The Christmas Shoes

I saw the first 5 minutes, realized it was another horrible made-for-TV Christmas movie and left the room to tend to other things while my wife watched it. I then watched the last 15 minutes (albeit not intentionally). What little I saw was bad. I mean really bad. So bad that my wife kept yelling at me to stop my MST3K routine while watching it.

A magical story about a pair of shoes that bring two strangers together. It's a tear jerker so it may not everyone's idea of a family Christmas movie, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Plot In A Paragraph: Two separate stories come together, in the first, a young music teacher, Maggie Andrews, is dying due to a heart problem and her son Nathan is trying to buy her a pair of Christmas shoes for her before she dies. In the second story, workaholic lawyer Robert Layton (Rob Lowe) and his wife Kate are drifting apart and things come to a head during Christmas when Kate takes over for Maggie for the school choir and turns down a job with Roberts company. Robert and Nathan's paths cross as Nathan tries to raise money for the shoes and Robert tries to get a present for his daughter.

Rob Lowe is excellent as both the jerk and the guy who has seen the error of his ways. Dorian Harewood (who I must has seen in over 50 movies and TV shows, but none immediately come to mind) deserves special praise, as does Kimberley Williams Paisley and Max Morrow.

Too sickly for me I'm afraid. From reading the other comments I sense that many of the other users had read the book and obviously loved the story. I don't enjoy this type of film whenever it's set but to set it at Christmas time with a beautiful, angelic dying mother was just too much.

I'll be avoiding this one in the future.

Before watching this movie, I was aware of the great song but not aware that the movie was based on a book.

I thought the movie was OK for a TV movie and the acting only average (although Hugh Thompson and Max Morrow stood out for me) so why the 7 star rating? Gosh darn it, sometimes there's a movie out there that comes along that just gets to me emotionally and reaching for the tissue box. It's very rare for a guy like me that doesn't shed a lot of tears but this is one of those movies. It offers up to us just what is important in life and we should all be aware of that message. Parental guidance recommended for those with small children.

I loved this movie. The song put me to tears, but the movie was even better. I just wish that they would show it on TV again. Seems like after the first year, this was a forgotten movie. Almost like Mr. McGreggors Christmas. Once you saw it, you wanted to see it again, but it was never played again. If I could get anyone to play this movie, I would try my best to do so. There are not enough good Christmas movies out there these days. Some of the one's they are making are stupid. Why can't we put the meaning of Christmas back in movies. Like It's A wonderful life, or Miracle on 34th street, or White Christmas. We need more decent Christmas movies.