It's safe to say the only thing that should ever be based on Newsong's insufferable "The Christmas Shoes" is a class-action lawsuit. Despite this, in 2002 CBS decided it would try to top the previous year's saddest television event, 9/11, by adapting the most quickly turned-off song on the radio into the most quickly turned-off movie on TV (by way of the most quickly hurled-across-the-room novelization).
Rob Lowe lets his acting muscles atrophy as the guy that was "not really in the Christmas mood" who helps a young boy buy a pair of shoes for his dying mother. Why wasn't he in that mood, though? And how sad, exactly, is a dying mother? The answers to these questions were glaringly omitted from the song, and the movie addresses the issue by devoting an hour and a half to establishing this crucial context. CBS's The Christmas Shoes delivers more schmaltz, empties more tissue boxes, and kills more characters than the song's format ever allowed. And if it's the case that the more sadness something elicits, the more meaningful and heartwarming it is, The Christmas Shoes is more meaningful and heartwarming than a stillborn bunny rabbit.
