By Geno McGahee
I think the easiest way to get Dean Cain to act in your film is to tell him that it’s a Christmas movie. He may have the most Christmas spirit out of any actor in the history of film, starring in such movies as: DEFENDING SANTA, BROADCASTING CHRISTMAS, A BELLE FOR CHRISTMAS, SMALL TOWN SANTA, THE DOG WHO SAVED CHRISTMAS and A NANNY FOR CHRISTMAS to name just a few. When it comes to the holidays, Cain is your man, and here he is again in the 2018 film “MEGAN’S CHRISTMAS MIRACLE.”
Saying Dean Cain starred in this film is a stretch. They obviously paid him for one day, but they got him in it and can say he starred in it if they want to. Megan (Katherine Elise Shaw) teaches a dance studio and is depressed as she thinks about Christmas. She comes home and her husband, John (Dean Cain), is decorating. She is irritated and decides to take a nap and is transferred back to the time when her mother died and she was 14 and living with her dad, Carl (Timothy E. Goodwin).
Carl and his daughter, Megan (Brookyln Nelson) is not happy about moving to West Virginia after living in L.A. Carl has decided to go back to his hometown after the death of his wife and he has not taken care of himself. I know he might be in mourning, but shave and take off a few pounds and get rid of that skullet thing you got going on. Poor Megan is 14 and that’s a tough age and now she has to go to a new school and have a dad that doesn’t take care of himself.
Because he’s unemployed, Carl goes to a church and gets some free stuff. He walks around and starts filling a box with some cans and is approached by Luke (Deven Bromme), the youth pastor. I was creeped out by Luke. He had one of those beards that just look dirty. Then again, maybe that’s the theme of the movie. Every guy, minus Cain, looked like they could use a shower and a shave. Megan should have asked for a miracle and a bar of soap and razor too.
After crying on Luke’s shoulder, Carl goes to Pastor Franklin (Gant Montgomery) and they hit it off. Carl is offered the janitor job and also heads up the Christmas show thing that they do every year. Megan is still not happy about being in West Virginia and is struggling with the loss of her mother.
The movie starts to get really strange as Megan enters the church and starts hearing voices. The nativity scene figures start to blink their eyes and smile (with some bad CGI), but this stuff is only happening for the young girl. The other side is communicating with her and it gets better, or worse, depending how you look at it. At one point, she has a fight with her dad and goes for a walk and runs into a really creepy-looking dude staring at a miner statue.
The creepy miner guy tells Megan of the story of miners surviving a couple times during cave ins through some miracle. He mentions one died…so when it comes to miracles, that guy got fucked in the ass. When Megan tries to question this dude, he evaporates in some more bad CGI.
Megan starts working with her aunt to teach dance and we get a terribly long dance montage, leading to the decision by Megan to dance at her dad’s Christmas show. We go back to current Megan telling her husband that her dad is coming back. Apparently, after she danced that one dance at the church, her dad dropped dead. He was a good 150 pounds overweight. So, I’m guessing it was a heart attack that took him out, but maybe he got so depressed that he took out a gun and blew his head off right in the middle of the Christmas play. They never say.
Adult Megan runs to the window and tells John that her dad is coming back and then sees a truck outside and deflates, realizing that her dad’s corpse is not behind the wheel. John is trying to keep it together, but he may need to lose that zero and get a hero. Megan hates Christmas, thinks her dead parents are returning in some form, and probably doesn’t make shit for money at that dance studio. All John wants to do is decorate for Christmas and he gets shit for it. I think it would have been awesome if he said “let’s watch a Christmas movie” and he put in a film that starred Dean Cain and then Cain looked at the camera and winked. That’d be great.
After remembering that her mother’s ghost visited her at the church, adult Megan decides that life is good and goes out to dinner with John. At this point, I can see Cain is looking at the clock, waiting for his day of shooting to be done. Megan sees her dead father, glowing in the dark, outside the restaurant window, smiling. He is either proud of his daughter or remembers how much he liked the French fries that were made there.
Megan grabs her husband’s hands and smiles big, noting that there’s a miracle. He looks at her and gives her that look of “if I get laid tonight, it’d be a miracle.” We then go back to the time when young Megan dances and the film abruptly ends. WHAT?! I sat through this fucking film, waiting for the fucking miracle and the miracle ends up being that her dad shoved a glow stick up his ass and looked through the window of a restaurant? I want a refund. OK, I saw it free on Prime but I still feel ripped off.
MEGAN’S CHRISTMAS MIRACLE sucks. The acting is pretty good, especially Cain. He tries. His animated arguments with his wife are pretty good, but the acting didn’t save this film. It has tons of filler and just doesn’t go anywhere. Also, why did it take 30 or so years for Megan to finally accept that her dad is dead and realize that he now glows in the dark? Did John have to put up with her being a complete bitch for all their years of marriage? Did their kids suffer as she locked herself in the closet and cried about her childhood? The miracle may be that John stayed married to her through all this madness.
What a shit show. I don’t recommend this one.
