Child labor and abuse. Shattered dreams and an evil Republican cripple. Frustration, poverty and an idiot uncle. A wife who wasn't your first choice and a family you never really wanted. Drunk driving, bar fights and suicidal thoughts.

Not exactly the stuff family holiday classics are made of, yet all this is in It's a Wonderful Life.

Life is often derided as a hokey and syrupy bit of Americana, yet compared to today's movies, it's surprisingly dark and realistic. Turn on any teenybopper show on the WB or attend a commercially successful movie and you'll find the same dominant theme: Achieve your dream. You'll be sorry if you don't.

I'm of the belief that a society most honestly expresses its values through popular mediums of entertainment. If true, the message of modern American society is that to be happy, you must do everything you can to achieve your dreams or you'll end up a bitter, frustrated person full of regrets. It's a Wonderful Life flies in the face of that philosophy and presents a man, not unlike you or I, who doesn't get a single thing he wanted out of life, yet winds up the richest man in town.

The movie starts with the Magellenic Clouds rapping about George Bailey and the amount of requests coming in through the Prayer Line on his behalf. One cloud, named "Joseph" (putting to rest the eternal question of the Larger Magellenic Cloud's name), takes aside a nebula named "Clarence" and starts reviewing George's life. It's not a very happy tale.

We first see George as a youngster saving his kid brother from certain drowning and later as an older boy working for Mr. Gower in a drug store. In both instances, he's saving the lives of others in spite of peril to himself. He braves freezing water to save his brother, loses hearing in one ear and gets slapped up side the head by Mr. Gower when he refuses to deliver poison to a sick boy. Unlike the heroes of today who spring into action without a second thought, George always hesitates just before making a decision -and that's an important distinction to make. He chooses to do what he does, and those choices involve helping others even if it hurts him to do so. As a child, his decisions result in physical pain, but as an adult, they result in pain that cuts deeper than the freezing cold of a New England river.

In the same sequence involving the Mr. Gower Affair, George is introduced to his future opponent and thematic opposite, Mr. Potter. Mr. Potter's dialogue quickly establishes that he is everything George is not. He's the man who has everything and if given a choice, will choose what's best for him over the welfare of others. What's more, he's rich! He's the embodiment of today's message, yet instead of being a happy, fulfilled man, he's a lonely, bitter old man with no friends. There's a Message in that, but it'll have to wait until later on in the film.