For me, home for the holiday meant catching up on some movie watching. I caught Thank You For Smoking and The Break-up, as well as my new annual tradition, Love Actually. (What holiday is complete without Colin Firth declaring love in broken Portuguese??)

But I also happened to catch Millions, a completely charming, if not a it flawed, fantasy about two British brothers who must try to spend a windfall in pounds that lands — literally — at the feet of the younger, more idealistic boy before the country converts to the Euro and the bills are made worthless.

Alex Etel is Damian, the aforementioned younger brother, who knows the names and histories of all the saints, and aspires to do good. He is sweetly naive, doling out bills to pay for a pizza dinner for beggars, stuffing the contribution box of a Latter-Day Saints commune and dropping a hefty wad into a collection for the poor children in Africa.

His brother Anthony, played by Lewis McGibbon, is a bit older and just a tad more jaded — suspicious of a solitary man poking around the railroad tracks near Damian’s playhouse, using his newfound wealth to gain influence and friends in the pair’s new school and advising Damian to sink the money into real estate. He also counsels Damian to strategically drop the information, "Our mom’s dead" as an all-purpose get-out-of-jail-free card that wins them cookies, free sweets and ends a tense session of questions when their father learns of Damian’s unusual donation to the poor.

A few too many coincidences for me to swallow sully some of the suspension of disbelief for me, but there is a certain beauty and joy in Damian’s innocence and his desire to do good works in life. The movie is charming and sweet, and the two brothers interact with each other so well, I fully expected to find out they really were brothers.

The entire movie takes place in the weeks before Christmas, and the climax takes place on Christmas Eve, so it definitely earns the designation "holiday fare."

I highly recommend it to lift your spirits, if you are at all doubting the goodness and generosity of humankind. It clocks in at 98 minutes and earned a PG rating for "thematic elements, language, some peril and mild sensuality." I think it is a lovely little film, far more appropriate than some of the gross-out comedies or rude humor prevalent in many of today’s movies. The accent is a little thick at times, and the hyper-realism may not work for some viewers, but I thought it was a refreshing addition to my holiday viewing.

Check it out and let me know what you think.