This charming and disarming family film offers wish fulfilment to all but the most cynical of youngsters. Rebecca Harrell plays a nine-year-old girl, recovering from the death of her mother, who finds an injured reindeer and thinks it belongs to Santa Claus. Unfortunately, her grief-stricken father (Sam Elliott) is struggling to save their farm from the bailiffs and has little patience with his daughter's attempt to nurse the beast. Sentimental without being mawkish, with the grown-ups given as much character as the children, this is lump-in-the-throat stuff from start to finish.

Jessica, the daughter of an impoverished apple farmer, still believes in Santa Claus. So when she comes across a reindeer with an injured leg, it makes perfect sense to her to assume that it is Prancer, who had fallen from a Christmas display in town. She hides the reindeer in her barn and feeds it cookies, until she can return it to Santa. Her father finds the reindeer and decides to sell it to the butcher, not for venison chops, but as an advertising display.