is sick but relies on God and trust Olivia. Together they have a bond. During the movie this bond is tested.

The movies teaches, love of God, sympathy for others and ways to show love. It is heart warming and can bring tears to your eyes. This is a truly beautiful and loving movie. The acting is so sincere and genuine. The little girl that plays Olivia portrays her character beautifully. See it if you can.

Christmas movies, while not strictly a genre of their own, have certainly become a distinct subset of films. Since the late 20th century, Hallmark and more than one other television channel have run movies set around Christmas for the holidays. And, Hollywood produces an occasional Christmas time film. They can cover the full range of genres - comedy, drama, musical, mystery, tragedy, war and Western. The most prolific are the romantic dramas that often include some light comedy.

The latter are so formulaic that one after another of such films seems a repeat or copy with just slight changes from the previous one. Many of these can seem like daytime soap operas, and after a while the films of this type become mundane and hardly interesting. The challenge for these films, to hold interest of viewers is to provide something new and different enough - still keeping their romance theme.

This TV movie for 2012, "Christmas Angel," fits that bill. There is enough difference in it, that it's almost too complicated a story to tell well in just under 90 minutes. A single mom and a daughter live next door to an old abandoned house with boarded windows. Melinda works as an events coordinator for a bakery, bistro and catering shop owned by her friends, Jeb and Daphney Conroy. The setting is in Louisiana. Daughter Olivia's best friend is the son of the Conroy's, Lucas. One day, he throws a stone at the old house and makes a wish as some sort of superstition that I never heard of.

Soon, Olivia sees blue light shining through a window of the old house at night. She is curious and goes snooping. An old lady lives there - Elsie Waybright, a one-time famous singer, Olivia discovers, who chooses to live in seclusion. Olivia also bumps into Dr. Nathan Davis leaving the house one day. She and her mom learn that he owns the house and had lived there at one time. As they all gradually get to know one another over time, and Olivia and Elsie hatch a sort of Christmas angel plan to answer wishes that people drop by in a box they put at the front gate, the mystery of who this woman is, who Dr. Nathan is, who Olivia's teacher is, and the unusual relationship of all of those people, unravels. And that is the key to this film keeping one's interest up. The romance between Melinda and Nathan is a foregone conclusion and is a small part of the story.

There are some plot holes in this film - there's no accounting for Olivia's father at all. Did he die? There's no mention if Melinda was a widow or divorcee. Or, was Olivia born out of wedlock? In time, one learns that Nathan is divorced and that his wife left him several years earlier because he couldn't have children. He wanted to adopt but she wanted to have her own children, so she left him and was now married and had three children.

There are more surprises about Elsie and a heart-rending moment for her toward the end. Izabela Vidovic is very good as the young Olivia - about 11 or 12 years old. Her persona with her quickness, smarts and frankness reminds one of that young girl, Addie Miles, in what has become a Christmas classic, "The House Without a Christmas Tree" of 1972.

At times, the acting with the two children, Olivia and Lucas, seems a bit forced and overly done. So, it doesn't come across quite real for kids. Maybe the producers were trying to impress on viewers that this was really a Christmas movie about kids.

Well, the story is different and interesting enough, and the cast and acting for the most part are good enough. So, this turns out to be a notch above the average film of this type.

In Louisiana, Melinda (Teri Polo) is a single mother with a VERY precocious daughter, Olivia (Izabela Visovic). At school, Olivia's teacher assigns her students to present an oral report on "my most impossible Christmas wish". Some kids want a million bucks, others a new automobile for the family. For Olivia, it is a romance for her mother, even though the little gal knows her mother likes her single life and beloved LSU football. Meanwhile, someone moves in next door to Melinda, in an old Victorian house, but no one knows who. Also, two possible suitors come to town as well, a new doctor, Nathan (Kevin Sorbo), who often stops for a visit at the mysterious mansion, and a new gym teacher. This is fodder for Olivia, who tries to arrange meetings with the bachelors for her mother and find out what the heck is going on with the neighbors! All too soon, the young girl discovers that an ailing singer (Della Reese) is the woman next door and that Nathan is her physician. The singer also seems "in" on the pursuit of granting impossible Xmas wishes, too, when some of Olivia's classmates requests show up in her mailbox. Could this be an angel in the disguise of former singing sensation? Also, romance doesn't seem to be in the air for Nathan and Melinda after all, when Nathan proves to be the sort that stands folks up. In this sweet little town near the bayou, what else is brewing for the holidays? Here is another wonderful made-for-television film with a sweet and relevant story. The cast is terrific, especially little Visovic, while the setting, costumes, and fine direction offer up a entertaining treat for Christmas time. True fans of family films with romance in the offing will want it year round, too.