Three Wishes

Director Martha Coolidge returns to the theme of Rambling Rose with this fantasy drama. Here, Patrick Swayze plays the stranger who comes into the family fold and changes everyone's lives. A tramp with a dog on a string, he may be an angel sent to help the family cope with the potential loss of their father, reported missing in action in the Korean War, and with one son's cancer. All of this culminates in the granting of three wishes. It's clumsily structured as a flashback to the 1950s, and the story is both daft and sentimental, but, as family fare goes, it's OK and the youngsters might enjoy it.