This is a cute family movie. An angel sees a 13-year-old girl having a tough time with her life. She gets sent to earth to help this just-reaching-puberty girl learn to appreciate her life, and her changing body (with her mother having died years before). The angel becomes a good friend, and tells her supportive things. This part of the movie is powerfully good.Her friends at school are becoming boy-crazy, while she remains somewhat of a tom-boy, with a good friend who happens to be a boy. Things come to a head when she is invited to a birthday party (but only if she comes with a boy, yuck). This film portrays (quite well) the mixed bag of feelings a girl can go through.Her father is a cartoonist, and sort-of falls for an extremely self-centered woman, who promises him to get his comic strip syndicated nationally. The parts with the girlfriend are almost cartoon-ish with some slap-stick humor (better for the kids to enjoy).I have watched this several times over a few years. It holds up well. All-in-all, a pretty good hour-and-a-half.

Once in a great while, a film comes along that completely redefines how you think about American cinema. That film may very well be "Angel in Training." First off, the acting is wonderful. The daughter is a gem, but the real show-stealer is the actual angel in training, Danielle Pessis. She often feeds the protagonist important nuggets of wisdom regarding being the "perfect age," something all teenagers can understand when they hear it from a space angel who shoots balls of light from her hands and uses the force to throw food at people. Gary Imhoff is great as the father character as well, who reminds me of the dad from Seventh Heaven mixed with Jon Arbuckle from Garfield.From a purely technical standpoint, the movie is brilliant. It introduces a new technique that, despite the film being released for nearly a decade, still has not been widely used at this point (I have no idea why). Essentially, the director often uses voice-overs and flashbacks of things that happened within the last 15 minutes so that the viewers won't forget about them. There are also two or three wacky and hilarious sound effects, all of which appear in the last ten minutes of running time (if you don't count the five minute long montage that recaps the entire film at the end).But really, what do things like acting and directing matter if the movie's got no heart? Well, don't worry about that here; "Angel in Training" has got so much heart that yours is likely to burst from your chest cavity and ruin all your limited edition "Spy Cat" cels. If you don't think this is the feel-good movie of a lifetime, then... well, you'd better watch it! So in conclusion, I highly recommend watching "Angel in Training" not once, but a dozen times. It will only get better.My father used to tell me, "A great movie is only great if it has dead people and cartoonists." Think about it.

This is a movie that's aimed mainly at a young audience, but it deals with some mature themes, like the loss of a parent and entering into adolescence. Although it is a low budget film, I think it is a good family film, in large part because of the performances, particularly the lead actress Laila Dagher. She shows great maturity and subtlety in her work for a child actress. I hope Hollywood casting agents take note and put her in more projects.

I saw this movie on cable..which is good because I would never have rented it out! A good movie for the family to watch over the weekend, mainly due to the performance by it's two young stars. It's a low budget movie, starring a bunch of fresh faces...eg Laila Dagher, Danielle Pessis, yet I feel the direction could certainly have been better. At some points, you tend to get frustrated because the story seems to be drifting rather than going anywhere definite. Laila Dagher does a fair job for someone appearing in her first major picture, but it's the other new comer Danielle Pessis who'll leave you impressed by her performance. Pessis plays the angel (RJ), who's sent to help Dagher through some tough times at home. Danielle Pessis basically steals the show with this one. She has a long future ahead of her in Hollywood, should she want to take up the challenge. Overall - 5/10 .