Father Xmas (2001) User Reviews

Short summary of this film... ending not revealed.

[the_skwejmeister · 8/10 · 24 May 2005]

This film is short but sweet and incredibly moving. Claree (Dakota Fanning) plays a young girl who is being babysat by her brother, who insists on teasing her and finally tells her the truth about where her father is- that he is fighting in the war in Vietnam. He leaves Claree alone after telling her this and the phone rings- she picks it up and it's her father pretending to be 'Father Christmas'. Claree asks him if her father can come home. The scene then switches to a plane landing and a few soldiers coming out holding a coffin...

Watch the rest to see what happens. Even though it was terribly short, this film did make me cry and I'd recommend watching it when somebody's not going to catch you crying!

Not bad for 20 minutes*SPOILERS*

[joshuaism · 10/10 · 7 September 2005]

First you just have to understand that this movie is nearly 20 minutes long. You can't do a whole lot in 20 minutes, but the length isn't the point of it. For Dakota's first film appearance, she was incredibly cute and captured my heart.

*SPOILER WARNING!* The movie is set in Christmas time during Vietnam, as the war unfolds on television, Dakota(Clairee) is being babysat by her older brother, Mickey. Mickey plays the stereotypical bully older brother that ties her up in a net and hangs her, so that he can go hang out with his friends.

So what else can Clairee do? She watches the war going on television, the images of people dying frighten her so much she has a hallucination that she is in the middle of the war. She is then interrupted by a phone call from Santa and Clairee, knowing her father is serving in the war, asks Santa that her one present is for her dad to come home. Santa is reluctant about making the promise, because Clairee demanded that if he doesn't come home safe, she'll stop believing in him! So the soldiers are returning, Clairee, Mickey and their mother is waiting for the father to arrive from the airplane, the suspense builds up. Clairee looks around the see the faces of happy and angry people, which I found accurate considering there were a lot of angry people when the soldiers returned in real life. Clairee was so excited to see her dad, they show a coffin being carried by, implying that her father was killed in battle. Does Clairee and her family unite with the dad? Indeed she does. The ending put a tear in my eye, and definitely deserves to be a Christmas classic, even though there's not very much reference to Christmas except the title, Christmas tree and Santa.