Currently published at: http://skuawk.com/film/669/a-modern-fight-for-christmas
A Modern Fight for Christmas
By Dara Avenius
Friday, December 8, 2006
In this modern tale of ‘Scrooge’ and the Spirit of Christmas, ‘Unaccompanied Minors’ manages to be both hilarious and heartwarming, something adults can enjoy unashamedly, even if they are not accompanying minors to the show. When five kids are stranded in a Chicago airport after a major storm grounds all flights, they are put in a room with all of the ‘Unaccompanied Minors’ in the airport. There, chaos reigns as all of them have an epic food fight the likes of which most kids would dream of.
The kids come from different backgrounds: rich girl Grace Conrad, played by Gina Mantegna , tough tomboy Donna Malone, played by the wonderful Quinn Shephard, geeky Charlie, played by the hilarious Tyler James Williams from Everybody Hates Chris, awkward 14 year old Spencer Davenport (Dyllan Christopher) and the sweet fat boy Timothy Wellington, played by Brett Kelly. However different from one another they are united by the fact that they all are children of divorce, stuck in a miserable airport on Christmas. When Spencer and his seven-year old sister Katherine (played marvelously by Dominique Saldana in her feature film acting debut) get separated, they all band together to help him bring Christmas to her so she will not be disappointed.
The audience will clearly relate the story to other films before it such as ‘The Breakfast Club', 'Home Alone’ and ‘Scrooge.’ However, the cast here manages to make what could have easily been a trite tale adorable, fun and consistently funny. The manager is played by Lewis Black, the acerbic commentator on The Daily Show. Here he manages to be acerbic but veers away from cruel. His long suffering assistant is played by Wilmer Valderamma, who is perhaps the only miscast as the tiresome comedic foil. But he melts into the background enough to allow the story and the rest of the cast to shine. And shine they do.
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