| Original Score: 2/4 | Nov 24, 2011

This new film moves along smoothly until Grandpa's most preposterous mission - which needlessly drags out the movie -- takes Jason to a severely caricatured Ecuador.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Aug 22, 2007

I think urban sophisticates can be people of faith who want to see movies, occasionally, that don't have the four-letter words, and I do embrace religion, but I think they have to be better than this.

Full Review | Mar 20, 2007

The result is a deep desire for those Hollywood execs to remember that Christian doesn't have to equal brain-dead.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Mar 18, 2007

If you missed the money-isn't-everything message, an end-credits recap outlines the story's salient points -- if you'd known, you could've skipped the rest.

| Original Score: 1/6 | Mar 17, 2007

Christian charity, in this movie, seems like a side-effect of capitalism.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Mar 17, 2007

[James] Garner is good, and so is Brian Dennehy as a crusty ranch owner; Abigail Breslin, playing a leukemia patient, demonstrates that she was not a one-note wonder in Little Miss Sunshine.

| Original Score: B- | Mar 15, 2007

The Ultimate Gift is kind of like a feel-good Saw for churchgoers, minus the sadistic games of death.

| Original Score: C | Mar 14, 2007

If The Ultimate Gift really wanted to embrace a powerful Christian message, it would've made Jason's ordeal truly threatening and genuinely transformative.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 9, 2007

Reeking of self-righteousness and moral reprimand, The Ultimate Gift is a hairball of good-for-you filmmaking.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/5 | Mar 9, 2007

Has a mercifully light hand in selling its Christian-values themes, but its plodding story about a spoiled young scion who must complete 12 tasks assigned him by his late grandfather is still a slog.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Mar 9, 2007

The Ultimate Gift is less a theatrical feature than a Sunday night made-for-온라인카지노추천 movie brought to you by Hallmark. That sounds crueler than it is: The movie, directed by Michael O. Sajbel, has plenty of charm.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Mar 9, 2007

The predictabilities of the story line might be forgivable if they had been rendered more entertainingly, but the overlong proceedings have been staged in an utterly pedestrian fashion.

Full Review | Mar 9, 2007

It soft-pedals its religious elements -- discussions of faith and God are fleeting, almost subliminal -- without stinting on the celebration of wholesome family values.

Full Review | Mar 8, 2007

There's an anti-abortion message jammed into one scene with all the subtlety of an avalanche. Just in case you miss it, it's repeated in the credits too. Some gift, eh?

| Original Score: 2/4 | Mar 8, 2007

The film's values are fairly well encoded into the story, such that it feels less like a sermon and more like a film with a good, if somewhat sappy, heart.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 8, 2007

Director Michael O. Sajbel too often succumbs to movie-of-the-week sentimentality and starchy pacing.

| Mar 8, 2007

Well-meant, but impossibly obvious.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Mar 8, 2007

The Ultimate Gift is so resolutely 'good for you' that watching it is a lot like eating Brussels sprouts.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Feb 20, 2007