ShangLuda Admirable film.

Bergorks If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

Casey Duggan It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Derrick Gibbons An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Amy Adler "Doc" Holliday (Dave Coulier) is a two-bit conman, eking out a living by fooling others. The Doc, in a booster jacket, goes door to door, asking folks to contribute funds for the little league team that doesn't exist. So far, he has gotten away with it. Out of the blue, Doc is summoned to a lawyer's office. He, Doc, will inherit a lovely house from a deceased relative but only on the condition that he is married with kids. Thinking quickly, Doc declares that he is. What a whopper! Luckily for him, however, an orphaned brother and sister have run away from a foster home, knowing they were about to be split apart. Doc, finding them around the corner, invites them to stay with him and play the "pretend family" game. The children are smart enough to demand monetary compensation! Now, they need a mother, so Doc hires a nice nanny, Elizabeth (Alexa Fisher) to look after the kids while he goes to his new "fake" job at an insurance company. All too soon, Children's Services are looking for the children while the lawyer sends folks to obverve the family's routines. Also, Elizabeth uncovers the truth, too, but decides to stay, for various reasons. Can these pretenders fool everyone? This fine family flick has an engaging cast, humor, sweetness, spirituality, and fine Holiday lessons for the entire family. Almost everyone will get a laugh and a sigh from the doings here. Also nice is the lovely house where a good deal of the action takes place. If you are parents seeking another movie for crowd control as the excitement of the Holidays approach, this is a darn good choice.

eliz_rug Cute premise, but the idea of some guy picking up a couple of kids in the park and taking them home, offering them money for a business agreement, makes me feel weird. We tell our kids not to talk to strangers all the time, let alone go home with them!!! What type of person would ask two kids on the street to come home with him? Other than that, some of the lines are cute, but the kids can have conversations that are adult level then have problems saying "fraternal", especially the girl. It's like they portray her as a bit dumb.I guess watching it with my 8 year old makes me want to grab her and say "Going with strangers does NOT lead to happy endings!"

drh-8 After watching movie after violent, profane and sick movie, Family Holiday was an absolute delight. Sure, the plot was pretty basic - even lame, but what the heck! It just goes to prove the old adage that there is some good in even the very worst people. Without wanting to include any spoilers, 'Doc' Holliday (Dave Coulier) is, perhaps, a bit of a "sanitized" bad guy (with, of course, a deprived childhood to justify the way he has turned out) - in real life, someone like Doc would probably be a lot more profane and uncouth but then this IS a family movie. Alexa Fischer is delightful. She is beautiful and oozes personality - a bit reminiscent of Meg Ryan. Why don't we see a lot more of her? There isn't even a profile of her on IMDb and I, for one, would like to know all about her (so please fix that!).William Schultz and Abigail Schornick as seven-year-old orphan twins, Tim and Amanda, were also excellent and I see that they haven't had any previous acting experience. It would be interesting to know their real ages but IMDb has nothing on either of them too. Since they portrayed twins I felt that the scriptwriter (Craig Clyde) doesn't have much knowledge of kids because, in the movie, Tim is by far the most 'worldly wise' of the two and, in real life, it's the girls who usually mature a lot quicker (as most movies typically have it) but, anyone watching Family Holiday would be forgiven for thinking that Amanda was a couple of years younger than her brother.I have a question: As an Aussie, I have no knowledge of American welfare practices and wonder if seven-year-old twins would really be separated for adoption (as portrayed in the movie). Here, everything would be done to ensure that siblings stayed together. Is America really that barbaric and soulless? If the answer is, as I hope it will be, "No", then that would be a 'downer' for the movie because it creates a false impression to non-American viewers.This was my first movie of 2010 and it was a beautiful start to the year. I will happily give a DVD of it to my 96-year-old Mum and, believe me, it is getting harder and harder to find anything with a decent heart-warming story and no gratuitous profanity and/or violence. Let's have some more please Craig.One final question: What actually happened to the inheritance?

Willard Hall I really loved The Family Holiday. I purchased this movie on DVD at Wal-Mart. At Christmas Time, a guy named Donald Doc Holiday (played by Full House Dave Coulier) is a con man, cheating people out of money so he can live on the streets. He then comes across two orphan kids, brother and sister who is ready to be separated to different foster homes. The kids plan to stay together no matter what. The kids and Donald pretends that they are a family so Donald can get money from his dead relative. Donald and the kids gets a Nanny who thinks they are real family and doesn't know the truth. The foster home man is on the kids tail and the kids give him a hard way to go which will make you laugh. The truth will come out and Donald Holiday will learn the true meaning of Christmas. If you love good family Christmas movies. You will love The Family Holiday. I really enjoyed it, and you will too.