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?
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03/08/07
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The Ultimate Gift (2007)
32
%
Tomatometer
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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.
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... [More]
Starring: Drew Fuller, James Garner, Ali Hillis, Abigail Breslin
Director: Michael O. Sajbel
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Reviews for The Ultimate Gift
The film communicates its message without belaboring its moral points or throwing in any overt religious dogma. Christ is mentioned only once and I couldn't tell from the story or the credits what the religious affiliation of the producers might be.
03/08/07
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03/10/07
Christian charity, in this movie, seems like a side-effect of capitalism.
03/17/07
...there's nothing new about the devices the film uses to tug at our heartstrings, but that doesn't make them any less effective.
03/08/07
Director Michael O. Sajbel too often succumbs to movie-of-the-week sentimentality and starchy pacing.
03/08/07
Veterans Garner and Brian Dennehy give convincing professional performances here, but Fuller is bland.
03/17/07
Abigail Breslin matches her Oscar-nominated work in Little Miss Sunshine with another brilliant performance in The Ultimate Gift.
03/07/07
I never found Ultimate Gift to be very pushy or distant, and while I might not subscribe to Stovall's teachings, I respect their intent, and this movie's efforts to embody them for the silver screen.
03/08/07
Like sensible woolen socks in a ribbon-wrapped package, The Ultimate Gift may be good for you, but it's a little hard to get excited about.
03/09/07
Click to read the article
03/17/07
Often meanders into Hallmark territory.
02/06/07
It's Self-Help: The Movie, and it stinks to high heaven.
08/21/07
You have to wonder why anyone might be interested in this ridiculously contrived and sappy story.
03/06/07
The film preaches a familiar message of valuing people over material possessions, but the past moralizing and contrived plot result in a tedious longwinded work that's like a Sunday-school lecture.
03/06/07
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.
03/17/07
Truly awful filmmaking, informed not by real life but by old movies, savages the story's generally honorable and positive themes
03/09/07
Relentlessly sappy and predictable...this may go over well as a public service announcement but as a roughly clocked two-hour movie it feels both tepid and tedious.
03/09/07
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.
03/09/07
If one learns by suffering, as grandpa keeps saying here, this movie offers a good deal of instruction.
03/08/07
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