Un cadeau inattendu

One of the best movies I have ever watched. Very touching story of a family trying to cope with the unfathomable sorrow from the loss of a child. Only to be made worse by not being able to conceive another child. Incredible performance from the boy "Eli" (Maurice Cole). Also heartfelt performances from Toni Collette and Ioan Gruffodd. Cannot believe the sad, cynical people who reviewed this movie negatively using terms like "creepy" and "spooky". Really!? Too bad they all got bogged down in the trivial details of accents and technical issues while missing the whole story being told before them. That unconditional love shown to people will overcome and heal even the deepest hurt and devastation. A lesson that Christ taught us that I fear is lost on the negative reviewers of this movie who could not see past the casting and unimportant details. A tremendous opportunity lost for theses folks. I vote for more movies like this vs. most of the trash that is turned out.

Stop calling the young man "Spooky" or "The Creepiest movie child ever". COME ON!!! Give the guy a brake. How dare you people. You should be ashamed of your self. Cant believe you people don't have anything better to do with your time. Putting down a child. Is it because the word "ANGEL" was in the title. WHAT A BUNCH OF JERKS. Get over it. If you don't like the movie just say so. Maurice Cole was remarkable. Good job little man.

As for the movie it self. Its a good family movie. Little things in the movie maybe stood out of place. But come on, how many action movies do we watch where Bruce willis or Will smith should have died a hundred times or more and everyone is like what a great flick. So real.

This was a great family movie and gives good people hope.

In this day and age it is becoming increasingly difficult to find movies that I can show to my 99-year-old mother. If there is the least bit of profanity or gratuitous violence, she just won't watch any more! So it was wonderful to see "Foster" and I look forward to inviting Ma to come and see it.

What an amazing little actor is Maurice Cole! Unfortunately, there is almost nothing about him on IMDb - not even his birthdate and so I am still wondering if, as the plot says, he was actually just seven years old when Foster was shot. If he was, then he is amazing! His clear and accurate pronunciation of some quite long and technical words would, I should imagine, put him into the child prodigy category. The only reason we won't see a lot more of him is if his parents decide that that don't want him to fall into the many traps that seem to await child stars.

The story is lovely - just nice people doing nice things and attempting to cope with life's challenges and setbacks. The only reservation that I had about the whole movie was the selection of Toni Collette as Zooey. I would love to have seen Sandra Bullock in that role! And why did an Aussie actress have a sort of Scottish accent? Her mother didn't and the film wasn't set in Scotland (as far as I could tell), her husband had his own natural very slight Welsh accent so that was, to me, a distraction because, rather than give the story my whole attention, I found myself wondering about that.

Nevertheless, a delightful film that will please Ma and my grandchildren equally.

I tend not to watch films like this one, but I watched this movie with my two little daughters on Sky this weekend, and it was a good experience.

My two little girls did not stop talking the next day about the little boy who showed up out of the blue in their foster parents doors steps with no notice.

We did enjoy the way that the movie was written and how the characters interacted with this little boy, Eli, was nicely done.

We did notice how Eli's foster mom and dad dealt with each event Eli was bringing to their lives.

I am not so sure if I understood some of the negative comments from other reviewers about the film, but being able to watch PG and G rated movies with one's kids, should be a pleasant experience.

I should mention that even though the movie had a title related to Christmas when I saw it, it's not really about Christmas. The holiday does come near the end, though. And Zooey and Alec learn a lot from Eli.

Maurice Cole is outstanding. There is no way he is seven years old. He comes across as a short adult and shows a lot of intelligence and appeal.

Toni Collette is quite appealing, and when she does smile, it's a very nice smile. But she doesn't smile a lot.

The other lead actors do quite well also. In fact, everyone does. Even the employee at Legoland Amusement Park who is only there for the paycheck and cares nothing about his job.

It's a very worthwhile effort.