User reviews

If I had Wings is a family film about a blind kid who wants to be a runner but needs a running partner. He teams up with a troubled youth in a bid to win a race.

To get the negatives out the way first this is a film we have seen a million times before, the troubled kid with a good heart, the bad guy Jock, the standard family film plot template.

For all it's predictability this still manages to be a very enjoyable and well above average film of its genre. This is mainly due to an excellent cast who all do a good job with the script they have. In particular Jaren Brandt Bartlett who is superb as the charismatic bad boy turned good.

The film is fast paced and flows well and there are some well executed laughs to be had along with the drama had as well. This is a film that can be enjoyed by all the family, a pretty rare occurrence these days. Highly recommended.

I enjoyed the film and the various story lines presented kept me interested and kept the plot moving. A good watch.

As a former XC runner myself, the director could have done much more research into the sport. Many facts/reality are not there, had they been I would have notched this up a bit higher. Also made the 'villain' in the movie difficult to believe because the sport doesn't typically attract those type of jocks.

The back-and-forth between the runners assigned to each other was what I found most intriguing.

Good cinematography that helped tell a well-written story.

This was a really heartwarming film that struck a lot of the right chords: overcoming a disability; having tolerance and respect for persons who are different in terms of culture, race, or ability; and meeting the challenges of single parenthood. During the screening I attended in Vancouver in April, young people in the audience were well engaged and, in the climactic race scene, cheering on the hero. It's a well-paced film with high production values.

One of the challenges of a classic overcoming-the-odds film is making the characters and their situation believable. This film achieved a good level of credibility by giving all characters, both the good and the bad, a mix of traits. The hero has his faults, just as the less likable characters have their moments of grace and remorse.

The film is well acted throughout. It was a testament to Richard Harmon's acting that, in a Q&A session following the screening I attended, one of the audience asked whether the actor is blind or sighted.

This is a wonderful story that makes us feel complete. Besides all problems and difficulties, human beings are put into test. Most of them are able to show their capability to overcome whichever comes as a barrier. This is basically what this movie is about.

As a teacher, I not only recommend it as I use this story to work with my students aiming to show them they can always go beyond they think they can. Moreover, they can see with this example that complaining over silly things won't help them achieve their goals or even make them better people.

Once again, I strongly recommend this movie if you're looking forward to being a better human being. =)

This movie was so beautiful, I really loved it. The story was so sweet and the acting was so great. But I had one problem that I'm sure many viewers may have...The whole time I was so expecting the two main guys to develop a romantic relationship... it was suggested so much and not just because I was expecting it. The ending seemed unnecessary and as if they were avoiding the inevitable. I didn't quite get it? They made it seem as if they were going to get together, but then literally in the last 10 minutes decided "nope, let's keep this heterosexual' and introduced new relationships with no chemistry or story? Other than that slight letdown, it was an amazing movie and a must watch!

OK this movie really could have been good. If they had done one ounce of research about cross country. I am a high school cross country runner and I was pretty much just laughing and shaking my head, everything was just so painfully inaccurate. First of all, in a race they we all basically jogging. And cross country teams actually have uniforms like other sports, believe it or not. And real life cross country meets usually have 200+ runners in one race. In the movie the meets looked more like a church picnic and some little kids running around. And for crying out loud, you don't train for a race by running the course as fast as you can every day. And I know they wanted to have a jock character in it like other sports movies but trust me. Jocks don't run cross country. They play basketball or football. Cross country runners are usually awkward nerds. So yeah. Next time try talking two someone who know jack about what your movie is about.

I absolutely loved this film!! Wonderful story. Great chemistry with the leads. Beautiful ending! Simply incredible!!

If I had wings is an inspiring movie about a blind guy who dreams to run "in the cross country", but to do this, he needs a running partner, where a wonderful friendship begins.

Besides all difficulties, human beings and differences each other, Alex and Brad, the guys overcome all obstacles what touching me, makes me think about my life. Moreover, it is touching the incentive relationship, support and care that the boys receive by their parents, showing how important their presence.

I really recommend this movie because the motivation and the lessons as a teamwork without intent to harm each other, which we must add to our lives.

I would not waste your time watching this film. It was bad in every way. The acting, screenplay, direction, music. The music is so loud with singing while they are running but they are TALKING while running and you can't understand or hear them because of the loud music. The acting is wooden and pretty over the top. The direction I thought was like a Lifetime movie and what do you know the Director is from Lifetime movies. You can feel it as soon as you start watching it. The blind kid was not bad in it but to have all these stereotypes around him made it hard to watch. You really laugh at the all the cliche lines and characters in it.

This film is simply rubbish! It's a kind of "feel good" movie that envisions a fantasy world, one that has nothing to do with the real world. It's a trite little tale, completely predictable and unimaginative, based on a script that appears to be written by a child. The atmosphere is all "unicorns and cotton candy", where everyone is just so sweet, with the exception of the high school bully, who plays the part as expected. It's a movie for the Hallmark channel, or maybe Canadian TV, where everything has to be made sugar coated. It seems to be a family production and really is completely divorced from real life.

Even among clichéd feel good films, it's rare to find a movie that doesn't contain anything unique even on a homeopathic level, but "If I had wings" does. In fact, it's the only thing that can, because within the first 5 minutes of the film you know exactly what's going to happen. This in itself is not so bad, and it can rise to the level of mediocrity, but the film is also so unbearably kitschy and unrealistic with adult movie level acting performances that you feel like you're in a high school drama club performance again.

I don't want to be personal, but after a bit of digging, I found that one reviewer who gave this "creation" 8 points gave Monty Python And the Holy Grail, Clockwork Orange and Sin City 2 points, an another, 10-point reviewer gave The Shining 1 point, and of course there are a bunch of "perfectly legitimate" profiles who only rated this piece of rubbish, with unrealistically high scores. So don't believe them, because they either have no taste or are just plain liars, and avoid this celluloid garbage as far as you can!