"One Christmas Eve" started out with some mishaps that weren't meant for comedy, most of which seemed hokey. After a bit, the mishaps one right after another took on a sense of Laurel and Hardy or the Three Stooges comedy. It's supposed to be a comedy of tragedies, but this film doesn't quite get the humor right in some scenes and that gives the film a dark pale. For instance, it's 20-degrees below zero when Alden falls into a pit and breaks his arm. If that isn't serious enough, no one knows where he is until Emma finds him later. Most adults, parents at least, won't find that funny.
The total lackadaisical attention that Reggie is paying to his security job outside the hospital isn't funny. But, allowing that as part of the plot, too many contrived things are here. One is the construction site adjacent to the hospital, with a padlocked gate and warning sign that Alden completely ignores. Then, the police station with its upper room decorated with a Christmas tree that's apparently the only room in the building without a sprinkler system. Another is the police station with no smoke alarms at all. There are more, but one can get a sense of all the manufactured failures and safety violations and other aspects of the various scenarios.
The last straw for overboard craziness is the multi-incident scenario when Reggie's van breaks down just off the interstate highway. Then, two criminals in the snowstorm stop and rob them. Then, the tow truck drops Reggie's van. And finally, the van rolls down the hill, onto a pond, breaks through the ice and sinks. There are holes in this film as well - the most obvious is when the fire trucks arrive to put out the fire in the police building, and the main characters - Nell, Reggie, Cesar, Alden and Emma, all get out of the building coughing from the smoke, but there isn't a single police officer anywhere to be found. They must all have stayed in the first floor - enjoying the smoke break perhaps?
Of the roles played in this film, I think Brian Tee as Dr. Chen was quite good. The funniest character by far was the hospital ER admitting nurse, played by Tracy Waterhouse. The two children don't seem bothered at all that this is the first Christmas without their dad, since their parents' divorce. They're just anxious about his surprise present. Have divorce and broken homes become so common place and blasé, that children are conditioned by society to have no emotions or feelings? The paperwork rigamarole that goes on when Nell Blakemore first takes Cesar into the hospital is crazy. The film does allow Anne Heche to have one very short scene to vent - or flip her lid. But otherwise, her Nell, always calm while being flummoxed throughout most of the film just doesn't seem very real.
I don't know what people thought of this TV film when it ran at the end of 2014. Judging by the couple of dozen reviewers so far, for most, this film was either a love or hate movie. But for the majority who rated it, it has fared just passable. I'm in that group, but rate it one notch lower - call it questionable, I don't recommend it and think most people wouldn't think much of it.
The best lines in the film weren't written for comedy. Cesar (Carlos Gomez) and Nell Blakemore (Anne Heche) are in the hospital operating room. They are talking about their children, and Cesar says, "You need to treasure every day that they are so young and that you have them so close, because it doesn't last." Nell nods slightly and says, "Mmm, you must be very proud of your daughter." Cesar says, "We carry them inside our hearts... all of them."
A nine-minute video was on the DVD of this film, "A Look Behind the Scenes." Producer David Rosemont said that the hospital scenes were filmed in a real working hospital. Director Jay Russell says he had worked with kids and animals before, "and each and every time I swear I'm never gonna do it again. But then, if the story touches me and if I think it's gonna be a lot of fun, well, then, I just gotta do it."
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