Don't worry, I'll warn you before I get to the spoilers :)
This is the original Waltons TV movie, with a few different actors in adult roles offering a slightly different interpretation of those characters. Patricia Neal plays Olivia here, and she plays her a little flintier than Michael Learned did in the series. But perhaps one could see this as being due to Olivia being worried about her husband making it home after a snowstorm. Edgar Bergen as Grandpa isn't given much to do compared to Will Geer in the series; I assume he still had the talent to have done more with the role if he had been given more to do (he really was a great performer). But with a large ensemble, and only 100 minutes running time, it's understandable that his role was somewhat limited. Everyone, including 4-year-old Kami Cotler (a wonderful child actor, but not quite as good yet as she was just one or two years later when the series began), needed to contribute in order to give the film the feeling of a large, rambunctious family.
A minor quibble is that Andrew Duggan is a bit too old to play Ellen Corby's (Grandma's) son, John Sr. Ralph Waite (John Sr. In the series) was maybe a little too old, but at the turn of the 20th Century, it certainly would not have been uncommon for a girl in her later teens to have married and begun a family.
Long story short, if you can accept a few different actors than the ones you may have gotten used to if you grew up with the television series, this TV movie has a lot to offer.
The Homecoming provided a fully-formed introduction (though I don't believe it was intended as a pilot) to the series; the house in the series is nicer, making it seem like a family that wasn't poor until the depression, and the series exuded a little more warmth, but both this TV movie and the subsequent series offer sentimentality without being trite or maudlin. There's just enough toughness to give some richness to the sentiment, so that it doesn't just feel manipulatively saccharine. In much the same way as adding a little fat to a recipe gives food a little richness of flavor, giving the characters some realistic adversity enriches this story.
That said, there are a couple of scenes that are kind of half-baked, or that should have been a little more developed. For example (very minor spoilers coming up), when John Boy borrows a car from a friend at the general store, he doesn't bother to check the gas tank before leaving. In an era when cars broke down pretty regularly, and when there still would have been some older cars on the road that had no fuel gauge, even a teenager wouldn't have departed onto snowy roads without at least making sure he had enough gasoline. And later, when visiting the Baldwin sisters, Cleavon Little as Pastor Dooley doesn't let John Boy ask if he can borrow their car (the whole reason they're there), and doesn't explain why. It felt like a scene from Three's Company. My guess is that writer Earl Hamner, Jr. Knew that he needed to have some difficulty at these points in the story, but didn't have enough time (or, perhaps, take the time) to come up with anything better, or with legitimate reasons for the difficulties. If these quibbles would take away from your enjoyment of this film, subtract a star from my score.
A side note: Another reviewer mentions that the movie has an anti-Christian bias that people wouldn't have had in the 1930s. It doesn't have an anti-Christian bias; it's a Christmas movie, for Pete's sake! In reality, God is very important to all the characters who bring it up. But Christian people have had issues with certain things professed by Christian religions since way before the 1930s; as a matter of fact, since way before the Reformation in the 1500s. Perhaps during the Puritan era (which was itself a disagreement with certain Christian religions), a person who didn't go to church every Sunday would be seen as a heretic, but by the 1900s not being a regular churchgoer may have been unusual, but it wouldn't have been seen as anti-Christian. And some characters (including his wife and his mother) do not approve of John Sr. Skipping church, though they tolerate it. Most characters seem to have a deep faith, regardless of how religious they are. It's funny that someone who is intolerant of the way others express their faith, calls those people intolerant. The writer and narrator of this movie and the subsequent series was Earl Hamner, Jr., a Baptist. Hardly anti-Christian.
This is the original Waltons TV movie, with a few different actors in adult roles offering a slightly different interpretation of those characters. Patricia Neal plays Olivia here, and she plays her a little flintier than Michael Learned did in the series. But perhaps one could see this as being due to Olivia being worried about her husband making it home after a snowstorm. Edgar Bergen as Grandpa isn't given much to do compared to Will Geer in the series; I assume he still had the talent to have done more with the role if he had been given more to do (he really was a great performer). But with a large ensemble, and only 100 minutes running time, it's understandable that his role was somewhat limited. Everyone, including 4-year-old Kami Cotler (a wonderful child actor, but not quite as good yet as she was just one or two years later when the series began), needed to contribute in order to give the film the feeling of a large, rambunctious family.
A minor quibble is that Andrew Duggan is a bit too old to play Ellen Corby's (Grandma's) son, John Sr. Ralph Waite (John Sr. In the series) was maybe a little too old, but at the turn of the 20th Century, it certainly would not have been uncommon for a girl in her later teens to have married and begun a family.
Long story short, if you can accept a few different actors than the ones you may have gotten used to if you grew up with the television series, this TV movie has a lot to offer.
The Homecoming provided a fully-formed introduction (though I don't believe it was intended as a pilot) to the series; the house in the series is nicer, making it seem like a family that wasn't poor until the depression, and the series exuded a little more warmth, but both this TV movie and the subsequent series offer sentimentality without being trite or maudlin. There's just enough toughness to give some richness to the sentiment, so that it doesn't just feel manipulatively saccharine. In much the same way as adding a little fat to a recipe gives food a little richness of flavor, giving the characters some realistic adversity enriches this story.
That said, there are a couple of scenes that are kind of half-baked, or that should have been a little more developed. For example (very minor spoilers coming up), when John Boy borrows a car from a friend at the general store, he doesn't bother to check the gas tank before leaving. In an era when cars broke down pretty regularly, and when there still would have been some older cars on the road that had no fuel gauge, even a teenager wouldn't have departed onto snowy roads without at least making sure he had enough gasoline. And later, when visiting the Baldwin sisters, Cleavon Little as Pastor Dooley doesn't let John Boy ask if he can borrow their car (the whole reason they're there), and doesn't explain why. It felt like a scene from Three's Company. My guess is that writer Earl Hamner, Jr. Knew that he needed to have some difficulty at these points in the story, but didn't have enough time (or, perhaps, take the time) to come up with anything better, or with legitimate reasons for the difficulties. If these quibbles would take away from your enjoyment of this film, subtract a star from my score.
A side note: Another reviewer mentions that the movie has an anti-Christian bias that people wouldn't have had in the 1930s. It doesn't have an anti-Christian bias; it's a Christmas movie, for Pete's sake! In reality, God is very important to all the characters who bring it up. But Christian people have had issues with certain things professed by Christian religions since way before the 1930s; as a matter of fact, since way before the Reformation in the 1500s. Perhaps during the Puritan era (which was itself a disagreement with certain Christian religions), a person who didn't go to church every Sunday would be seen as a heretic, but by the 1900s not being a regular churchgoer may have been unusual, but it wouldn't have been seen as anti-Christian. And some characters (including his wife and his mother) do not approve of John Sr. Skipping church, though they tolerate it. Most characters seem to have a deep faith, regardless of how religious they are. It's funny that someone who is intolerant of the way others express their faith, calls those people intolerant. The writer and narrator of this movie and the subsequent series was Earl Hamner, Jr., a Baptist. Hardly anti-Christian.