All Mine to Give

Last Christmas I bought a four pack of movies at Sam's. Last year, I detailed how and why I got the set of movies and then reviewed one of them. It is certainly a set of movies that had fallen beneath my radar and, seemingly, are not well known to the other people who exist.

My first thought process is how certain movies are more successful than others, even when the lesser-known movie is dramatically superior. For example, many have probably heard of the movie, Ace Ventura. Yet, I believe a far greater detective-based comedy, which was released around the same time, is Undercover Blues. In fact, of the many people I have shown the latter movie, the results aren't even close. We all agree that Undercover Blues is a superior movie in just about every way.

Clearly, money can be the primary factor, as the more money put behind a movie, the better it tends to do. But sometimes these decisions defy logic. What causes people to spend so much money on such a terrible movie or to not spend money on a real good movie? I bring up this thought process, because of a discussion with my wife about watching one of the movies on the aforementioned four pack of movies.

SPOILER ALERT!

The movie is All Mine to Give. Kelly can not understand why anyone would create a movie that is so sad. The premise of the movie is that a couple of newlyweds travel across the Atlantic Ocean to begin a life here in America. After some initial difficulty, they get a group of friends to help them build their house, and after a couple of difficult jobs, the husband settles on one that seems to be beneficial.

Then, the couple begin to have children, and it seems to be a lovely story. After they had their sixth child, the story advances several years. It seems like a wonderful family, and then one of the children gets sick with a deadly disease of which I have never heard. Apparently, kissing his quarantined son goodbye was the death kiss of the father (though the son makes a recovery).

When the mother is then forced into work and the thirteen year old eldest son becomes a man (ie, working and paying for familial needs, while taking care of the younger siblings while at home), the story could stabilize there. But no! We then watch the family go through the tragedy of the matriarch dying. It is from that point, from whence the title cometh. The oldest child, who is about 13, is given the responsibility of giving away his siblings one-by-one and the highlight of the movie, where he rebuffs a women for whom his parents did not care from getting the youngest.

I do not know from which place in a human spirit this movie could come. I don't know what it is that makes this kind of sadness appealing to watch. But I know that Old Yeller is also a sad movie that made it big. And honestly, I am not sure why such a sad movie would be created. The question I really have is why my eight-year-old son, Jacob likes the movie so much.

At any rate, if you are a sucker for tearjerkers, you should go see this movie. You can probably borrow it from me, but just know that I think it is impossible to not cry at some point in this movie. It does show children growing up before we would like them to, difficult decisions made, and a weird movie to ever be classified as a Christmas movie. But it is a sad story!