The Ultimate Gift

The entrance of Jason Stevens to his grandfather’s funeral couldn’t be more obnoxious: he drives a loud car, smokes a joint, and when told by his mother that he’s late, he asks, “Late for what?” Looks like someone’s past due for repentance! Good thing his deceased grandpa—played by James Garner, in reportedly his final role—taped hours of footage of himself preaching Jason the rules of the good life, while unleashing a diabolical plan for redemption more cunningly layered than the that of the Saw killer!

Welcome to the latest film from Twentieth Century Fox’s emerging division Fox Faith, which markets religious-themed films to a predominantly Christian audience. Their last release was February’s little-seen embarrassment, The Last Sin Eater, yet director Michael O. Sajbel’s The Ultimate Gift boasts the involvement of two Oscar nominees. They should have a firm discussion with their agents. This deathly do-gooder film has bad laughs written all over it. The story is so painfully predictable that all the plot mechanisms fueling tears and spiritual uplift are stripped of any subtlety or sophistication. After his rain-soaked funeral, Garner’s recording yearns, “I guess my funeral was today. Gee I hope it rained.” Hmm…so I guess there really is a God! Thanks Fox Faith!

The story concerns Jason, played by Drew Fuller, a spoiled trust fund baby impatient to receive the inheritance from his dead grandpa, whose recording informs him that he must first go on a journey of self-discovery to earn it. Jason will receive a series of life-affirming ‘gifts’ along the way, until he finally receives—you guessed it—‘the ultimate gift,’ which will teach him what’s most important in life: money or happiness. If this sounds like an instructional lecture, it pretty much is—more on that later. What’s worse is that Fuller, in a fatally stiff performance, never seems to transform emotionally throughout the course of the film. It also doesn’t help that every single person in The Ultimate Gift is a broad caricature. For example, the filmmakers demonstrate that Jason’s girlfriend is spoiled by having her weep when he can’t pay a lousy bill.

Along the way, Jason catches the eye of a pretty single mom—Ali Hills—with a daughter Emily, played by Little Miss Sunshine’s exceptional Abigail Breslin. She’s faced here with a fatally stereotypical “tug-at-the-heartstrings” child role that combines three cataclysmic archetypes: a wiser-than-thou precocious smartass; a matchmaker determined to set her mother up with Jason; and a leukemia patient with not much longer to live. There’s even one scene where she has to play all three shades of her character simultaneously! It’s completely to the credit of Breslin that she somehow pulls it off—never turning on the cheap “cutes”, and sporting comic timing she must have sharpened from her previous cinematic outing. Breslin is the real thing, though the film she’s in isn’t.

Shot with zero cinematic style, the film has all the quality of a second-rate TV-movie. Gift also has a flaw shared by most every Fox Faith film: it’s simply too heavy and adult-oriented for most kids, while anyone over the age of twelve would be insulted by its shameless emotional manipulation. Based on Jim Stovall’s book, the film bears a startling resemblance to Pay it Forward. Both films aim to ‘change the world’ by offering a child up as a martyr for humanity’s flaws. Will Christian audiences be relieved to find that the PG-rated family film marketed to them contains no swearing or sex, but is almost entirely shrouded in death?

Meanwhile, the plot is so relentlessly rushed that no character motivations are remotely believable. In the film’s most outlandishly bizarre sequence, Jason travels to the kind of Ecuadorian town that could only be filmed on location…in Charlotte, North Carolina. For two weeks, he’s held for ransom, and on the day he’s scheduled to die he makes a wildly improbable escape. Next time we see him, he’s clean-shaven and in America. This jaw-dropping episode is never mentioned again—except when Jason explains to a perturbed Emily that he was “unavoidably detained.” This line gets almost as big a groan as the final symbolic shot of Emily’s “hovering presence,” which fails to draw any real tears because of its inherent cliché. Any time a dying kid says she thinks heaven will be full of butterflies, guess what’s gonna be flying on down into the audience’s tear duct during the last shot?

I have nothing against good-hearted films—hell, my favorite film of all time is Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life (1946). I’m against films that insult my intelligence, and desire to manipulate my emotions to such a degree that they forget to tell a story believably human enough to be moved by. The Ultimate Gift is nothing more than an excruciatingly earnest failure. And if you feel like you didn’t get lectured enough on the film’s moral code, make sure to sit through the end credits, where scenes from the film are played over again to illustrate each of the deceased father’s gifts, complete with a verbal label and a helpful illustration for the literacy-impaired (for example: “work” – picture of hammer; “laughter” – picture of jester hat)…just in case you felt compelled to take notes afterward.

Rating: ** (out of *****)