Critic Reviews

It is light, it is charming, it is delightfully funny and completely captivating. It is all that, and something more. It has an undefinable spiritual quality that raises the spirits of the beholder into a happy, hopeful mood.

In the battle of the classic Hollywood Christmas movies, It's A Wonderful Life feels charmingly ancient, fixed in an early-20th-century America that scarcely anyone today remembers first-hand. Miracle On 34th Street feels more modern, with slangy dialogue and naturalistic asides, and a general awareness of how Christmas has become about the intertwined stresses of shopping and selling.

The original (and best) version of the cockle-warming tale of a man who claims to be the real-life Santa Claus.

So you don't believe in Santa Claus? If you want to stay a non-believer don't see Miracle.

The freshest little picture in a long time, and maybe even the best comedy of this year.

A Christmas season evergreen.

Christmas classic. [06 Nov 1997]

It's a highly professional piece of Hollywood sentimentalism.

Author-Director George Seaton has laced his sure-fire sentimentality with equally sure-fire wit and some cynical knowledge about how men of business and law might talk, look and act under these extravagant circumstances. The movie handles all its whimsy deftly and is consistently a smooth, agile job.

A touch labored but lovable.