The Man Who Saved Christmas Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		2.0
Audio		2.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		2.0

The Man Who Saved Christmas Blu-ray Movie Review

Erect your Blu-ray Holiday library to greater heights with the addition of this warm and gentle Christmas movie.

Reviewed by Martin Liebman December 3, 2011

Can you imagine children without toys?

With the Christmas season comes any number of heartwarming tales of love, compassion, understanding, and redemption, all of which wiggle their way into the tenderhearted The Man Who Saved Christmas, one of the many made-for-TV holiday-themed pictures that aim to bring even more cheer and contentment to "the most wonderful time of the year." It's a movie that nicely balances the various themes of the Christmas season, combining both a little bit of the commercialism and gift-giving angle with a little bit of the more traditional spirit of family, love, and outreach. It's not overtly religious in nature, but the movie does strive to present the holiday as something more innately important than ripping open gifts (hopefully to reveal boxes of Erector sets) on Christmas morning. The movie isn't a revelation, and it's fairly transparent, but those negatives don't hurt it one bit; it's a movie meant to satisfy the viewers' craving for something warm and comfortable, and indeed Director Sturla Gunnarsson's (Beowulf & Grendel) film wraps itself around the audience like a well-loved blanket and a cup of hot cocoa on a cold December's night. It's the sort of movie that's easy to love but also easy for the Christmas Scrooges out there to reject, but as far as these otherwise dime-a-dozen TV Holiday films go, this one's pretty good.

A.C. Gilbert.

A.C. Gilbert (Jason Alexander) is a man with a loving wife (Kelly Rowan), a loyal brother (Ari Cohen), and a father (Ed Asner) who just doesn't understand why he hasn't put his medical degree to good use. But A.C. has bigger dreams. He loves to please children, which has led him to become something of an amateur magician and a professional toymaker. He's put together a product he's sure the kids will love: the "Erector" set, a collection metal parts that may be assembled to create anything from an airplane to a skyscraper. The sky is truly the limit for the child lucky enough to own it, but no matter how high that sky may be, it all comes down the bottom line. With the holiday season in full swing, there's just not any shelf space at the local toy shop for a product that's not selling. The Erector sets -- along with A.C.'s hopes and dreams -- are kicked to the curb. Fortunately, his pregnant wife comes up with an idea: the best way to sell the sets is to put one on display, one that's been fully built into something the kids will just have to have. It works. Suddenly, A.C.'s toy becomes the must-have gift of the Christmas season.

A.C.'s life is looking up. He emerges from the poor house a famous toy inventor to whom all of the children look up, writing him letters expressing their gratitude for his product. His wife has given birth to a beautiful baby boy they've named Al Jr. (Jake Brockman), and A.C. has opened up a brand new large factory where he and his brother oversee the production of thousands of Erector sets, take on a large number of employees whom they treat extraordinarily well, paying them more than a fair wage and making sure they all leave work before the Holidays with a generous Christmas bonus. But just as things are settling into a routine and A.C. finds himself living a dream, disaster strikes. The United States enters World War I, and A.C.'s brother receives notice that he's been drafted and his scheduled to ship overseas for combat duty. Perhaps not worse but just as heartbreaking, A.C. receives a summons from the U.S. government. They want him to retool his factory into a weapons and munitions plant, which means more hours for his employees, a more dangerous work environment, and no more toys for the foreseeable future. The government goes so far as to call for a suspension of Christmas, a preposterous idea to which A.C. begrudgingly agrees to back. Can this toymaker, a man who brings joy to kids all over the country, look America's children in the eye and cancel Christmas? Or does he have what it takes to stand up for what's right and make sure every kid has the Christmas memory he or she deserves?

The Man Who Saves Christmas is a fairly easy movie to digest, and it's even easier to analyze. It lacks the production values of bigger-budget studio Christmas movies, but it doesn't come in second place in heart. This is a classy, well-rounded movie that places story first and admirably fills in the gaps left by its relatively small budget through pure strength of will and spirit. It exudes a pleasing, warm, and enveloping Christmas spirit while also delivering a soft and gentle complimentary story on traditional values and hard-working success. The movie sure isn't for anyone who enjoys a sense of mystery; it's easy to see what's coming and the movie never truly betrays its full-steam-ahead feel-good nature, so of course the characters will come out of every situation for the better. But that's the key to the movie's success. It's meant to be a gentle reminder of the good things in life, not a hard, unforgiving glimpse at reality. The movie never feels anything but authentic, however, in large part thanks to a classy and goodnatured performance by Jason Alexander, who truly shows his range as an actor, playing a kindly toymaker here, in stark contrast to the sleazy lawyer he portrayed in Pretty Woman. Though the other performances may be a little stiff, Alexander carries the movie to success, in conjunction, of course, with its well-rounded feel-good story that never loses its energy, charm, or spirit.

The Man Who Saved Christmas Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Man Who Saved Christmas unwraps a disappointing 1080p, MPEG-2 encoded, 1.78:1-framed transfer. The image is constantly soft with little room for quality detailing. Faces are pasty and lack definition throughout, and the period clothing, too, looks flat and lifeless in most every scene. The transfer disappoints with its inability to more sharply display textures like the brick façades of the factory and the cardboard boxes in which the Erector sets are housed. Colors are somewhat drab, certainly never vibrant but never totally washed out either. Black crush is evident, and faces carry a warmish tint. Banding and blocking are of little concern, but the transfer's primary nemesis is an incredible slathering of noise that devastates the image. It's a constant throughout, except, oddly enough, in chapters seven and twelve, where it pretty much vanishes and gives way to a far more vibrant and clear image that sports steady colors and vastly improved detailing and sharpness. Alas, the rest of the movie looks fairly bad, but at least it shows signs of life in a few spots.

The Man Who Saved Christmas Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Man Who Saved Christmas arrives on Blu-ray with a PCM Uncompressed 2.0 soundtrack. Unfortunately, it's limited in range and ability, but then again this isn't exactly the sort of soundtrack designed to push sound systems to their limits. Most of the material stays grounded in the center channel. There's very little sense of space, and music is absent the superior clarity and body of more well-defined tracks. It does yield a decent low end feel in some of the sounds of the factory's machinery at work and a noticeable jolt of energy when the model train Erector set moves around the toy shop window, but that's pretty much the extent of the movie's sound effects. This is primarily a dialogue-driven movie, and the spoken word never wants for vastly greater clarity or separation from surrounding elements. This track adequately gets the job done with no fanfare and no real distinction of which to speak.

The Man Who Saved Christmas Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The Man Who Saved Christmas bears no gifts. This Blu-ray contains no special features.

The Man Who Saved Christmas Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Man Who Saved Christmas is a fine little picture that rises above the standard made-for-TV Holiday fare thanks to a genuine story of family, entrepreneurship, dedication to an idea, and care for people. It's a comfortable, well-made movie that espouses good values and tells an interesting story to boot. It might be as predictable as the day is long, but the movie nevertheless works because of its charm and kindly nature. Jason Alexander carries the movie and rounds it into a picture well worth making part of the Holiday movie rotation. Echo Bridge's Blu-ray release of The Man Who Saved Christmas doesn't have any extra features, and the video and audio presentations are below par, but the disc still comes recommend as an on-the-cheap addition to the Blu-ray Holiday movie library.