A good message film which I really wanted to like, but I just wish that it hadn't been so boring

Rating: 4/10 (27 December 2014)

It's a wonderful life chronicles the life of George Bailey (James Stewart) from his early childhood right through to his adult years when he ends up taking over his father's building & loan business after his father passes away.
This was a film that I really wanted to like since it does have a lot of heart & warmth to it, but the problem for me is that it was so dull and tedious. I understand that everything that is depicted in George's life did eventually serve a purpose in the context of the narrative, but if I'm being honest I found the journey from A to B to be rather uninteresting. The other problem is that this uninteresting aspect of George's life is dragged out for about 2/3 of the film (had the film been 90 minutes long that probably would have been just about OK, but in a film that is over 2 hours long it's just unforgivable). I just couldn't get involved in the story, I didn't care about the characters and pretty much lost interest in the film.
Focusing on the positives, I thought that Stewart was excellent and this is probably the best I've ever seen from him. Likewise, Donna Reed was also really good and I thought that they both had really good chemistry together.
Another big positive to be taken from this film is its message and the best way I can describe it without spoiling anything is 'Be Careful what you wish for'. The last 30 minutes of this film were excellent and if I was to rate the last 30 minutes alone I would give it a 9 or a 10. The ending of the film is particularly good and is actually quite moving and it's just a shame that the first 2/3 of the film was so boring.
Even though I've only rated this film a 4 out of 10, I would still recommend watching this film because as a 'message' film it's absolutely first rate. However, no matter how good the message is with this film, for me, it didn't make up for how tedious and boring the majority of the film was as a whole.