Movie Review: The Christmas Pageant (2011) with Melissa Gilbert

Man I have missed Melissa Gilbert.  Of course I miss the Little House on the Prairie Melissa Gilbert, and this movie is not her; however a couple times this movie took me back.  Gilbert plays Melissa Parks, a Broadway director, who is down on her luck and down on opportunities because of her sour personality.  In the end, she takes the only thing available, a gig directing a Christmas Pageant to the north.  There she meets her old boyfriend (Jack Harmon), who left because he realized Parks was married to her career and didn't need marriage.  She also befriends the boyfriend's daughter (Lennon Wynn) who is wise beyond her years before realizing who she is.  Her birth mother has passed away.  (It seems single parents is common in Hallmark movies.  The landlords where the director is staying are played by Candice Azzara and Edward Herrmann. 
The biggest test with this show comes when a Broadway job finally does come through.  Parks leaves the pageant production a few days before the presentation, to return to New York.  What happens from there?