I'll Be Home for Christmas . Newcity Chicago . 11-16-98

I'll Be Home for Christmas

DIRECTED BY: Arlene Sanford

REVIEWED: 11-16-98

Tiger Beat centerfold Jonathan Taylor Thomas is Jake, a So-Cal college con artist who scraps two tickets to Cabo San Lucas when Dad calls up and promises Son the Porsche if he can make it home to New York by Christmas Eve. Problem is, he's been left in the desert--clad in only a Santa suit and beard--by thugs disgruntled with his latest failed scam: helping them cheat on an exam. Thus ensues an episodic journey in which Jake panders to strangers' Christmas spirit (usually by fabricating a medical emergency), only to find every scam turned into an opportunity to do right. While rife with hamburger humor, curled-upper-lip grins and the familiar shorthand irony of scoring sour moments (like riding through the desert in a car full of old ladies) with zany music (like "What's Up, Pussycat?"), the premise of the reluctant Santa is always a charmer. But it's hard to root for a college kid whose designs on a fancy car vie with those of retaining his elusive, mixed up girlfriend, played by "Seventh Heaven"'s Jessica Biel. I also never had the sense that Jake was growing any wiser, just getting away with it all, so that, when the moment of self-understanding arrives, it's as slipshod as slapping a moral on the end of the jubilantly self-indulgent "Ferris Bueller." You might say that, like that film, "I'll Be Home" and its hero finish unscathed inside the bubble of their cushy, middle-class materialism, where being broke and stranded is merely a cloying cinematic conceit. But, after all, what would the holidays be without a little self-delusion?

--Ellen Fox

Capsule Reviews
I'll Be Home for Christmas

Other Films by Arlene Sanford
A Very Brady Sequel

Film Vault Suggested Links
Babe
Homeward Bound II: Lost in San Francisco
Tom & Huck

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