Like most made-for-TV holiday movies, this one is a generally harmless, family-oriented feel-good tale of what happens when people thoughtlessly swear to never love another person again.
Ellie is a young girl who, at the age of 12, is riding her bike home from her boyfriend's house when she witnesses her father kissing another woman on a bridge. Overcome with emotion, she shouts at a magic fountain that she will never love again, and blindly rides her bike across a street, where she is struck by a car.
Many years later, her guardian angel, who was forced to abandon her when she swore to never love again, is given a chance to save Dr. Ellen Kilcarten (as she is known now) from the miserable - but commercially successful - life that she is destined to live. But, he is given one stipulation: Dr. Ellen must not see him, feel him, or hear him. To get around this obstacle, the angel goes through Time to recruit 12-year-old "Ellie" and 62-year-old "Eleanor" to pose as Ellen's new assistant and a senior nurse (respectively) at Dr. Ellen's hospital.
What follows is a light-hearted tale of romance lost and found again, as the angel, Ellie, and Eleanor try to persuade Dr. Ellen to rekindle a romance with an old boyfriend (who is now an architect leading a renovation at the hospital where Dr. Ellen works) and find her true self that she had buried that fateful night when she swore to never fall in love again. Complicating things are her new boyfriend, a shrewd businessman looking to capitalize on Dr. Ellen's miracle formula for curing spinal injuries, whom Ellen thinks she is in love with and who she thinks loves her, too. She must also learn to forgive her father and reconcile with him before Christmas Eve. On top of this, she is slated to be wed to her boyfriend on Christmas Eve and has begun making preparations.
After a powerful pharmaceutical executive forces her to skip her wedding in favor of presenting her miracle formula to investors, she begins to slide down the slippery slope of favoring her career over her true self. As she is presenting her formula to a room full of the pharmaceutical company's executives, she announces that her research is too valuable to keep to herself and offers her research materials - and the formula - for free to whomever wants to continue to develop the serum. This renders the formula worthless to the pharmaceutical company, who had hoped to cash in on licensing rights to other companies. In the confrontation that follows, she realizes what her new boyfriend's motives for being with her really were and has an epiphany.
She goes home to her parent's house and tearfully tells her father why she had hated him for so long, and forgives him. He accepts her apology and admits his wrong-doing, and says he never stopped loving her mother.
We then see her being married to her first love, Bobby, in a beautiful spring-time ceremony months later.
Generally, the acting is good and the pacing is keen. Even the bit supporting actors do a good job in their roles, and you never really see the ending coming even though you pretty much can predict the outcome. It would be easy to make this movie sappier and "heavy on the schmaltz", but the producers dial it back before it gets too thick, which is almost a shame because a good cry is why some people watch these movies. You never really hate any of the characters - nobody is evil, they just have different agendas - and so you never really cheer for one possible outcome over another.
Ellie is a young girl who, at the age of 12, is riding her bike home from her boyfriend's house when she witnesses her father kissing another woman on a bridge. Overcome with emotion, she shouts at a magic fountain that she will never love again, and blindly rides her bike across a street, where she is struck by a car.
Many years later, her guardian angel, who was forced to abandon her when she swore to never love again, is given a chance to save Dr. Ellen Kilcarten (as she is known now) from the miserable - but commercially successful - life that she is destined to live. But, he is given one stipulation: Dr. Ellen must not see him, feel him, or hear him. To get around this obstacle, the angel goes through Time to recruit 12-year-old "Ellie" and 62-year-old "Eleanor" to pose as Ellen's new assistant and a senior nurse (respectively) at Dr. Ellen's hospital.
What follows is a light-hearted tale of romance lost and found again, as the angel, Ellie, and Eleanor try to persuade Dr. Ellen to rekindle a romance with an old boyfriend (who is now an architect leading a renovation at the hospital where Dr. Ellen works) and find her true self that she had buried that fateful night when she swore to never fall in love again. Complicating things are her new boyfriend, a shrewd businessman looking to capitalize on Dr. Ellen's miracle formula for curing spinal injuries, whom Ellen thinks she is in love with and who she thinks loves her, too. She must also learn to forgive her father and reconcile with him before Christmas Eve. On top of this, she is slated to be wed to her boyfriend on Christmas Eve and has begun making preparations.
After a powerful pharmaceutical executive forces her to skip her wedding in favor of presenting her miracle formula to investors, she begins to slide down the slippery slope of favoring her career over her true self. As she is presenting her formula to a room full of the pharmaceutical company's executives, she announces that her research is too valuable to keep to herself and offers her research materials - and the formula - for free to whomever wants to continue to develop the serum. This renders the formula worthless to the pharmaceutical company, who had hoped to cash in on licensing rights to other companies. In the confrontation that follows, she realizes what her new boyfriend's motives for being with her really were and has an epiphany.
She goes home to her parent's house and tearfully tells her father why she had hated him for so long, and forgives him. He accepts her apology and admits his wrong-doing, and says he never stopped loving her mother.
We then see her being married to her first love, Bobby, in a beautiful spring-time ceremony months later.
Generally, the acting is good and the pacing is keen. Even the bit supporting actors do a good job in their roles, and you never really see the ending coming even though you pretty much can predict the outcome. It would be easy to make this movie sappier and "heavy on the schmaltz", but the producers dial it back before it gets too thick, which is almost a shame because a good cry is why some people watch these movies. You never really hate any of the characters - nobody is evil, they just have different agendas - and so you never really cheer for one possible outcome over another.
