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EMMA'S WISH
Reviews
Please choose one to jump to that review:
DAILY VARIETY: "Emma's Wish"- October 16, 1998
HOLLYWOOD REPORTER: "Emma's Wish"- October 15, 1998
ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER: "Kern's finds age a treat in "Emma's Wish"- October 18, 1998
DAILY NEWS: "Kerns gets what she wants in Emma's Wish"- October 18, 1998
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Emma's Wish Television Review
October 16, 1999
By RAY RICHMOND
If Hallmark Hall of Fame ever decided it had to do a knockoff of "Mrs. Doubtfire," it would look an awful lot like th Here's the deal: A granny named Emma Bridges (Joanna Kerns wearing a ton of cakedon makeup) who is
estranged from her only daughter Joy (Harley Jane Kozak) makes a wish during her 75th birthday party that somehow activates a 35-year-old wish commitment
granted her during a carnival by her nowdeceased son. Still with us? OK, so she wakes up the next morning looking like she did on that day in 1963, inspiring her manhungry nursing home roommate Mona (Della Reese) to freak. Soon enough, Emma has blown that elderly Popsicle stand, cleaned out her checking account purchased an oldstyle VW Bug convertible, purchased
snazzy new fashions and set out to repair Joy's marriage after Joy's husband Bryan (William Moses) is caught philandering. The catch: She has only a month before her old geriatric self kicks back in.
It's here that things really start to get weird in Cynthia Whitcomb's hackneyed teleplay, which asks the audience to suspend a tad too much disbelief. Emma, for instance, is able to wrangle a nanny job in the home
of her daughter and two grandkids without anyone wondering why she happens to look exactly like grandma did 35 years ago. No one even much questions it when grandma (who now calls herself Mame, switching around
the letters of Emma) starts meddling in everyone's business, Pretty soon, the cops are looking for the supposedly missing Emma Bridges. But it never occurs to the
daughter that this woman living in her house bears a striking resemblance to her mom's unknown 40 year-old twin. Joy also doesn't seem overly concerned that her mother has been missing for weeks now. Is it
denial or apathy? We're never sure. At least in "Mrs. Doubtfire we could buy that Williams' wife and kids may not recognize him in his nifty disguise. There is no such easy leap to be made in
"Emma's Wish," and while its alternately lighthearted and weepy tone asks us not to take anything too literally, it's still difficult to work up much
empathy when everyone seems to be stumbling around behind blinders. Telepic vet and "Growing Pains" alumna Kerns turns in her usual convincing,
soulful performance, using her puppydog eyes to great effect. Reese is superb in her now trademark feisty senior role ("Touched By a Geritol Tablet"), and Kozak is very good as the world-weary grownup. Helmer Mike
Robe keeps everyone sharp. Yet there's just too much in "Emma's Wish" that strains credibility to allow for the film's highly cultivated sensitive side to grab you. And is having your
mother suddenly 35 years younger and living under the same roof really something many people would wish for? Tech credits are solid.
is heart-warming but cloying fantasy telepic from Paul A. Kaufman and Citadel Entertainment about a 75-year-old woman who is able
to turn back her physiological clock 35 years and land a nanny job in order to save her daughter's wounded marriage. Not exactly Robin Williams in drag, but then,
"Emma's Wish" seems more interested in selling us wholesale implausibility than biting comedy.
changing
around the furniture and rummaging through boxes of old photos.
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EMMAS WISH A pleasant romance is one thing, but an anemic one is another. "Emma's Wish," from Citadel Entertainment LLC. in ass Most of "Emma's" problem stems from Cynthia Whitcomb's uneventful script, which leaves its characters sugarcoated and looking high and low for
any emotional confrontation. In the prologue, we meet Emma as a young mother celebrating her birthday with her husband and two kids on a pier in L.A. Next, she's livinging in a retirement home about
to celebrate her 75th birthday. Divorced, Emma lost her son in a car accident and is estranged from her daughter (Harley Jane Kozak), who is strapped with two kids and separating from her own husband.
Emma pulls out a forgotten cheap, plastic ring from her jewelry box (her young son won it on the pier lo those many years ago) and zap! Quicker
than you can say "Big," she transforms back into a 40 year-old beauty who gets a job as her daughter's housekeeper (a daughter who doesn't recognize her own mother?) to help tighten their relationship. She has one
(very uneventful) month before turning back into a pumpkin. Although dubbed "lighthearted" by its producers, "Emma" is such whipped
cream (despite director Mike Robe's affection for Emma) that the actors all but float aimlessly in their narrative space.
October 15, 1998
By Marilyn Moss
ociation with the Kaufman Co., has a good heart and soul, but despite the fine company of Joanna Kerns as Emma, the story is so
simpleminded that it remains a mere trifle.
Kerns finds age a treat in "Emma's Wish"
Orange County Register
October 18, 1998
BY Jay Robbines
If youth is wasted on the young, that's not the case for Joanna Kerns, especially after her latest role. The actress-director takes on a much older appearance to make the fantasy work in "Emma's Wish," a fanciful
new CBS movie. Kerns plays a retirement home resident who spends her 75th birthday without relatives, especially since she's not on good terms with her daughter (Harley Jane Kozak). She wants
She then poses as a nanny to her grandchildren (Courtland Mead, Jenne Allen), hoping to use the wisdom of her true age to influence her daughter. Della Reese appears as Emma's roommate, who tries to cover for her
in her absence, and William Moses plays Kozak's unhappy husband. Younger actresses rarely get to play senior citizens, and Kerns jumped at the chance: "I only (act in) one TV
movie a year now, so I'm very careful about what I do. You can be good at playing the 'everywoman,' but finding and developing unique material is always a challenge. I think the idea that
you can get a second chance, especially with your children, is kind of a universal wish." "It was a real challenge to do this on a TV-movie schedule," adds "Growing
Pains" alumna Kerns, "especial ly with six-hour makeup sessions. (Director) Mike Robe and I did a lot of talking about how we were going to accomplish the look and get the different stages of it on the screen."
Kerns describes Emma as "a rigid woman with lots of rules. She wants to fix her daughter's life, but what she gets is entirely different." That might sound
like an episode of costar Reese's CBS show "Touched by an Angel." "It has that sentimentality, and I think that's what that show has found an audience
for," Kerns says. "People want to feel better, like they can heal." Playing someone three decades her senior wasn't that difficult for Kerns. "I
come from the stage, so I'm one of those actresses who has always found a character not just from the inside out. That's a very English way of working.
You do a lot of research, and you're never sure what's going to stick." The prosthetics did, and Kerns was in on the makeup decisions from the start.
"It was an amazing process. By the time they were finished with me, I felt 90." Kerns' parents, who are in Emma's age range, live in a retirement home. "I'm
around those people all the time," Kerns says. "When I knew I was going to do this part, I started collecting little 'things' from them, like what my
mother would do with her hands, and what happens to your voice at that age." Being a director herself helped Kerns while making "Emma's Wish." She
says, "Every actor should do the job of everyone else on a set at least once, just to know what they're up against. To be good as an actor, you have to
focus on what you do, and the only way to do that is to block everybody else out and have no consciousness of their jobs. "The privilege of having done a series as successful as 'Growing Pains'," she
says, "means I don't have to do anything I don't want to." 
to resolve the differences between them, and the elderly Emma gets that chance when she's magically given the look of a 40 year-old.
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Kerns gets what she wants in Emma's Wish
October 18, 1998
By Suzzane Gill
It's not every week there's a movie about a couple of elderly ladies who've taken up residence in a nursing home without losing interest in life.
Della Reese and Joanna Kerns play the geriatric roommates in Emma's Wish airing Sunday, Oct. 18, on CBS. Kerns, who starred in Growing Pains from 1985 to 1992, plays 75 year-old
Emma Bridges, who blows out her birth With its sentimentsoaked message about forgiveness of self and others, Emma's Wish asks considerable suspension of disbelief as Emma
first comes young through the magic of her wish. then gets hired, Mrs. Doubtfire-style, as her daughter's housekeeper. Calling herself Mame, she encounters only the
most perfunctory trial period before shifting into mother-confessor mode. Back at the nursing home, Mona is doing her best to cover for her friend. With Wish,
Kerns takes a risk portraying a much older woman, but remains more convincing as Mame, the radiant 40 year-old zipping around Southern California in a vintage Volkswagen convertible.
Kozak's performance is easy to overlook alongside Kerns' star aura, but viewers will appreciate the realism of her pain. The sum of these parts isn't perfect alchemy, but a little magic is enough to make Emma's Wish
satisfying viewing.
day candles with a wish that she
might come to the aid of her daughter (Harley Jane Kozak), who is trying to raise two children, start a business and deal with a marriage in cnsis. As Emma's irrepressible pal, Mona, Reese
gives the film a welcome injection of attitude.
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