Product Description

Joy is just around the corner when Susan Sarandon, Penelope Cruz, Paul Walker, and Alan Arkin fill out an all-star cast in this holiday classic. As five strangers come together on Christmas Eve, a story of peace, companionship, comfort, love, and healing unfolds against the backdrop of New York City. Noel, with its stunning cast and inspirational story, proves miracles are closer than you think.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10991 in DVD
• Brand: GAIAM MEDIA
• Released on: 2005-10-25
• Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• ESRB Rating: Teen
• Formats: AC-3, Color, Dolby, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 96 minutes

Features

• Joy is just around the corner when Susan Sarandon, Penelope Cruz, Paul Walker, and Alan Arkin fill out an all-star cast in this holidayic. As five strangers come together on Christmas Eve, a story of peace, companionship, comfort, love, and healing unfolds against the backdrop of New York City. Noel, with its stunning cast and inspirational story, proves miracles are closer than you think. Form

Customer Reviews

Worthwhile Year-round Movie
I think the film has some good acting by Paul Walker, Susan Sarandon, and Penelope Cruz and some enjoyable plot twists that will entertain those looking for an enjoyable Christmas story in a modern-day setting.

The movie isn't likely to win any major awards, but it's better than most holiday dramas and many non-holiday films. I think young and more mature adults alike will enjoy NOEL. It's an excellent "date" flick.

Penelope Cruz will appeal to both men and women but for different reasons, but I think children and young teen viewers should be "spared" her bulging cleavage and ultra-mini skirts. I was most "surprised" by Paul Walker's performance. Early in the film I thought his character would be 1-dimensional (i.e., an over-the-top jealous lover), but I think he gives a believable performance as the "macho hunk" who is a man of heart, soul, and some depth of character.

Robin Williams and Susan Sarandon redeem each other and contribute to an uplifting climatic twist to end the movie on a hopeful, redemptive note. Definitely worth seeing.

spirit of christmas
This is a great xmas pic. The cast is incredible. Susan is flawless. Paul Walker is a revelation in a great dramatic romantic role. Penelope sambas! The stories are real and touching. Six very new york characters, each searching for someone on a christmas eve, find one another on christmas day. Great viewing cuddled up on the sofa with a date or the entire family. Cinematography and music are academy award caliber.

Christmas is obviously a time of miracles in Noel.
With its unabashed melodrama, it's hokey premise and contrived plot; it's hard to imagine that Noel has anything going for it. It's such a thick and gooey slice of holiday bunkum and it's hard to understand why an estimable actor like Chazz Palminteri chose David Hubbard's awkward script for his directing debut. On the up side, however, Palminteri is able to draw some very fine performances from his cast - which actually makes Noel worth watching.

Set in New York on Christmas Eve, Noel follows a disparate group of lonely souls, whose lives will eventually intersect. Susan Sarandon is a middle-aged workaholic book editor, a man-shy divorcée who desperately tries to communicate with her mother who is in the final stages of Alzheimer's. Gorgeous office worker Nina (Penélope Cruz) and her strapping, hunky taxi driver fiancé, Mike (Paul Walker), are madly in love, but Mike's jealousy - he breaks out into fits of rage when another man even looks at her - threatens to derail their relationship.

Alan Arkin is a diner employee who in turn is convinced that his late wife's spirit has entered Mike's body - his first encounter with Mike where he offers him some butter cookies is one of the best scenes in the film. In the most thankless role, Marcus Thomas is a young man whose childhood was so brutal that the only happy Christmas he ever had was when family violence sent him to a hospital.

The various stories swirl together, some drifting into the realm of the supernatural and others into the more prosaically therapeutic. But Mr. Palminteri's direction is often choppy, giving no spin or shape to the complex structure. And his message is constantly hammered at us, that Christmas is the perfect time to reach out and touch someone - even if that someone isn't there.

The drama unfolds on an especially emotional and opportune cold winter's eve, and as we watch these people find the resolutions to their problems, the means with which they do this occasionally rings silly, but because the actors and the director seem to have so much faith and belief in there material, we're mostly able to accept the preposterous turns of events and roll with it.

The extras include interviews with the director and the cast, where Sarandon and Walker comment that the film is destined to become a holiday classic. Well, that's a bit of a stretch, but Noel does represent some of Cruz's and Walker's very best acting, with Walker's final encounter with Arkin taking a surprisingly poignant and heart rendering turn.

Just when we've suffered through another cloying cliché, we find ourselves deeply touched by Walker's beautifully realized character. And Sarandon is so vulnerable that when she is startled to find Robin Williams - or, rather, his mysterious character - sitting next to her mother's hospital room, she aptly conveys the tone of the movie - the miracles do happen, even if, in this movie, they're sometimes put to a pretty severe test. Mike Leonard November 05.