A Spunky but Safe ‘Christmas’

“All I Want for Christmas” tries to be a something-for-everyone Yuletide charmer. It’s about two industrious kids, Ethan (Ethan Randall) and Hallie (Thora Birch), who scheme to reunite their divorced parents on Christmas Eve. It’s like “The Miracle on 34th Street” for the dysfunctional family era: the “mature” material is sugared with whimsy.

On some level, just about all of these Christmas cheer fables are shameless tear-jerkers, including the greatest gusher of them all--Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.”

The new-style sappiness in “All I Want for Christmas” (citywide) seems partially designed to give adults something to mull over while they’re putting in the time with their children inside the movie theater. The scenes between the two parents, played by Harley Jane Kozak and Jamey Sheridan, don’t have the kind of nattering condescension that one often finds in, say, John Hughes movies featuring adults.

Robert Lieberman, the director of “All I Want for Christmas,” and his screenwriters Thom Eberhardt and Richard Kramer, retain a measure of self-respect. And the two children have genuine spunk; they don’t have that processed cuteness one often sees with kids in TV commercials. (Randall looks like a pipsqueak Timothy Hutton.)

Still, the film’s overall design is without surprise. The magic in this movie is tinselly and conventional and uplifting, like a Yuletide display in a Macy’s department store window. One of the reasons Dickens’ fable is so enduring is that it gives heartbreak its due; it doesn’t hold back from showing us how awful life can be, which, of course, makes Scrooge’s ultimate redemption all the more glorious. The heartbreak in “All I Want for Christmas” (rated G) isn’t worked up with any brio; in a way, the film would have been better if it had been more shameless.

In the process of updating fairly standard material, the filmmakers wade into dubious territory. We’re supposed to believe, for example, that the kids’ parents split up because the husband dropped out of his cushy executive-track job and decided instead to open up a diner. This is supposed to persuade us that he’s a good man with good old-fashioned ungreedy values. Hasn’t anyone pointed out to the filmmakers that, in the past decade, opening up ‘50s-style diners was the height of corporate yuppiedom? And, of course, the diner is an instant success--this is perhaps the film’s biggest fantasy.

With so many bright supporting performers in the cast, ranging from Lauren Bacall as the children’s imperious, croak-voiced grandmother, to Kevin Nealon as their mother’s snobby twit fiance to Andrea Martin as a pregnant family friend to Leslie Nielsen as Santa, the film could stand to be a lot more hip and irreverent.

No one’s taking any chances here; the movie, which was rushed through production for the holiday season, is geared up to be a perennial for Paramount, and perennials are, by their nature, predictable. But if the filmmakers had taken the genre in a more subversive direction, they might have come up with something memorable, instead of just memorably safe.

‘All I Want for Christmas’ Lauren Bacall: Lillian Brooks Harley Jane Kozak: Catherine O’Fallon Thora Birch: Hallie O’Fallon Ethan Randall Ethan O’Fallon

A Paramount Pictures presentation. Director Robert Lieberman. Producer Marykay Powell. Executive producer Stan Rogow. Screenplay by Thom Eberhardt and Richard Kramer. Cinematographer Robbie Greenberg. Editor Peter E. Berger and Dean Goodhill. Costumes Nolan Miller. Music Bruce Broughton. Production design Herman Zimmerman. Art director Randall McIlvain. Set designers Masako Masuda and Ron Yates. Set decorator John M. Dwyer. Running time: 1 hour, 42 minutes.

MPAA-rated G.