Movie Night: Christmas Movies: Naughty or Nice, One Christmas

***^One Christmas This is a Truman Capote story which was made into a TV movie in 1994.  It features  Henry Winkler as Buddy's (T.J. Lowther) father, Swoosie Kurtz as father's girlfriend and Katharine Hepburn as the girlfriends influential aunt, Cornelia Beaumont.  Buddy is visiting his father, who he doesn't know very well.  He was been living with Aunt Sook in Alabama.  Father lives in New Orleans.  Father is a con artist, manipulating women to give him money for his investments.  He is currently investing in a plane scheduled to be in a race.  He is sure of winning, until the engine blows.  He has to find investors to pay for a new engine, and gets one of faulty history.  Swoosie is a major investor, over the objection of her aunt.  I liked this  movie because it showed the growth of the characters.  They all seem to mature.  Buddy learns to love his father, although he prefers Alabama.  His father learns to be more honest.  Swoosie learns to stand for herself and make her own decisions and Miss Beaumont learns to open up more in her old age.  This movie is a bit slow, but I mildly recommend it.
*** Naughty or Nice.  This movie is a play on a name.  The main character's name is Krissy Kringle (Hillary Burton) and she lives on Christmas Lane.  She gets Santa Clause mail every year, and this year she get's Santa's book, "Naughty or Nice."  She begins focusing on the naughty side of the book, which gives her some momentary satisfaction and makes her life go to pot.  Especially when she reads that her boyfriend of six years had an affair with her worse enemy at the job from which she was fired.  She breaks off the relationship.  Her parents come to visit (Meredith Baxter and Michael Gross ((yes from Family Ties)) and mother reminds her there are two sides to every coin.  It is then that she realizes that the book has too sides, and if you turn it over it will tell you nice things about people.  She begins to set things right, and in so doing gets her Christmas wishes, including a marriage proposal.  This is a movie with nice Christmas Spirit, and a visit from Santa Claus.