A "Better-Off-Dead-Than-Alive" Bible Story

Rating: 5/10 (1 December 2016)

Believe me - This decidedly heavy-handed, Christianity-driven, tear-jerker (from 1947) is so loaded down with underlying religious propaganda that (depending on which side of the bible your "daily bread" is buttered on) it's either gonna warm your heart, or else it's sure to freeze it.
This film's story-line also preached (and I quote) "No man is a failure who has friends" - (Yeah? - Isn't that nice to know?) - But, with that in mind - (I ask you) - What about all of those out there who have no friends? Does that render them as failures?
Anyway - From my critically observant point of view - "It's A Wonderful Life" was so incredibly over-sentimental and highly manipulative (as it zeroed in on the idealism of small-town, American life in the late-1940s) that its storytelling repeatedly veered right off the radar into the stratosphere of pure surrealism.
And, with that - This film ended up coming across like an extended (and rather creepy) 2-hour-10-minute episode of The Twilight Zone. This was especially so during the film's "Pottersville" sequence - As well as in its final climatic moments of total jubilation.