The dialogue between the main character, Clare (King), and a senior boy, Paul (Slaggert), whom she has a crush on, is possibly the biggest example of regurgitating tired plotlines to the degree that they lose what could have been unique almost from the very beginning.
What I mean by that is the use of the wish itself could have been so much better. Not until the very end of the film are they even used creatively.
To back up a bit, Clare is raised by her father, Jonathan (Phillippe) after her mother’s suicide. She hasn’t had the best of lives but she has a few best friends who stick by her side and her father loves her very much. Jonathan stumbles upon a beautiful box and gives it to her as a gift. The box has Chinese writing all over the outside of it and, conveniently, the high school she’s in has a Chinese language class that she happens to be taking. The box doesn’t open but she can read the script on the outside of it that reads, ‘seven wishes.’ She soon realizes that if she makes wishes upon it… they do come true. How? She wishes for something to happen to her mortal enemy. This wish is quite awful and something that, if it were to happen, would baffle all medical science. She’s shocked to find out it does happen. Knowing that it was impossible and had to have been her wish, she tries again to see if she now possesses the power we’d all wish to have and it once again comes true. After using several wishes and happy that she now has almost everything she has ever wanted, she all but abandons the person she was before getting the box and, oddly, doesn’t mind when she, at last, learns about the ramifications of using the box.
