Wishin' and Hopin'

Felix Funicello is a fifth-grader. The year is 1964. He goes to a Catholic school. The famous one in the family is his cousin Annette Funicello. Annette was a well known young performer of those years. Felix’s school is thrown into confusion that holiday season. Two new people arrive. One is the substitute teacher Madame Frechette. The other is Zhenya Kabakova, a student from Russia. Lessons fall into second place. Felix learns a great many things over that stretch. Cultural misunderstandings are among them. The Christmas preparations grow more tangled as they go. The film tells this as comedy and drama. The work was adapted from a novel. Wyatt Ralff and Chevy Chase take the leads, with Molly Ringwald and Annabella Sciorra also in the cast, in Colin Theys’s American film of 2014.