Rose Stirling

This movie was really emotional. I wish I'd brought a box of tissues. Only negative is it wasn't suitable for my 5 year old. This is more suited for 9-13 year Olds. It touches on things like death and getting old and losing your childlike belief in anything. Very confronting as an adult which I enjoyed. But probably too mature for younger audiences. In saying that my miss 5 was mesmerized. But admitted she wished we went to Garfield instead! I left feeling sad and I think the entire theater was crying. Very different film to the trailor as not a happy silly movie definitely more deep.

I think in writing, this film had potential. Where it went wrong was casting. For instance: They had a Chinese woman play the part of a kooky Christmas store owner obsessed with the holiday season. It was just ridiculous because it wasn't believable. Yes someone like this might exist in real life. But I've never met them and I know a lot of Chinese people. They're not known to celebrate this time of year and if they do it's never on that level generally speaking. The film by trying to shy away from stereotypes became fake and almost too PC, too try hard. If they did it to one character okay but it was everywhere. Maybe the actors saw this too so struggled to embrace the characters. Hence coming off disingenuous and forced. Sprakingvof forced there was no chemistry between the two lead characters sadly and I wonder if there had been if this would have saved the movie. But I doubt it somehow as there were too many other pieces of casting that made no sense. The girls parents were Russian - once again not believable you had the most Brittish woman on the face of the earth playing a Russian woman, and the main actress was not believable in that sense either and again felt like certain messages being pushed I.e anti immigration while not actually employing genuine immigrants to play the role of immigrants is kinda laughable, it felt like they were trying to portray modern issues while failing to grasp that they were speaking to the minority in society and not really get to a deeper level of meaning that many of us consider i.e those anti immigrant people who scream and yell obscenities are often complicated characters, mental health is an issue or substance abuse not an excuse but by simply portraying racist behaviour is easy to do and rather shallow. And I think people are sick of such shallow rhetoric, as it causes so much division and is not reflective of the majority. It is a big issue though but deserves its own pedestal - maybe even it's own movie. In saying all this I've realised this films main issue, there were too many story lines within one main story line and they all are big issues but lacked depth and came off forced/fake. The homeless actors none were allowed to grow or develop into really meaningful believable characters. However I loved the whole heart transplant story idea. But since that in itself is unbelievable then they really needed the characters and plot line to ring true. The characters needed better lines, better chemistry but they didn't so the message was lost. I must admit tending to a very distractive newborn baby while watching this. So perhaps I just missed too much of this film to grasp it's message. Either way it didn't keep my attention whether distracted or not. I found myself looking at my phone a lot.