I'll Be Home for Christmas (1998)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

To me, this movie is perfection.

Best movie ever!

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

I'll be Home for Christmas (1998): Dir: Arlene Sanford / Cast: Jonathan Taylor Thomas, Jessica Biel, Gary Cole, Adam LaVorgna, Andrew Lauer: Idiotic holiday adventure that ranks right up there with Jingle All the Way as nerve wrecking stupidity. The title represents promise, which Jonathan Taylor Thomas does when his father invites him home from college promising a Porsche if he arrives by 6:00 on a particular date. He is off and running until his peers beat him up. They are angry with regards to an exam that he was suppose to help them cheat on. He wakes up in the desert wearing a Santa Claus suit. The rest is your basic road movie as he encounters strange people on his way home. Oh yeah. On a side note, his worst enemy is driving his girlfriend home. Directed by Arlene Sanford who had no better success with A Very Brady Sequel. This ranks as one of the worst of holiday films, with the handling of Thomas's rival proving mean-spirited. Thomas looks like the bunt of a bad joke. Jessica Biel recites her Seventh Heaven role, not to mention that her good girl image here is as predictable as any other in similar roles. Gary Cole is reduced to sitting at home and waiting. Perhaps he is waiting for a better script to arrive. Andrew Lauer plays a thief whom Thomas encounters on his hideous venture home. The result is an unnerving pile of road kill. Score: 1 / 10

My expectations were low when I started to watch this film. The premise seemed OK and from watching Home Improvement I knew the lead actor had some charm about him.I can happily say that I didn't need to worry because this film is good family entertainment, that also manages to be a good Christmas film.Sure, it's far fetched and the plot doesn't hold up to much, but it's also full of funny moments and has its heart in the right place.It's a shame that Jonathon Taylor Thomas didn't go on to make more films after this one because he was likable and had good comic timing.This is one of those films that you see on the shelf every Christmas. Why not give it a go?

rules are all very well and good, but why should I have to write at least 10 lines about a movie when others have extensively critiqued it already, and all I want to do is disagree with the bad reviews? Sheesh. I almost didn't watch this film, after reading some of the comments here, but as it was on TV and I had nothing better to do, I ignored the bad reviews and was glad I did. Sure, it is lightweight and the plot is a bit far-fetched, but so what? It is a Christmas movie, folks, nothing more, nothing less. Jonathan Taylor Thonas strikes just the right note as a college student trying to get home for Christmas, and learning to shed his selfish, self-centered attitudes as he does. There were some genuinely funny moments, a lot of touching moments, and the only fart joke I have ever laughed at. The great scenery (parts of BC and Alberta pretending to be various locations in a cross-country race across the USA) added to the enjoyment of the film. I was just going to say "Ignore the bad reviews, I liked it" but I had to pad it out . IMDb, don't you know that brevity is the soul of wit?

This film is mediocre to the extreme. It could, if you can overlook the glaring plot holes, be something good to watch on Christmas Eve if there is nothing else on and you have had a few drinks. It's not the worst movie ever made, but it is clichéd, predictable and not very funny. Three out of ten- and that might be a case of me being over generous because it's, as I write this, December 12th. What is also frustrating is that there's a nucleus of a good idea in the script- albeit one that has been done before. If the script had been redrafted a few more times, and if some of the Disney schmaltz had been remove then the film might have landed, somewhere, on the better side of OK.Jessica Biel isn't bad though.