16 Wishes

Abby Jensen has been planning her sixteenth birthday since she was a small child, keeping a private list of wishes she hopes will come true. When the day finally arrives, events go badly wrong, and the celebration she imagined seems ruined. Then a box of magical birthday candles reaches her, one for each of her sixteen wishes, and the wishes begin coming true one after another. As her day improves, Abby makes a wish that changes the situation in ways she did not expect, and she must work out how to set things right.

Directed by Peter DeLuise, this 2010 American television film runs 90 minutes and mixes family drama with fantasy. It was written by Annie DeYoung and produced by Ron French and Robyn Snyder for MarVista Entertainment, Unity Pictures Group and Family Channel. Debby Ryan plays Abby, with Jean-Luc Bilodeau as Jay Kepler and Anna Mae Routledge as Celeste. The cast also includes Keenan Tracey, Karissa Tynes and Brenda Crichlow.

The film sits first in the chronological list of DeLuise's five directed features, ahead of Zapped, Harvest Moon, SnowComing and The Wedding Contract. Audience responses are modest: on IMDb it holds 5.5 out of 10 from around 18,000 votes, while on TMDB it stands at 6.3 out of 10 from a much smaller base of 1,382 votes.