Three Wishes (1995)

User Rating:

5.6/10   

Director:

Martha Coolidge

Writers (WGA):

Clifford Green (story) &
Ellen Green (story) ...

Release Date:

27 October 1995 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | Fantasy

Tagline:

If you really believe, magic will find you

Plot:

In an unexplained act of charity, Jeanne Holman, picks up an injured, apparent tramp and takes him home to care for him little realising who he was or the effect he would have on her life and those of her family.

Plot Keywords:

Korean War | Dog | Baseball | Flashback | Meditation

Awards:

1 nomination

Cast

Patrick Swayze	...	Jack McCloud
Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio	...	Jeanne Holman
Joseph Mazzello	...	Tom Holman
Seth Mumy	...	Gunther 'Gunny' Holman
David Marshall Grant	...	Phil
Jay O. Sanders	...	Coach Schramka
Michael O'Keefe	...	Adult Tom
John Diehl	...	Leland's Dad
Diane Venora	...	Joyce
David Zahorsky	...	Little Leland
Brian Flannery	...	Brian
Brock Pierce	...	Scott
Davin Jacob Carey	...	Sackin
David Hart	...	Brian's Father
Scott Patterson	...	Scott's Father

MPAA:

Rated PG for mild language and sensuality, and a scary fantasy.

Runtime:

115 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

SDDS

Certification:

Iceland:L | South Korea:All | Australia:G | Spain:T | UK:PG | USA:PG

Filming Locations:

Agua Dulce, California, USA

Company:

Rysher Entertainment

Goofs:

Anachronisms: Set in 1955, Tom Holman enters a construction site with an orange warning sign. Prior to 1971, construction signs were yellow.

Movie Connections:

Features "The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet" (1952)

Soundtrack:

The Glory of Love

Good family film with an excellent message

This story of a young mother of two son's whose husband is missing and presumed dead in the Korean War touches your heart. Jeanne Holman (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio)hits a drifter, Jack McCloud (Patrick Swayze)with her car on the way to a picnic. Later she finds him sleeping on a bench with his leg in a cast and insists that he stay at her house until his leg is better. The two boys; Tommy (Joseph Mozzello) and Gunny (Seth Mumy) gradually come to care for Jack and Jack cares for the family.

The lesson, "instead of wishing for things to make you happy; wish to be happy with what you have" is such an important truth in today's life but one that is difficult to remember when we all want what the neighbor has! The movie set - of brand new developments with thousands of houses exactly alike and looking very bare because trees have not had time to grow yet - is a nostalgic setting from that time in history.

Patrick Swayze as Jack McCloud, is good in this part of a drifter who has stumbled into the life of Jeanne Holman right when she needed friendship, support and understanding. It seems that a lot of Swayze's characters have an elusive quality of melancholy, of an acceptance that there is something special between two people that can't be defined or captured;looked at closely; or held and kept safe like a firefly in a quart jar. Jack McCloud is one of these characters along with Jed Eckart (Red Dawn), Johnny Castle (Dirty Dancing), Sam Wheat (Ghost), Ms. Vida Boheme (To Wong Foo...), Ben Clifton (Forever Lulu /Along for the Ride), Max Lowe (City of Joy) and even Allan Quatermain (King Solomon's Mines). Swayze's character Jack Charles of Father Hood was open, brash, funny and most importantly - hopeful who learned to love his children. Donnie Darko's Jim Cunningham (Swayze) was a snake-oil salesman who under it all was really slime with real no depth of any kind being developed in that character.