Oh Virginia, you're such a precocious girl!  It's Christmas Eve morning and mom (Angela Steele) is making waffles for Virginia "Ginny" (Madison Pay) and her dad (Ronny Johnstone).  While waiting for breakfast, Virginia starts asking if Santa Claus is real, and as her parents enter panic mode about what to tell her, her father starts coming up with all of these rational and scientific sounding explanations about how Santa does his thing.  The question is, will Virginia buy it?

Amidst all the violence and drama of the films we're often sent here at Rogue Cinema, every once in a while we get a film like this that's just "nice".  There's no heavy drama or shattering of childhood dreams here.  It's just a loving mother and a glib father with a great sense of humor trying to save the magic of Christmas for his daughter, even if it is just for another year or two until she's old enough to realize the truth.

One of the things I loved most about this film is that there were incredibly cute and highly amusing animations to go along with several of the father's explanations.  This added immensely to my enjoyment of the film, and took its entertainment value to a whole other level.  The animations were really well done and were artistically very cartoony and just plan funny.  The amount of care and work that went into them was obvious.

The acting was quite good with everyone in the cast.  There was a naturalness to the interactions between the parents and their daughters.  Yes, daughters.  They have another daughter named Nicole (Holly Belveal) who's on her way home from college for Christmas, and she helps along the father's stories by backing him up when she talks to Virginia on the phone.  She wasn't in it much until the end of the film, and she was never actually there at the house.  She wasn't limited to phone chatter though, as we get to see her actually driving along the freeway on her way home while she's talking to them.  This was extra work going out to film those scenes, and if they had taken the lazy way out, they could have just had her calling from a dorm room or something before she left, or even just relegated her to being a voice on the phone.  I'm glad it was done the way it was, because it actually reinforced the fact that she was coming home for the holiday, whereas if it had gone either of the other lazy ways it could have gone, it wouldn't have had the same effect.

The technicals of the film were all in place as well.  The camera work was excellent, the sound was good, the editing moved things along nicely, the animations were brilliant, and it all just sort of fell into place...except for one thing.  The lighting seemed off to me.  I'm thinking it was most likely the camera, but much of the coloration of the video seemed to be blanketed with a reddish-orange hue.  It was like the difference between warm, normal and cool color temperature settings.  The visuals here seemed to fall a bit shy of normal and into the warm range.  I don't mean to imply that it was really bad or that it hurt the visual aspects of the film, nor is it all that unusual to see, as I have seen it often.  It wasn't so bad in the living room scenes, because with the lighting in there it looked normal, but this type of visual coloration in the kitchen scenes seemed out of place.  Other than that though, this was a really well made film on every level.

Waffles for Virginia is a wonderfully fun holiday film that the whole family will love.  However, I want to give a small warning with that.  If you have a kid that still believes in Santa Claus, it's probably best not to show this film to them.  If however they're past that stage, they'll absolutely love it, and so will you.

If you'd like to find out more about this film, see some clips or pick up a copy for yourself, you can check out the film's website at http://www.3oclockproductions.com/waffles_for_virginia.