This made for TV movie surprised me. I had very little expectations for it but ended up finding it to be a very light, yet entertaining plot mainly due to the cast. Trish (Nancy Travis) is a mom/school teacher, who has lost touch with her family mainly from taking her job too seriously. Meanwhile, Cindy (Jana Lee Hamblin) had a husband who was killed in Iraq leaving behind two sons for her to raise, one of which has to write a paper for the teacher (Travis) on an event that changed his life yet can not seem to do so due to spending too much time focusing on the basketball team. When Cindy goes to talk to Trish about the problem, the teacher ignores her plea telling her to be more of a mother to her son and not enable the situation. Through the work of a female angel watching over them all, this leads to Trish getting into a car wreck bumping her head which instantly puts her in Cindy's shoes as a mother to realize what an easy life Trish had compared to her. This is where the actress (Travis) switches roles and becomes Cindy with the angel telling her she has a lesson to learn "all through the blink of an eye". The movie offers some humorous situations of the somewhat above-middle-class school teacher switching to the life of a mother who works in a café as a waitress especially when she learns her "new" son is the boy she was actually failing as a school teacher. Some heartwarming scenes when she learns the real reason why he can't write his paper is due to the very last words the boy told his father before he left and was killed in Iraq being, "I hate you!" In the end after her lesson is learned, Cindy/Trish returns back to her body with the only time lost being "a blink of an eye". The plot is a different form of "It's a Wonderful Life" only not as strong with only a few light traces of Christmas lights mixed within the plot.
Review of A Walk in My Shoes
