December 31, 2018

After hearing from at least three people that this movie was just unwatchable, we took it as a challenge and decided to close out our 2018 season with it. And we say to you, at least three people: you know nothing of pain. This movie was crappy and misogynist and weird, sure, but we’ve seen at least six movies that make this one look like an Oscars contender (I will never forgive Hulu for allowing “Snow” to see the light of day.) A first-time wedding planner/maid of honor (read: a MOH who has coordinated the cake tasting and dress fitting) is putting the finishing touches on a classy Christmas wedding for her cousin when the bride-to-be’s long-ago ex appears and starts…not really doing anything rude or inappropriate, but MOH gets worried he’s there to BREAK UP THE WEDDING????!!!!!! He’s not. He’s just a working stiff private investigator/Italian restaurant co-owner who treats women like children. Natch, she gets googly-eyed when he starts coaching her at Private Dick work. God, I’m so sorry for that joke, but not as sorry as I am for seeing this dumb movie. He’s in town to dig up dirt on the groom and needs some unpaid labor so he finds the nearest woman (MOH) and negs her until she agrees to help. As we find out during some kooky stakeout scenes, there’s literally nothing out of the ordinary about the fiancé. Just when they’re about to call off the investigation and carve their initials together on a Yule log, HEY LOOK THE GROOM IS INTERACTING WITH A WOMAN WHO IS NOT HIS FIANCEE LET’S CAUSE A SCENE. They cause a scene. Turns out the Other Woman is an old friend who’s helping him finance the purchase of the wedding dress. Wow, that’s boring. MOH embarrasses herself and gets a firm talking-to by the mother of the bride, an elegantly aged Angela from “The Office”, who also reveals that the ex-boyfriend PI guy got paid off by the bride’s dad to ghost on the bride back when they were dating. No mo smooches! I never want to see you again! I never work at Walmart! Order corn! The PI guy goes back to his restaurant where his partner Joey Fatone (really! Oh you weren’t surprised? Us either) serves up some food and wisdom. Ugh.

Fast-forward to wedding day. Are you bored yet? It’s a boring movie! Everything about the wedding is going well and our wonderful bride has been nothing but pleasant and gracefully charming, so she really deserves the abject catastrophe that ensues. PI Ex storms in during the service to CANCEL THE WEDDING!!!! Just as everyone thought he was going to at first but then he acted like he wouldn’t! Aaggh! Turns out, this hard-boiled gumshoe discovered the groom’s secret LOVE CHILD! So naturally the best way to handle this upsetting revelation is to ruin a wedding and Christmas for dramatic effect. The wedding quickly dissolved, the MOH and bride sit outside the chapel chatting about how they’re both to blame for this disaster (rather than assigning agency to like, any man involved…cool) but then Detective Spaghetti butts in to make it all about him and decides this is the optimal time to propose – using aunt Angela from Accounting’s ring – to a woman he has only know for 3 days but sees infinite possibility in exploiting her low self-esteem. She says as much in the voiceover, but she convinces herself that her dead mom would have wanted her to take a chance on this complete bastard. So they HIJACK THE BEST FRIEND’S WEDDING including the guests, church, reception, and honeymoon, and everybody is pretty cool about it, especially the erstwhile bride cousin. What the entire shit?

WHIMSY: 🧝‍♂️🧝‍♂️ 2/5 elf ears. (The “it was MY wedding all along” gimmick was pretty whimsical but it came at the expense of her best friend/cousin who almost certainly had the worst day of her life off-camera.)
SPARKLE FACTOR: ✨✨✨✨ 4/5 twinkly lights. (Snowy and pretty. This was the most attractive and well dressed cast of any movie I’ve ever seen.)
ADORKABILITY: 🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃 5/5 (This one has it all –falls, dropped stuff, kiss-capades, baked good hijinks, and AWWK-WAARD moments.)
CHRISTMAS SCALE: 🎅🎅 2/5 Santa hats. (This narcissistic atrocity could have happened at any time of the year. It was pretty hard to believe anyone would have given up their own Christmas celebrations to go to someone else’s wedding, but they could have at least had some more visible holiday cheer.)
DO YOU HEAR WHAT I HEAR?: 🔔1/5 silver bells. (The music wasn’t even Christmas music, it was generic love song schmaltz. Why couldn’t J-Fatone write us some sick N’SYNC Xmas Jamz ’99? That would have been worth at least 2 bells right there.)
REASON FOR SEASON: Spy shit! 🕵🏻‍♂️

December 31, 2018

A zany madcap twist on the “facing foreclosure” theme inside “A Christmas Carol” wrapping paper, this picture features an emotionally unavailable divorced thirtysomething dad of two very nice kids who has a fiendish antipathy toward all things Christmas-y, because it makes people spend money when they should be misering it like he does with his love for his children. He also has a deadbeat dad and a dead-dead mom which makes him Secretly Sad this time of year. To soothe his angst he engages in self-care by serving foreclosures to kindly old farmers who care for a motley assortment of unloved livestock. In the true spirit of Take Your Kids To Work Day, he brings his mortified children along to witness firsthand the joy of giving…an eviction notice. The children, appalled, tell their mom how terrible their dad’s parenting skills are, but she can’t think about that right now because she’s busy competitively directing all Ontario’s third graders in an unnamed Christmas pageant. That night, it gets weird fast. The farm animals appear in the children’s shared bedroom to enlist their aid in saving the farm and forcing their shitty dad to just like Christmas already. The animals talk, btw. This presents a much smaller hurdle than you’d think for the humans in this movie. Each night they stage an appearance by an animal Ghost of Christmas Past/Present/Future. This was helpful to see because we had never stopped to consider what an alpaca in a ghostly sheet shroud looks like! (A Klansman.) Dad’s pretty chill about talking animals because he thinks he’s dreaming, I guess?, but he’s not convinced he needs to Change His Ways until the night of the pageant when the animals, children, and Dad wind up on stage accidentally in front of the entire population of [insert Canadian city]. Dad strides off, embarrassed that he had a feeling in front of people and also didn’t realize the talking animals were REAL not dream! Ahhh! SO ANGRY I GOING TO RUIN CHRISTMAS AND CANCEL THIS FARM!

Just when all is lost, a British goat shows E.B. (that’s the Dad’s name! Last name…”Enezer”?) some more home movies where his father was emotionally unavailable and that he’s doing the same thing to his own children!!!!! He cries until Christmas morning, then treats us to his interpretation of the classic Dickens scene by throwing open a window upstairs, screaming at a local kid, and chucking his wallet at his head while demanding the child fetch him a sizable dinner goose (while there’s a very nice talking duck inside? Dude). Everyone gathers for Christmas breakfast and a game of pancake discus – even Mom and old Grumpfather are there! – and all the barnyard pals (who I guess just haven’t pooped for a couple days?). Dad, having adopted Christmas as his entire identity (a fun trope), celebrates by Saving the Farm by not trying to collect or foreclose AND setting up some kind of 501(c)(3) to ensure the continued financial incompetence is propped up by semiannual donations. But from who? And who will become their development director? And don’t they need a board? (Yes, legally.) I guess they’ll solve that later. Or never! And we’ll get a sequel: “My Dad Is Dysfunctional Nonprofit Board Chairman”!

WHIMSY: 🧝‍♂️🧝‍♂️🧝‍♂️🧝‍♂️🧝‍♂️ 5/5 elf ears. (The plot was as perplexing as they come but if we live in a world where talking animals is NBD that’s gonna be a big ol’ whimsyfest.)
SPARKLE FACTOR: ✨✨✨✨✨ 5/5 twinkly lights. (Nothing to knock here! Snowy and decorative with festive events and meals.)
ADORKABILITY: 🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃 5/5 (Peak adorkable. We had animal gags, some pageant slapstick fun, and the Uncle who thought he was a ghost was honest to God great. Also, Jon Heder was in this movie as a bite-happy rat!)
CHRISTMAS SCALE: 🎅🎅🎅🎅🎅 5/5 Santa hats. (They made a weird twist on an old classic but it’s as Christmas-y as it gets.)
DO YOU HEAR WHAT I HEAR?: 🔔1/5 silver bells. (Absolute garbage.)
REASON FOR SEASON: Talking animals!

December 30, 2018

A stunning installment in the “horse girl” subgenre of Yuletide cinema, this movie boasts horses, tack, barrel racing, petting horses, bonding, and hat boys. A Teen Girl (portrayed super convincingly by an actress closing on 30) is dragged out of NYC by her Moooooommmm to the Louisiana ranch she has just inherited and must immediately pay tens of thousands in back mortgage on, because it’s not Christmas without the threat of utter financial ruin. The drive down there takes approximately two hours, during which we learn that Daughter is super into Facetiming her besties, and also doesn’t know what a tree is and decides the fresh air is harshing her mellow. Mom runs into her old flame, Cowpoke Michael Madsden circa “Reservoir Dogs”, who’s been Dead Ranch Dad’s #2 for the last decade or so. And it turns out Big Daddy signed over half the ranch to this hat-wearing fella, whose nicest article of clothing is a Carhartt jacket with a piece of tape covering up the logo. (Wouldn’t want to just hand out free ad space willy-nilly to all the fives of people who might see this movie.) Meanwhile, Daughter rides a horse once and adopts it as her entire identity, instantly ghosting her friends and presumably school?? She also meets Ranch Guy’s nephew Zeb or Zeke or Justin. He may have said his name but we couldn’t tell because in true country fashion he does not part his lips when he speaks. I appreciated the genuine country charm that requires me to put on subtitles for dialects I grew up hearing. Anyway, he convinces Mustang Sally to enter the annual Christmas barrel racing competition to earn enough money to save her new horse Rodeo from the auction block (that reminds us, her name is Juliet. That’s what makes the title make sense. Yep). Even though she has just encountered mammals for the first time, she’s confident she (or at least her stunt double) can outclass professional local yokels who have trained their whole lives to compete. And guess what? Rocky-like, she trains like crazy and loses but came real close so we’re all like, yeah! Turns out it’s fine because Mom and Uncle Hat rekindle their romance and decide to just own and operate the ranch together. OK but HOW DOES THIS RANCH TURN A PROFIT WHAT IS THE SERVICE/GOODS IT PROVIDES??? RANCH CANNOT LIVE ON HORSE MAGIC ALONE oh wait it’s Christmas I’m sure it’s all fine. Neigh! *horse whinny*

WHIMSY: 🧝‍♂️🧝‍♂️🧝‍♂️🧝‍♂️🧝‍♂️ 5/5 elf ears. (The city girl-gone country trope is a whimsy well that’ll never run dry.)
SPARKLE FACTOR: ✨✨ 2/5 twinkly lights. (Save for a spray of greenery on the porch and a recently mucked out barn decked with a few strands of white lights for a deeply mellow teen hootenanny, it’s…minimally sparkly.)
ADORKABILITY: 🙃🙃 2/5 (This movie was weirdly humorless but the unintentional comedy was peak. I especially loved how they thought we wouldn’t notice that our “teenage” protagonist was wearing her wedding band and that the old Southern lawyer wore a dinner napkin as an ascot.)
CHRISTMAS SCALE: 🎅 1/5 Santa hats. (It’s bold, setting a Christmas movie in the humid-ass South. The atmosphere created is closer to “Air Bud” than “Miracle on 34th Street”. We had to remind ourselves why we were watching this movie because it felt like masochism, not Christmas cheer)
DO YOU HEAR WHAT I HEAR?: 🔔🔔2/5 silver bells. (There may have been some original country Christmas tunes but I honestly don’t remember hearing it.)
REASON FOR SEASON: Horsies! 🐴

December 24, 2018

Ok, this movie definitely had the most former A-listers of any picture we’ve watched so far. Did that make it a surprising holiday good time to share with friends and family year after year? No. It made it depressing. Patrick Swayze uproots his family of five from LA to Edmonton, AL to go work for the tar sands oil companies…YEP. But fear not Water Protectors, because the day after they arrive he learns that the company’s been sold and he’s been laid off. Presumably the company was busted for insider plot devices. Do the parents decide the smart thing to do would be to move back to the States, where they have legal status, family, and probably some sort of emergency support network? Nah, Canada can be fun, eh? What man can resist the rugged call of Northern Alberta? Not a SWAYZE MAN, that’s for sure!

One problem though (actually many problems, but this one) is that they have made no prep for Christmas. So, Dad and the kids are off to Mall of Canada to buy all their last minute gifts for each other. The creepy teenaged son goes to perv on girls at the indoor pool. Middle bro and kid sister (who speaks Parseltongue to sea lions and reindeer) visit with Santa and ask for lots of money for Christmas. Just then, Chris Kattan and A Meat Loaf Type drop their sack of counterfeit loonies, which kiddos belief was a gift from St. Tim Horton. This leads to some goofy Home Alone-esque-capades in the mall that mostly serve as a vehicle for Abbot and Costello style “big guy little guy” humor. The bad guys come up empty-handed and have hell to pay with their boss, Carmen Electra (remember her?). And to round out our celebrity tour, Tim Curry plays a Scotch-Canadian Mountie who is following the counterfeit money scheme despite being mostly inept from a former horse kick to the head. That’s the actual story from the movie! The Mounties bust the trio of future “where are they now” stars and return the hero kids to dad, and in the parking lot, the mall owner offers dad a job as a ranch guy because “he looks the type”. (He must have seen “Road House”). Santa provides!

This all sounds harmless enough but this movie had some dark moments. In one scene the kids were wandering through the catacombs of the mall and had encounters with possible ghosts, hell hounds, a The Shining-like cascade of ping pongs ball, and some awfully freaky Flash animated elves that looked dated 10 years ago. Also, our cute magic daughter straight up tried to murder Carmen Electra’s character by sending her through a glass roof to her death below. Fortunately a pool broke her fall (thank god for egregious displays of consumerism and the fruits of oil wealth). This movie serves as a Home Alone caper for the Paul Blart generation and reminds us all of the important things about Christmas, such as, hollerin’ at hotties while they’re alone in their swimsuit, never questioning a duffel full of money that falls from the sky, putting your trust in an oily boy who worker in the boiler room, and buying all of your Christmas gifts on Christmas Eve including sexy undies for your wife from a weird Panty Nazi.

WHIMSY: 🧝‍♂️🧝‍♂️🧝‍♂️🧝‍♂️🧝‍♂️ 5/5 elf ears. (Magical kids and bumbling chuckleheads doing crimes. What more do you want?)
SPARKLE FACTOR: ✨✨✨ 3/5 twinkly lights. (Santa went ALL out for their wishes, including decorating their whole house and made them turkey dinner while they slept WAIT THAT’S MEGA SCARY AND WHO EATS XMAS DINNER AT 8:00 AM!?)
ADORKABILITY: 🙃🚫 Faceplants not applicable. (Again, the kids don’t really count here. Mall pratfalls, riding bikes indoors, and plunges into the pool through breaking glass abound, though.)
CHRISTMAS SCALE: 🎅🎅🎅🎅🎅 5/5 Santa hats. (Checks all the boxes for what really makes a Christmas: a Santa character and a shit ton of presents that mysteriously appear overnight even though you definitely locked all the doors.)
DO YOU HEAR WHAT I HEAR?: 🔔🔔 2/5 silver bells. (Nothing notable except for the Bluesmas Rock at the beginning…which sucked.)
REASON FOR SEASON: Crime! 💰

December 23, 2018

A girl is born on Christmas in a neighbor’s barn after the expectant parents get lost driving three minutes from home, having somehow forgot over the last nine months to figure out the route to take to the nearest hospital in their hometown. Her name is Noelle, and she has Matilda Lite powers that include “Compel Harmony”, a wide-radius area-of-effect attack that deals no damage but calms all targets within range and makes them suddenly recognize the good in all nearby enemies. The Local Jackass, the opposite of a prodigal son, returns home from a successful American venture starring Actual Pierce Brosnan via Skype. He has acquired wealth and an atrocious American accent. He and his goons don disguises and destroy the entire sales inventory of the local 500-year-old snowglobery that employs Noelle’s dad and presumably most of the town’s dads too. In the only trope used more than “dead parents 😞”, his ultimate goal is to bulldoze the town and build a Christmas village casino and Howard Johnson. Noelle and her friends overhear, break into his office and hack his computer (favorite trope #3: all children are hackers!), can’t magic him into a peaceful compromise, so they have their football (or as we call it in America “can we watch literally anything else”) coach drive them to freaking Parliament to reveal his dastardly plot. People all over Northern Ireland are fixated on CSPAN-UK and are so inspired by their bravery and speechifying that celebrities across the Commonwealth begin ordering these genuine Potters Glen snowglobes. It’s a Christmas miracle, even if Noelle realizes the magic wasn’t magic all along. It was friendship or something! Except it *was* magic earlier, it’s just not now.

I…actually don’t have a lot to say about this movie. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I felt my heart grow 2.2 sizes (that’s converting from metric). Small accented children and a small Northern Ireland town verdant and full of little village charm…am I on my period? Why am I crying? Anyway – and I say this with no snark for once – it is the kind of movie my mom would enjoy! Does your mom like quiet BBC shows and children being clever and brave? Mine too! Show her this! After she finishes bingeing “Lark Rise to Candleford”, “Rosemary and Thyme”, and “Breaking Bad” (I mean that’s just a good show).

WHIMSY: 🧝‍♂️🧝‍♂️🧝‍♂️🧝‍♂️🧝‍♂️ 5/5 elf ears. (Magic powers! A fierce but kind old lady (witch?) A Linus-like best friend! It’s all here.)
SPARKLE FACTOR: ✨✨✨3/5 twinkly lights. (The interior/exterior décor game isn’t too strong but then they have a kickass concert in Belfast at the end! Damn, that’s where all that budget went.)
ADORKABILITY: 🙃🚫 Faceplants not applicable. (Kids aren’t “adorkable”. They’re just good! Unless they’re at Santa’s Boot Camp.)
CHRISTMAS SCALE: 🎅🎅🎅🎅🎅 5/5 Santa hats. (Noelle born in a barn on Christmas! There’s a pageant! Northern Ireland looks COLD! And the inspiring send-off from Liam Neeson put us right in the holiday spirit.)
DO YOU HEAR WHAT I HEAR?: 🔔🔔🔔3/5 silver bells. (It was mostly perfectly pleasant and there was a big finale number at the end that was Not Bad for a little TV movie!)
REASON FOR SEASON: Friendship is magic! (Magic is also magic!) 👼🏻

December 23, 2018

Have you ever watched something so bad that it was difficult to make jokes about it? This movie was AGGRESSIVELY UNENJOYABLE. A restaurant manager at a ski resort is doing well but unhappy after her Chicago restaurant venture failed. Just before Christmas, the owner (who 40 min. in is revealed to be our antagonist?) hires a recent winner of knockoff Chopped as the seasonal head chef. Our heroine, an ethnically ambiguous 20-something whose mom is Vivica A. Fox and Dad is dead (WHO SAW THAT COMING!), immediately falls toque over skis for this sentient loaf of white bread. But, he embarrasses her when they are first getting intimate because he has a ~dark secret~ that he just can’t reveal yet. SPOILER, his secret is that his parents are dead and he has been trying to find out where they spent a Christmas together once “in the American Mountainside” 30 years ago. AND GUESS WHAT! It was this place! He finds out while talking to the resort owners who pull out (from their couch cushion that they’re sitting on) the exact tree ornament that his parents had in an old photo. Once Chef Boyarplease reveals his sensitive side, Manager A. Fox comes back to him with open tongs.

One fun thing about this movie is that it is clearly made by people who worked in food service. Every patron is portrayed as a complete asshole with ridiculous demands. The dialogue reads like the arguments you have in the shower against imagined adversaries. Also the production value of the kitchen scenes are at least 20% better than the rest of the movie. There was so much about this movie I hated. The moronic plot is built on a linchpin so loose it looks like a 4-year-old doing one of them Fortnite dances. Our protagonist’s best friend is either a complete moron or the master of self-aware comedy. And our girl also straight up ditches her mom on Christmas to celebrate with her 2-week soulmate who decides for her that she’s gonna own a hotel now. Surprise!

WHIMSY: 🧝‍♂️🚫 0/5 elf ears. (This is just a weird plot. Nothing magical or enchanting about it.)
SPARKLE FACTOR: ✨1/5 twinkly lights. (Vivica A. Fox gets one because she’s so good at making gingerbread houses.)
ADORKABILITY: 🙃🙃 2/5 faceplants. (This one is exclusively for her friend Bonnie, of Bonnie and Clive [sic] fame, who can’t stop talking about how cheese makes her fart.)
CHRISTMAS SCALE: 🎅🚫 0/5 Santa hats. (Barely anything about this felt like Christmas. Barely anything about this felt like a movie.)
DO YOU HEAR WHAT I HEAR?: 🔔🚫 0/5 silver bells. (We watched this yesterday and, honestly, I can’t even be sure there was music. Or even a soundtrack. This was Texas Chainsaw Massacre in the snow.)
REASON FOR SEASON: Food Service! 👨🏻‍🍳

December 22, 2018

Despite what the title might lead you to believe, this ain’t no generic PC LIBRUL movie. Christmas is the only holiday featured here despite a mostly Black cast (sorry Kwanzaa). A photographer gets a seasonal gig taking Santa photos just as her oldest and most male friend returns from his world travels. She has art gallery dreams but can’t afford the studio space and is too proud to ask for help from her parents who are lawyers. Okaaayyy. Also, her apartment is within a 25 mile radius of NYC and is massive, so maybe that gallery space is more attainable than she realizes. For Christmas, Grandpa Magic Negro gifts her her dead grandmother’s lucky advent calendar (bruh) which she quickly discovers has the ability to foretell something that will happen to her the following day. At least I think that’s how it works, the mechanics are not really explained and the movie itself gives us on the Advent gift plot after about 10 days. It seems entirely plausible that this is a case of confirmation bias, which the would-be love interest points out to her causing her to dump him – pretty surprising turn of this holiday trope actually. But don’t worry, because she of course falls in love with her best friend who was there all along, even though he never told her how he felt until now and was disappointed when she went on dates. Good thing she overlooks that, and the fact that he doesn’t know how to use a digital camera and got her ass fired from Olan Mills Santa Wonderland photo gig. Charming!

There are several of the aforementioned Advent toys that appear each day that do not fully materialize. For example, one was a deer but she ended up on a horse drawn carriage. Close enough? Four legs? Also the final one was a snowflake and it snowed the next day. Is that really a magical sign from the Holiday Calendar or is it a cold front brought in from the Northeast, as is typical in late December in New Jersey? The B plot with her older sister the overachiever was disposable, just like her older brother who had no speaking lines the whole movie. But it all turned out as a Christmas miracle when – TWIST – the best friend ended up being a super rich “travel blogger” (read: international drug smuggler) allowing him to buy a gallery space for them to share as a couple. Maybe that would have been cool to mention before she had to go on 10 dates with Dr. Husband Material and work outside in an elf costume all season.

WHIMSY: 🧝‍♂️🧝‍♂️🧝‍♂️🧝‍♂️🧝‍♂️ 5/5 elf ears. (It’s allegedly a magical Christmas story, if you don’t believe in self-fulfilling prophecies.)
SPARKLE FACTOR: ✨✨✨✨✨5/5 twinkly lights. (The whole town was decorated and festive. Lots of good sweaters and coats.)
ADORKABILITY: 🙃🙃 2/5 faceplants. (For the second time, a character references another Netflix Christmas movie. Maybe all Netflix Originals exist in the same cinematic universe? When does the gang from Stranger Things arrive?)
CHRISTMAS SCALE: 🎅🎅🎅🎅🎅 5/5 Santa hats. (This is the first movie so far with an advent calendar. And the first with…a Latinx mayor? Nothing else was really original about this movie.)
DO YOU HEAR WHAT I HEAR?: 🔔🔔🔔🔔 4/5 silver bells. (This was a rare instance when we did not want to cram fruitcake into our ears and make the music stop. As far as original songs and jingle go, these were pretty okay!)
REASON FOR SEASON: Fortune Telling! 🔮

December 21, 2018

CW: sexual assault, elevators, strangers. I wish I was joking.

If this title feels like low-hanging fruit, prepare yourself because this joint is a goddamn orchard of stupid and it’s Pick Your Own all season long. We open on about, oh, forty or so establishing shots of San Francisco, and then a hetero couple goes into a fancy hotel. We learn that the man is a Famous Ballet Director-Choreographer and that he is an absolute Christmas FIEND. The ornate decorations in the suite are insufficient because he’s gotten a taste for the harder stuff, and he wants MORE. He says that. “MORE CHRISTMAS!” His Business Manager girlfriend generously expositions to us that she knows his Christmas cravings are rooted in his daddy issues and an upbringing devoid of seasonal merriment. Then he orders her around a lot because he is, naturally, a big pathetic baby man who can’t see to any of his own basic needs. He gets recognized so much around town it’s hard for him to go out, you know? (Two things before we proceed: He’s just directing the freaking Nutcracker, it’s not the goddamn “Rite of Spring 2: Age of Ultron” or something, and as my ballet dancer sister informs me, nobody recognizes choreographers.)

Meanwhile In Another Part of San Francisco: a family catering business who’s providing the cookies for the Famous Ballet Director and Famous Ballet Director’s Business Manager’s Nutcracker/Engagement Party struggles to find the *perfect* Nutcracker inspo for their cookies (Google? No? OK) so the guy goes down to the local Handmade Austrian Gifts Shoppe, but not before Doris Roberts corners him in the elevator under a sprig of mistletoe she hung there moments ago and sexually assaults him by grabbing his face and making smooches to him. Someone really thought this was OK. So OK, in fact, that it happens a second time, when Business Manager flees the Bavarian Bodega busybody babushka trying to get in with Famous Ballet Director-Choreographer and sprints right into Cookie Chump’s building and right into the same elevator and right into his face for some decoy smooches. The fact that he’s not mad about it does not make it any less problematic! Aghh! Then like five freaking minutes later DORIS CLOBBERS HIS KISSPARTS ONCE MORE. THIS IS AWFUL. The plot, such as it is, continues and eventually the pretty people get together like they’re supposed to. (I don’t know, I was kinda picking up a Folgers commercial vibe from the baking team. You know what they say about caterin’ cousins.)

If this movie was a sweater, it would be a cold and lousy one, because there are holes all over and loose threads dangling everywhere. This movie is, no joke, the spiritual successor to The Room. There are tons of pointless characters with unclear or nonsensical motivations and dialogue that sounds like a third-grader alien baby wrote it, place-setting with no real narrative ties to location, questionable time sequencing and location shots, a Denny haircut or two, and oh hi doggies! Except after watching this, I was the one who felt like everybody betray me.

WHIMSY: 🧝‍♂️🧝‍♂️🧝‍♂️ 3/5 elf ears. (I mean it’s pretty switcheroo-y and there’s dogs? I don’t know. This movie broke me.)
SPARKLE FACTOR: ✨✨✨✨ 4/5 twinkly lights. (Every kiss began with Kay Jewelers product placement!)
ADORKABILITY: 🙃🙃 2/5 faceplants. (I feel like they intended more, but in my house we do not call sexual assault adorkable.)
CHRISTMAS SCALE: 🎅🎅🎅 3/5 Santa hats. (Nutcracker is omnipresent; Santa was around, but he looked ragged and sauced; “San Francisco” was pretty warm and full of t-shirts and shorts and beaches.)
DO YOU HEAR WHAT I HEAR?: 🔔🚫 0/5 silver bells. (The two themes are “Clown Bullshit Nutcracker Circus” and “the music on Survivor when they vote somebody off”. )
REASON FOR SEASON: Kissing strangers without their explicit consent! 👄🙅

December 20, 2018

They say you can’t fight Christmas, but boy do these fools try it! A family-owned Hampton-Inn-level hotel is abuzz with seasonal merriment as our friendly, festive interior decorator protagonist puts the finishing touches on her lobby Christmas festoonments. When the hotel owner hires his grandson to save the hotel from – what else? – financial ruin, the grandson brings a pragmatic but sentimental touch while his business partner is an Evil Niles Crane in Stacey Dash clothing. Well-heeled Grinch lays out a very reasonable and thorough marriage proposal to Grandson that appeals to his business savvy and caters to the growing black romance sector. He’s like “???um???”. Later, Loyal Grandson and Christmas Planner, finding they have “general holiday-related cheer” in common, team up to perform original Christmas numbers in the hotel bar, and then they totally Do It! Suddenly grandson is REALLY in the Christmas spirit and questions his whole professionally designed, well-thought-out plan to rescue the hotel and instead considers letting Black Jesus take the wheel, doubling down on the Christmas First business model: sure to carry them through peak and off-season all year long! Her trusty design team execute a clever scheme to bring down Business Lady’s Business Plot and show that Christmas is the most! lucrative tiiiime! of the yeeeeear! Of course it works, and Grandson dumps the Uptight Lady after everyone else attends the Annual Orphans’ Christmas Concert in the hotel lobby. He shows up at The Decorator’s house to apologize and show off the ugliest sweater he could find. And probably, you know…do it.

They talk so much about how the hotel is a pillar of the Black community, as is Orphan Christmas??? Several times, they mention all the celebrities who have stayed in this hotel, but unfortunately none of those people’s agents responded to the cameo requests. Somehow they dragged Marla Gibbs’ 137-year-old body onto the set just so they could say they got Florence from “The Jeffersons” in this dumb movie. But would you believe the original music is actually kind of great? You shouldn’t, because it’s not. It’s doesn’t even rhyme. Also, there is a TROUBLING amount of hard liquor consumed in this movie. Our hotel designer heroine is a straight up addiction enabler. I hope Rick James never stayed at this hotel. I’m pretty mad that in the end they abandoned all plans to reach the emerging Black business class with their plans to save this hotel. Even the places on “Hotel Impossible” get a new customer management system and some sheets from Hotel Luxury Linens. Our power went out while watching this terrible movie and it got better.

WHIMSY: 🧝‍♂️🚫 0/5 elf ears. (Unless sex counts as whimsy???)
SPARKLE FACTOR: ✨✨✨✨✨ 5/5 twinkly lights. (It’s all about the tinsel and baubles and shimmery lights. And the orphans light the tree! Oh wait maybe orphans are whimsical?)
ADORKABILITY: 🙃🙃 2/5 faceplants. (They employ the most overused romcom gag of “falling down on each other” and “falling into Christmas tree”, bleah)
CHRISTMAS SCALE: 🎅🎅🎅🎅🎅 5/5 Santa hats. (You can’t fight it! You can’t. We tried SO HARD.)
DO YOU HEAR WHAT I HEAR?: 🔔🚫 0/5 silver bells. (Hip-hop instrumentals of Christmas standards. I liked it better when DMX did Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer. And of course the aforementioned originals…)
REASON FOR SEASON: Decorations! 🎄⛄️🌟

December 19, 2018

THAT’S RIGHT PEOPLE WE’RE GOIN BACK-TO-BACK! That sentence was as much enthusiasm as we can offer because this movie was street meat. It made the insipid first installment look like Citizen Kane. The movie begins with our princess-to-be addressing her “loyal readers” which probably just includes her mom because she must have started blogging in the past few months tops. Wait, no, her mom’s dead. OK, so nobody’s reading her blog. In the span of a single cinematic year, every character got worse. The Mary Sue became a clueless nincompoop, King Stand-in (formerly Prince Stand-in) really started to fly his misogynist flag high, and Mary Sue’s dad became another person entirely (or got into some Face/Off mixup? No, they just switched actors. Unless…). Two characters actually spent the year improving themselves: Sassy Bundle of Ringlets Princess Emily has become a h4XX0r, and the Would-Be Usurper to the Crown went from villain to chillin’ in no time. This Ersatz Gang, plus Almost Queen Amber’s Cool NYC Friends, have to figure out who’s been siphoning millions from Aldovia’s infrastructure stimulus plan. Hey who saw that big boring development coming? Shouldn’t there be a wedding in the works? Why yes there is! Amber is grumpy because the king won’t let her draft the official positions on affairs of state, plus she thought a royal wedding would be basically hers to plan without any concessions to or even input from the royal family or general good taste (guests will be served Dad’s greasy NYC diner food). Racist caricature High Camp Apu reminds her, between breathless exclamations about dresses and other fashion tidbits, that she gave up a normal life 11 months ago when she agreed to marry a head of state she conned her way into meeting. Oh shit, is this how Melania feels?

In a weird scene, the two plots converge when the king declares that Amber can go ahead and take charge of wedding planning, but Amber is too busy holding A Roger Stone Type at bow-and-arrow-point. Apparently this Red Shirt royal had been stealing the country’s money all along. Twist? Who is he again? He has like 4 min of screen time. Anyway the bad guy goes to the dungeon and now everyone is free to focus on fun wedding stuff while the King pulls a Michael Scott and goes on TV to promise Christmas bonus checks to all citizens from some imaginary reserve funds. His country is in financial ruin and he has the gall to go on TV to say “This totally is not my fault guys, it was that dude who lived at my house” before going off to spend $7 million on his wedding. Let them eat cake I guess? Everybody CONGA!

WHIMSY: 🧝‍♂️ 🧝‍♂️ 2/5 elf ears. (Whimsy was replaced with a plot and characters straight out of a Tom Clancy novel.)
SPARKLE FACTOR: ✨✨2/5 twinkly lights. (Mary Sue shot down all the fancy gowns and jewels for her trademark Chuck Taylors and the locket she probably bought from Claire’s)
ADORKABILITY: 🙃 1/5 faceplants. (The comic reflief should have been a Jean-Ralphio-esque wedding planner but instead he was a racist caricature.)
CHRISTMAS SCALE: 🎅1/5 Santa hats. (I legit forgot it was a Christmas movie. It’s a third tier storyline behind Bernie Madoff shit and Say Yes to the Dress.)
DO YOU HEAR WHAT I HEAR?: 🔔🚫 0/5 silver bells. (The most memorable music was them playing “Wedding March” during what should have been “Here Comes the Bride” and a painfully obvious fake performance of Pachelbel’s Canon with the wrong instruments. NEITHER OF THESE ARE CHRISTMAS SONGS.)
REASON FOR SEASON: Disappointment? 🙍🏼‍♀️