dataferret-87524

I have been a caregiver for my wife's journey with cancer for the last seven years. I don't know if she'll be gone this year or the next, but it will happen.

To all the caregivers out there who have a doomed loved one, watch the movie, and then decide for yourself if your loved one should see it.

It's a beautiful movie for caregivers, and perhaps, for extended family and your loved one.

Your call. Make sure you have tissues at hand, for it will haunt you.

Oh. And apparently I have 138 more... characters to write. My wife is asleep at this time, and I will soon wake her up to attend to her toilet. I cry every day, when she doesn't see me. Cancer sucks.

With thousands of reviews, mine won't be seen. Regardless, the women in the typing pool who were crying while tapping out the handwritten notes from officers, and the mother who collapsed on her porch when the preacher showed up to tell her the devastating news... was the most gut-wrenching.

And the women of Ukraine are living the same reality. Regardless of people who want to ban or sanitize the agonies of war.

I must tap out more words to fulfill the minimum of a review. As a vet, I've seen these horrors. 'They shall not die old' was and is the same in 1914 as it is in 2024. And so we continure...

This is a Christmas rom-com that is really (no kidding, REALLY) funny. Lots of gags of various types going on here. The "Sleepless" reference is when adorable but Vegas-knowledgeable, precocious moppet Hope Jenkins (Aislyn Watson) writes a letter to Mr.s Claus (not Santa), asking not for toys and trinkets, but a new husband/daddy for heart-of-gold mom, a Las Vegas casino concierge. Mom (Laura Vandervoot) is a STUNNINGLY beautiful blue-eyed blonde, so it sorta / kinda stretches the imagination that she would be bereft of male suitors. Regardless, Mrs. Claus (Jessica, played by Mira Sorvino), irked by an overworked Santa (Will Sasso) who blows past their 500th anniversary. Extra comic relief is provided by elfin reindeer wrangler Calvin (Geoff Gustafson), all being kept on track by hilariously-frantic Executive Elf Anika.

So while Santa is sleeping through a romantic dinner, Jessica reads Hope's letter asking for a new Uncle Daddy, and ropes Calvin into dropping her off at 'Vegas. With a little "magic dust", Jessica becomes (presto) the actually gohjuhs, if bewilderingly naïve, Jessica Clausbuffet ("It's French"). Meanwhile, Santa is distraught that Mrs. Claus has left him, and coerces Calvin into telling him where he dropped her off. Accordingly, Calvin and Santa go off to 'Vegas, arriving incognito (albeit magically), conjuring literal fistfuls of cash to "grease the wheels" of the greedy scrooge-like casino manager.

Ok, it's predictable from the get-go when you have a long talking role from Lifetime regular Andrew Walker, who plays the cute bartender (Myles) who's a big friend of Moppet Hope. But hilarity ensues throughout the movie, with a frantic Executive Elf Anika urging haste and attention to the mission, and Calvin the reindeer wrangler working the tables, Jessica looking for Noelle (Mom), Santa looking for Jessica, Myles the bartender keeping "Security" away from Moppet Hope, and a greedy scrooge looking to milk as much dough as he could from the magical rubes and sending a hooker (Brandy) to keep the mark (Santa) happy.

Like an old Tex Avery cartoon with characters running in and out of various doors, things will suddenly explode in one swell foop. You know romance will be "found" for Mom, Moppet Hope is happy, Santa and Mrs. Claus will reconnect (with help from Elvis), Christmas is saved, toys are delivered, and even party girl Brandy and comic-relief Calvin will wrangle, too... but the interim byplay is the more funnerer part, with bodaciously-whimsical magic tossed in as well.