Prancer movie review & film summary (1989)

Nobody seems to care much about the injured decoration, which is cleared from the road. But not long after, walking home alone through the frosty woods on a cold night, Jessica comes across a reindeer with an injured leg. It stands unafraid in a moonlit clearing and seems to be asking for help. Not long after, her dad comes along in his pickup, and then they both see the deer in the road. Her dad sees that it has a bad leg and wants to shoot it, but then the reindeer disappears. And when it turns up again in the barn, Jessica hides it in an out-building and brings it Christmas cookies to eat. She wants to nurse Prancer back to health and return him to Santa.

OK, I know, this sounds like a cloying fantasy designed to paralyze anyone over the age of 9, but not the way it's told by director John Hancock and writer Greg Taylor. They give the film an unsentimental, almost realistic edge by making the father (Sam Elliott) into a tough, no-nonsense farmer who's having trouble raising his kids alone, and keeps laying down the law. And what really redeems the movie, taking it out of the category of kiddie picture and giving it a heart and gumption, is the performance by a young actress named Rebecca Harrell, as Jessica.

She's something. She has a troublemaker's look in her eye, and a round, pixie face that's filled with mischief. And she's smart - a plucky schemer who figures out things for herself and isn't afraid to act on her convictions.

Her dialogue in the movie is fun to listen to, because she talks like she thinks, and she's always working an angle. She believes ferociously that her reindeer is, indeed, Prancer, and to buy it a bag of oats she does housecleaning for the eccentric old lady (Cloris Leachman) who lives in the house on the hill.