the sam(ta clause)’s review published on Letterboxd:
There's a place out there in the world for a "searching for God" story told through the eyes of a child, but the communal christmas movie whimsy here really isn't mixed in naturally with the subject matter. It's like if Home Alone ran exactly like normal except halfway through Paris catches fire and tragically kills off Buzz, forcing Kevin to consider his mortality right before having his cartoonish face-off with the Wet Bandits, except the face-off never happens and he just wanders around town for twenty minutes before he meets the ghost of Buzz and the movie ends. It's hard to tell what this movie was going for, especially considering M. Night's notorious obliviousness to how kids operate, but, as usual with him, it's got a lot of heart and you can see the attempt. Not sure why he thought it would be endearing for the main romance to build itself off of the boy having a "chemical reaction" to seeing the girl... twice. Why M. Night? Why?
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