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The Ultimate Gift (2007)
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Reviews Counted:56
Fresh:18
Rotten:38
Average Rating:5.1/10
Consensus: Though The Ultimate Gift avoids religious speechifying like other Fox Faith films, it's dramatically inert with flat direction.
Rated: PG [See Full Rating] for thematic elements, some violence and language.
Runtime: 1 hr 58 mins
Genre: Dramas
Theatrical Release:Mar 9, 2007 Wide
Box Office: $3,178,843
Synopsis: The videotaped will of deceased billionaire Red Stevens (James Garner) includes the "ultimate gift" for his spoiled, sullen grandson Jason (Drew Fuller). A series of tasks meant to turn Jason from... The videotaped will of deceased billionaire Red Stevens (James Garner) includes the "ultimate gift" for his spoiled, sullen grandson Jason (Drew Fuller). A series of tasks meant to turn Jason from a hedonistic jerk into a compassionate human being is included in the will, but whether that's the gift or there's a fortune at the end of the rainbow is something Jason will just have to wait to find out. First, he's sent to Texas to work on the ranch of one of Red's old pals (Brian Dennehey). Then his trust fund is cut off and he's thrown into the streets where he battles a bum for a park bench and eventually makes friends with a young girl--dying of leukemia--named Emily (Abigail Breslin). There's some romantic bonding with Emily's struggling mom (Ali Hills) and danger down in Costa Rica, where Jason winds up hostage to some drug-running thugs. Bill Cobbs and Lee Meriwether are the lawyers who monitor Jason's progress. This is a nice little movie, with a straightforward spiritual agenda. But it gets everything right, with minimum sermonizing and maximum heart. The cast is clearly into the spirit of the matter: Abigail Breslin (LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE) radiates oddball charm, and the eyes of old pros Garner, Denehey, Meriwether, and Cobbs are alight with compassion and nobility. [More]
Starring: Drew Fuller, James Garner, Ali Hillis, Abigail Breslin
Starring: Drew Fuller, James Garner, Ali Hillis, Abigail Breslin, Brian Dennehy, Bill Cobbs, Lee Meriwhether
Director: Michael O. Sajbel
Director: Michael O. Sajbel
Screenwriter: Cheryl McKay
Producer: Rick Eldridge, John Shepherd
Composer: Mark McKenzie
Studio: 20th Century Fox
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Reviews for The Ultimate Gift
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.
I haven't even read the book, and I know it has to be better than the movie.
A parabolic film about one selfish young man's spiritual transformation.
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.
The film squeaks by on a combination of reliable old pros...and appealing newcomers...
The result is a deep desire for those Hollywood execs to remember that Christian doesn’t have to equal brain-dead.
Christian charity, in this movie, seems like a side-effect of capitalism.
Veterans Garner and Brian Dennehy give convincing professional performances here, but Fuller is bland.
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.
[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.
Pretty much what one would expect: a sincere story of redemption delivered with all the low-key execution of one of those Hallmark-backed TV movies of the week.
The Ultimate Gift is kind of like a feel-good Saw for churchgoers, minus the sadistic games of death.
Wholesome and inspirational, it preaches a simplistic "prosperity gospel."
It is message filmmaking so blunt you might be tempted to root for the parasitic reprobate over the saintly old man, and that's just not right.
If The Ultimate Gift really wanted to embrace a powerful Christian message, it would've made Jason's ordeal truly threatening and genuinely transformative.
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