"The Ultimate Gift"

Directed by: Michael O. Sajbel

Starring: Drew Fuller, Ali Hillis, Abigail Breslin, James Garner

MPAA rating: PG Running time: 113 minutes

Best suited for: traditionally minded, spiritually prone

Least suited for: the cynical, the plot-conscious

March is always a little interesting for avid film folk- - too soon after the Academy Awards to think about next year's contenders and too early for summer blockbusters. So we're confronted with the studios' secondstring efforts and a host of (occasionally phenomenal) independent offerings.

Universal Pictures has a March surprise for filmgoers. The studio is offering free promotional tickets to last year's limited-release "The Peaceful Warrior." Based on Dan Millman's best-selling book, the film is a mix of inspirational courage and metaphysical shamanism.

Interested parties can claim up to 10 free tickets at a Best Buy store or via www.BestBuy.com before April 1. In return, Universal hopes you'll spread the word about how cool their movie is.

What I enjoyed about "The Peaceful Warrior" (besides Nick Nolte) was the film's refusal to resort to overt sermonizing. Young, impudent student Dan Millman learns some valuable life lessons without fingerwagging at the audience.

Not so with FoxFaith's "The Ultimate Gift." This one is a morality play that feels like a morality play. Understandable, as the only requirement of 20th Century Fox's newest division is that films "have overt Christian themes" or must be the work of (and this is kinda creepy) Christian authors. In other words, Saul Bellow, Isaac Asimov, Bernard Malamud, E. L. Doctorow need not apply. FoxFaith is also letting us know this evangelical treat is more than simply a movie. It's a movement.

I can't help but get a queasy feeling that they mean, like a jihad.

Based on Jim Stovall's bestselling novel, "The Ultimate Gift" stars James Garner as Red Stevens, a California bejillionaire who dies suddenly in a plane crash. Red had been feeling secretly remorseful his last few years, having raised a typically dysfunctional family of baby bejillionaires. Apparently he'd already dismissed most of these heirs as unsalvageable, but was feeling particularly penitent toward his spoiled and superficial grandson, Jason (Drew Fuller).

From beyond the grave- and with the help of video technology- Red submits Jason to a series of personal challenges. The reward? Nobody knows for sure. Even though Jason smells an easy buck, he's reluctant to oblige his dead granddaddy, but Red's dare has rung some kind of Pavlovian bell.

My biggest gripe with "The Ultimate Gift" is its underlying message: Should you perform your tasks sufficiently (although I'm not saying Jason manages to do so), your reward, know it or not, is financial windfall. The subliminal message here isn't exactly philanthropic. In fact, isn't this exactly the stereotype the film is trying to condemn?

"Gift" is a capitalist's conservative spiritual bedtime story, hiding beneath a happy varnish of subliminal, wideeyed innocence. The Fox Film Fund wants us to know that from each ticket sold they're donating a buck to charity. Somebody's forcefeeding me a feel-good movie rather than allowing me the courtesy to decide for myself. It didn't work for me with "Crash" or with "Babel," and it's probably not going to work now.

Okay, so how's this for irony? "The Ultimate Gift" could have been longer.

One gets the feeling the project didn't start out as a Major Motion Picture. It began, I suspect, as a two- or three-part mini series. The acting, the editing, the pacing all scream TV special.

But then somebody thought that "Gift" might actually be worthy, and somebody else cut the hell out of it, trying to fit it in one bite-size gulp. The film feels hurried and uneven, rendering it less effective than it might have been running another 30 to 60 minutes over a long winter holiday. That's where this one belongs.

The best thing about the film is Abigail Breslin, fresh from her Oscar-nominated "Little Miss Sunshine" gig. Abigail plays Emily, ill but hopeful, a young girl who realizes Jason's undiscovered potential and then goes about playing matchmaker for her angstridden single mom (Ali Hillis). Emily and her fate are a little predictable here (and her exit a big fat cop-out), but one can't help admiring her performance.

Brian Dennehy has a nice role as a Texas rancher, but his appearance, like several otherwise nice performances, feels rushed because the clock is running.

So "The Ultimate Gift" forgoes the chitchat, the character building, the nuance and gets bluntly to the point, hoping we get the message. We do, trust me, we do.