Movies to Watch - The Christmas Shoes

I had heard this song many times before, but never really paid attention to it, till yesterday.  I mean, I understood it, and knew it was emotionally heart-wrenching, but it wasn't until I saw the movie that it made me value the importance of loving your fellow man.  There isn't one person in this world that I hate.  Not one solitary man, woman or child, and I'm a better person because of it.

Remember to tell the people in your life how much you love them, because there will come a time when they're gone and you'll wish you had.  I call my mother 5 times a week to tell her I love her, and I tell Ryan how much I love him every day.  Embrace it!  You'll be better for it.

I bought the DVD, "The Christmas Shoes" on Amazon.com and got it in the mail just on the nick of time, on Christmas Eve.  I knew Ryan wanted this movie for our collection, so we sat and watched it on Christmas Day.  Let me tell you, I cried, and cried, and cried.  It's a tear-jerker of a film.  I highly recommend it, if you're a Christmas movie aficionado.

The movie bounces between two families--the Layton household, where the father, Robert is so consumed with his work that he misses his daughter's recital; and the Andrews home, where the mother Maggie has been diagnosed with a fatal heart ailment. Desperate to make his mother's last moments happy, Maggie's son Nathan struggles to buy a pair of red dancing shoes that seem like a pair Maggie remembers from her childhood. Naturally, the lives of these families become intertwined, particularly when Robert's wife takes over Maggie's choral program--which topples the already troubled balance between Kate and Robert. Perhaps because Rob Lowe is usually stereotyped as glib and insincere. The Christmas Shoes feels surprisingly heartfelt. The earnestness of The Christmas Shoes surprises because the story originated in the famous country song of the same name, and movies based on songs rarely feel anything but plastic and contrived. There are certainly moments when The Christmas Shoes lays on the sentiment woefully thick, but you'd have to be an ogre not to be touched when Maggie and her husband have one last dance.  --Bret Fetzer on Amazon