Noel

So how are you planning to spend the holiday season? For lonely forty-plus singleton Sarandon, it'll be looking after her Alzheimer's-stricken mother, and perhaps contemplating suicide. Pregnant Cruz, on the other hand, will be pondering whether to ditch her hot-head husband-to-be Walker (who has problems of his own since café owner Arkin is convinced the cop's his late wife reincarnated). Wistful Marcus Thomas, on the other hand, longs to be injured so he can recreate a treasured teenage Christmas spent in the hospital. Palminteri's first feature is desperately convinced of the significance of all this, but the film's contrived, overstated and sometimes downright odd miseries singularly fail to persuade. And the pain-factor shoots higher with Robin Williams' 'mysterious stranger', ultra-mawkish as only he knows how, setting in motion the predictable final reel fake uplift. An endurance test, frankly, though buried within is a touchingly fragile performance from Sarandon which hints at the genuine personal tragedies the film's so crassly aiming to exploit.