A Christmas Eve Miracle

Bad acting, bad dialog, cardboard characters who are also unrealistic, too many platitudes.

In act 1, before the wish, we have the ideal family despite the workaholic mom who rightly denigrates herself as a terrible mom. Yet somehow, she manages to spend quality time with her kids. And her teenage girl has none of the usual tension with her mom. Both kids act like the workaholic mom is a hero. In this section, the acting isn't great but it isn't as horrible as what's to come.

Act 2 made me wonder if this was a parody. This Dustin is the most one dimensional of all the characters. He acts like the only thing in life is to spend outrageous sums of money on his wife. All of these movies where a wish is granted to change a life path presents the main character with the problem of having the old memories and thought patterns despite a completely changed circumstance. In this case Sharron becomes creepy as like a stalker of other people's kids. Of course, to her, they are her kids, but not to them. The fact is that these same kids have become spoiled in this other family and that is supposed to be part of the morale of the story. In this act, all the acting is terrible.

I won't say much about Act 3 other than that the acting goes back to being only slightly poor.