A Familiar ‘Home’ Nicely Fits the Family Bill

It’s not even Thanksgiving yet, but here comes “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” which Disney is releasing early in hopes of attracting audiences before the holiday deluge of films begins in earnest. It’s a broad, shiny teen comedy that showcases Jonathan Taylor Thomas, the middle son in TV’s long-running “Home Improvement.” The film is formulaic but its energy never flags, and it fills the family entertainment bill.

Thomas’ Jake is a Los Angeles-area college student, a fast-talking con man (right out of an old Warner Bros. picture) who tries to wrangle airplane tickets for a Christmas getaway in Mexico with his girlfriend Allie (Jessica Biel of TV’s “Seventh Heaven”). But she wants to spend the holidays with her family, and Jake’s father (Gary Cole), estranged from Jake for having remarried only 10 months after his wife’s death, bribes his son by promising to give him his cherished ’57 Porsche if he arrives home, in upscale Larchmont, N.Y., by 6 p.m. on Christmas Eve.

Writers Tom Nursall and Harris Goldberg have thus set the stage for one misadventure after another as Jake attempts to cross the country in time to win the car. When an elaborate scheme he’s devised to help some classmates cheat on their finals backfires, Jake winds up in the desert wearing a Santa Claus suit, its hat glued on his head, the white beard glued on his face. He has neither money nor any identification, but you know that’s not going to stop an irrepressible guy like Jake.

Some of Jake’s mishaps inevitably are more effective than others--one of the best features the one and only Kathleen Freeman as an elderly Tom Jones fan--but director Arlene Sanford, a TV sitcom veteran, socks them all for maximum impact. She’s a forceful director who’ll zap you with cynicism one moment, then offset it with schmaltz the next, keeping everything moving along all the while. Thomas is nothing if not brash, Biel is a down-to-earth charmer, and Adam LaVorgna scores as Thomas’ dense but determined rival for Biel’s affections.

“I’ll Be Home for Christmas” resembles lots of other pictures in the family genre, but it deserves credit for taking values seriously. Jake, the guy who concocts classroom cheating schemes at the beginning of the picture, has grown up and got his priorities straight by the time the picture is over.

* MPAA rating: PG, for mild language and some crude humor. Times guidelines: suitable family entertainment.

‘I’ll Be Home for Christmas’

Jonathan Taylor Thomas: Jake

Jessica Biel: Allie

Adam LaVorgna: Eddie

Gary Cole: Jake’s Dad

A Buena Vista release of a Walt Disney Pictures presentation. Director Arlene Sanford. Executive producer Robin French. Screenplay Tom Nursall and Harris Goldberg; from a story by Michael Allin. Cinematographer Hiro Narita. Editor Anita Brandt-Burgoyne. Music John Debney. Costumes Maya Mani. Production designer Cynthia Charette. Art director Alexander Cochrane. Set decorator Lin Macdonald. Running time: 1 hour, 26 minutes.

In general release.