Richie Rich's Christmas Wish

Directed by:	John Murlowski
Release date:	November 2, 1998
Running time:	1 hour, 25 minutes
Available on:	VHS DVD

Richie Rich's Christmas Wish is a 1998 direct-to-video sequel to the 1994 film Ri¢hie Ri¢h, released by Warner Home Video, and starring David Gallagher as the titular character. Like many of the Saban films, it was seen mostly on Fox Family. Currently, it airs annually during ABC Family's 25 Days of Christmas. The plot is very similar to It's a Wonderful Life.

Synopsis

Richie Rich's employee, Professor Keanbean, invents a powerful car/sled remote, and an infinitely more powerful wishing machine. Stealing the former device, child-nemesis Reggie Van Dough (Jake Richardson), sabotages Richie and valet Cadbury's annual Christmas sled (actually a car) toy-drop at a local orphanage, thereby ruining the children's holiday. Using the latter device, a remorseful Richie wishes he were never born.

As an alternate reality dictates, a selfish Reggie takes Richie's place at the Rich Family mansion. Richie is now poor and anonymous to the rest of the townsfolk, including his parents who must now endure alternate son Reggie's incorrigible tyranny.

Richie reacquaints himself with his ex-pet, Dollar (the animal's ingratiating, devotional instinct still intact), orphanage owner Mrs. Peabody, Cadbury, and the children with whom he used to play. After informing Keanbean, the children must now steal a dinosaur wishbone from the museum, in order to complete the Professor’s ‘new’ wishing machine, which will enable Richie to reverse the effects of his previous wish. The group is captured by Reggie, but is freed by Cadbury. The group, now including Cadbury, attack the Rich Mansion and defeat Reggie. Everyone turns on Reggie, having had enough of him, with the police chief quitting, and the Riches asserting their dominance over Reggie for once. At the last possible moment, Richie makes his wish to set everything right with everyone but Reggie cheering him on.

With Richie's universe set right, Reggie confesses to and apologizes for having stolen the remote.

Just then, Richie’s family and friends exchange Christmas gifts. Richie's parents had previously sacrificed a prized material possession in order to buy their spouse a special gift: father Richard sold his golf course to buy his wife a gold Spanish armada anchor (to go with her cherished yacht); in turn, mother Regina sold her yacht to buy her husband a one-of-a-kind Rolls-Royce golf cart (much like The Gift of the Magi).

Location shots

The Langham Huntington Hotel and Spa, in Pasadena, CA, was used for exterior scenes of the sprawling Rich Family Mansion. The interior lobby and vault of the disused (currency exchange) Valuta Bank building, in downtown Los Angeles, was used for the scene in which Richie traps the pursuing Rich security men (this same bank was also used for the bank-robbery scene in Spider-Man 2). The same background music in some scenes like the wishbone was taken out of the wishing machine by Dollar, and the characters standing in front of the Professor's shop was used in Digimon. Colonial Street at Universal City, previously used in The Munsters, Leave it to Beaver, and The 'burbs, is also featured.