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The recently deceased Doug, a "hot tekkie millionaire," sees things a new way since he passed over and devises a computer-generated Christmas-Eve haunting to get his sister on the right track in life. "Christmas has always been about second chances," Doug tells Monica. (Oh yeah, "Bah, humbug.")
Ebenezer Scrooge pops up onscreen in Monica's office and emerges to escort her to Christmases Past, Present, and Future. What a cyberspace journey! Twentieth-century American ways are as much an eye-opener for old Ebenezer as the grim reminders and scary prospects are for Monica. Our contemporary misguidedness takes plenty of comic jabs. You don't know whether to laugh or cry at the litany of the holiday's dark side -- commercialization, stress, isolation from the world's realities. Among the "terrors" of Christmas: "not significantly warming the hearts of your family with a monumental pile of gifts under a tree worthy of Martha Stewart."
Enter Tina Timmons, a handicapped child, whose struggling inner-city mother, siblings, and grandfather enjoy a loving, happy family life. The tide is turning for a very resistant Monica. This modern Christmas carol offers up that eternal second chance at love and human warmth with such a knowing contemporary voice you can't help but join the song.
Jeannie Crawford-Lee is a writer and editor.
©1996, ProMotion, inc.
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