bigverybadtom
This TV movie is based on a short story by Louisa May Alcott, and is set in post-Civil War New England, on a farm where a widow, her adult daughter, and her two younger children live. But the farm is poor, the family is unable to pay the rent, and they are running out of resources with winter coming. The mother has been estranged from her own mother, a rich society lady, but the adult daughter, on her own accord, decides to write her grandmother-and the grandmother, having had her carriage break down, decides to come and visit the family. The reunion is fraught with problems, but that is only the beginning as we find out more about the family's unhappy past.This is no smarmy feel-good story. There are not only the inevitable family conflicts springing from the reunion, but we see that tragedy in that era can be just around the corner. The father had died in a farm accident, people are killed by bad weather, and a scarlet fever epidemic infects many people and killed a number of them. A farm helper has been traumatized as a Civil War soldier and has lost his ability to speak.The story may be "old-fashioned", but tragedy can still be around the corner nowadays as well as in the past.
rinfillmore
I love this movie and have tried to see it each year around Thanksgiving if I can manage to catch it. Tatiana Maslany is great in a role she completed well before Orphan Black made her famous. I'm only sorry she didn't perform in the follow up "An Old Fashioned Christmas" as the young woman who took her place in that movie is nowhere near as good.While I gather from other reviews that this story is far removed from the Louisa May Alcott story on which it is loosely based, I still felt it maintains an affinity with Alcott's writing and that Tillie is a believable Alcott heroine. The love story with Gad and the familial rapprochement that is the focus of the storyline are all quite charming and make one feel the hope of the holidays. Best of all, they actually filmed it somewhere with snow and cold weather, versus the horrible Hollywood tendency to blow some fake snow over green bushes and pretend it's winter. Definitely worth a watching.
ILuvPrincessDiaries2
I actually found this film in our local public library. As I'm starved for anything new to watch I thought hey why not and borrowed this movie. When you see the cover it makes you think it might be a cheesy film. But I didn't think it was at all. The actors whom I personally have never heard of before (but will be looking for in the future!) astonished me at how well they acted. They had me believing the story almost instantly. Though it's no Masterpiece Theater, it's well acted, the music is good, and the characters had you rooting for them the whole time. I suggest that you look for this film. If you liked 'Little Women' I'm pretty sure you will like this one.
stephenfrakes-1
I think that the problem that most people have with this movie is that it is so far removed from Louisa May Alcott's story that the only thing they have in common is the title and the name of the family. And on a more personal level, my maternal grandmother being a Bassett from the old New England family, I didn't like that they turned Ellis Bassett into an Irishman, when Bassett is one of the oldest and well-known Norman-English names in England and Old Yankee names in New England. And so as not to make anyone mad, I do have some Irish in me and I don't have a problem with being Irish. It is just the turning of a name into something it isn't. It would be like calling the Kennedy family English.So, now that I gave what I didn't like about the movie, this is what I loved. The movie was excellent. The costuming was out of this world. The homes in the movie were perfect. The plot line was good. The actors were great. And like with most Hallmark movies, I really felt good at the end of the movie.So if you watch this movie just on its own, not comparing it to the original story by Louisa May Alcott, then you're going to love it.I purchased the movie and it will be one of the movies that my family and I watch every year near Thanksgiving Day.
AD
