25 Days of Christmas: Day Two

Prancer (1989)















I won't lie... this was a little tough to get through.

The movie tells the story of a young girl in a small town who thinks the injured reindeer she finds in the woods is the lost Prancer. She nurses him back to health with the intention of taking him up into the hills the night before Christmas eve in hopes of Santa coming to get him.

I'm going to assume it's because I'm older and wiser now with kids of my own but during this viewing all I was thinking was "Sam Elliot should send that brat girl packing to her aunt's house."

The girl Jessica played by Rebecca Harrell was such a turd in this flick I really didn't care about anything she wanted as the story progressed. I could see if the father was a jerk and was mean to her but I only saw a man who was trying everything in his power to keep a roof over his kids heads and his turd daughter kept running off and ignoring everything he said to her. I wasn't broken up at all when it came out that he was thinking of sending her off to live with the aunt. Don't let the door hit you on the way out, kiddo...

The first thirty or forty minutes I was wondering why people thought this was a good flick and it wasn't until Jessica had to make some cash to feed the hurt Prancer that the story got a little interesting. She heads over to the crazy lady who lives in the spooky old house over the hill and offers to clean her house. The woman agrees and is soon breaking into a smile and seems to enjoy the company until she finds out Jessica has gotten into the mass of Christmas decorations hidden in the attic.

It turns out that this lady used to be a nice woman who would go all out during Christmas every year but something happened to change her into the old crone we now see in the flick. Jessica manages to melt the frozen heart of Mrs. McFarland enough that she allows the decorations to be put up on the house and then we see her rejoining the town at life. But what was the thing that turned her into the town shut in? What's her story? Well, they don't bother telling us. Bummer.

The last bit of the movie picks up as we see the healing of the relationship between the father and daughter and sister and brother and the town comes together for the usual Christmas miracle. Sam Elliot takes his daughter up to the hills to set Prancer free so he can go back to Santa and it's pretty much shown that the reindeer is in fact the lost pet of Santa himself. Or is he? Sam Elliot doesn't seem to be surprised that the animal disappeared off the edge of a cliff. He doesn't look up in the sky to see the sleigh and eight tiny reindeer fly across the full moon. He doesn't even acknowledge the jingle bells. The only one to see the sight is the girl. Was it in her mind?

I think Prancer jumped. I felt like doing the same through most of the flick.

It's not horrible though. But it's so slow at parts and when it does start to get interesting it's only on the surface and doesn't try to get any deeper than that. This was a better movie when I was younger.