Guest post: Today’s misery brought to you by 2/3 sisters Rose Nealon and Andi Nealon!

Good news: no content warnings for this one! Bad news: that’s because it’s largely devoid of content.

Meet Clara, a young tween vlogger who is excited to celebrate and vlog about her family’s Ultimate Christmas celebration, which is basically just an average quiet family Christmas with four adults and two kids, but also like, you know. Presents! But then tragedy strikes: her dog runs away and her dad, who promised to be part of her Christmas Eve vlog, has to go on a last minute business trip to do his job, which is never once described.

With a premise like that, you’d expect to see clips from Clara’s vlog a few times, or even once, but nah, that would be too interesting. You might also expect there to be something resembling a script, but the dialogue sounds improvised, or possibly transcribed from real life, and no, not in a good way. They also forgot to cast actors for this movie, aside from the main kid, so poor Clara is surrounded by wooden statues, someone’s kid, and one (1) youth pastor/magician/Second City reject who comes across like a discount Alan Tudyk.

This movie is shot like an emotional indie film, with almost no musical score, but without any sort of editing, acting, or dialogue that might feasibly make that tolerable. The “script,” if it exists, is peppered with dialogue like “What are you doing awake?” “I’m tired.” and “Cold broccoli and meatloaf was great,” said by a small child without a trace of irony. Any hint of storyline is quickly abandoned. There can be no tent-building, tomato planting, or vampire-slaying in this film, because there are no stakes to be found anywhere! Clara’s mother calls her mom to tell her the dog ran away, but the dog doesn’t run away until two days later! When the dog actually does run away, everyone basically shrugs and says he always does that, except Clara, who freaks. The dad will be home for Christmas and then maybe he won’t and then he is, and everyone’s just kind of meh about it.

You know how people like to call some extra-bad movies “the spiritual successor to The Room”? I wish so hard I could give this movie a title like that. But I can’t! In the hour and a half one spends watching, there’s not enough weird dialogue, and there’s no dramatic music. The entire movie could be cut down to about ten minutes without losing anything relevant. Clara’s mom basically says she wants a divorce and NOTHING COMES OF IT. Annoying Uncle supports his daughter getting a dog while Responsible Aunt counters that she’d end up taking care of it and that conversation–which occurs IN FRONT OF THE DAUGHTER–never gets resolved or mentioned again either. This movie offers only vague problems, no follow ups, bland dialogue, and such a poor attempt to create an atmosphere that even the moon is skeptical. Clara’s Pathetic Attempt At Christmas. Clara’s Somehow Nutcracker-Pun-Less Christmas. Clara’s Ultimate Disappointment.

WHIMSY: 🧝‍♂️🚫 0/5 elf ears. It’s stunning how a movie premised on “Tween kid is excited to have a great vlog post for Christmas” is utterly devoid of whimsy. Andi’s best guess is that the folks in charge don’t actually know what a vlog is or why kids do it. Maybe watch one single Dan and/or Phil before attempting a whole movie about it? Jenna Marbles? No? Okay.
SPARKLE FACTOR: ✨ 1/5 twinkly lights. The aunt and uncle’s house has a lot of twinkly lights, I guess? There’s some lights on sometimes?
ADORKABILITY: 🙃 1/5 faceplants, literally just because Clara is funny and knows how to be melodramatic at the right time.
CHRISTMAS SCALE: 🎅🎅 2/5 Santa Hats. Inside is decorated for Christmas. Outside is not, and there just isn’t much of a Christmas feel all around.
DO YOU HEAR WHAT I HEAR: 🔔 1/5 silver bells for the very occasional Christmas sounds during terribad “Hark! An ornament!” transitions.
REASON FOR SEASON: Harrumph! (The sound your grumpy neighbor you makes when you pass him and his wife is in the hospital with a mysterious illness and it’s really stressing him out and he’ll tell you all of that when he finds your missing dog and brings it home, but you’ll probably never think about it or him again after he leaves.)

CW: dead mom trope. YEAH, AGAIN.

This one has been popping up on both Netflix and Hulu since we started, and it finally crawled its way up to the top of the teeming pile of garbage. A Rich Girl (who’s surprisingly down to earth) gets a phone call from her estranged grandfather, inviting her to Christmas so he and Grandmama can meet her for the first time and pimp her out to eligible suitors. A Poor Girl (who’s surprisingly put-together) is headed across half the country to meet her deadbeat failed country music star dad who just found out she exists and invited her to Christmas. For reasons we never find out, both of these girls live in the same airport region of Vermont, and they fly into Stillwater International Airport (joke!), Oklahoma. Amazing! A direct nonstop flight between Burlington and Stillwater! But the magic doesn’t stop there!

At the gate the Poor One gives up her ticket to an army wife so she can see her husband one last time before he deploys. A flight attendant is so moved by this act of generosity that she rewards Poor One with a first class ticket on the same flight! (Why didn’t she just give it to Army Wife?!) She gets seated right beside Richie Rich and it kicks off a selfie-filled montage of first class luxury (hot washcloths! All the sody pop they can drink!). Turns out they’re both going the same place to meet relatives they’ve never met. Natch, perfect time for the ol’ switcheroo! Why not? I can’t imagine any consequences! They never discuss how to gracefully withdraw after playing Talented Mr. Ripley in each other’s lives, so we’re left to assume they had no intention of seeing these relatives ever again after this Christmas.

Rich Girl has a GREAT time being a regular person playing guitar with her not-Dad, thrift shopping with Grandma Shelley Long, playing football with 9yr olds, and ruining a kid bully’s day – and her Christmas pageant gown – in the mud. Meanwhile Poor One has a ROUGH time with her conniving not-Grandmama, snooty alt-right pageant queen Bo Derek (if you’re wondering, she doesn’t have those cornrows anymore). Poor One has to sneak meals with the help of The Help – an ACTUAL BLACK HOUSEMAID wearing a uniform and standing at attention while they dine on, like, lobster or some shit. (Or…the Most Dangerous Game?)

Independently, both girls’ not-grandmothers decide to enter them in the Stillwater Christmas Beauty Pageant (a thing?), setting us up for a kooky reveal when Rich Girl wins (but everyone thinks she’s Poor One!). By now, Rich Girl’s dad has shown up, seen her win a beauty pageant under someone else’s name, but doesn’t really intervene or even interact for over 24 hours. He has some grownup man tears with his Rich Dad as they reconcile their 18-year grudge over Dad abandoning the Plantation LifestyleTM because he wanted to marry the (now-dead) mom. The two girls come clean and everyone’s really cool about it and not mad at all that they fed, clothed, and shared tender heartfeelings with some rando.

And THEN it gets WEIRD! Grandmama tosses off one too many elitist zingers, finally pissing off Grandpapa enough that he tells her to beat feet forever, because he secretly – are you ready for this? – fathered his son (Rich Girl’s dad) with Poor Girl’s grandma! If this is confusing, yes! The son immediately embraces Shelley Long as his real mother (again, first time meeting!) and straight up shuns the woman who raised him and has been in his life for like 40 years. The long-suffering domestic worker sips someone’s whiskey and shakes her head in the most self-aware moment of the film. You can almost hear her say “damn, these white people”.

So the two girls were cousins all along! And the two dads are brothers! And everyone has a pretty solid legal claim to the family fortune! Is this the prequel to “Christmas Inheritance”? I hope so. This is some “Dallas”-level family entanglement so I really want to know how the inevitable litigation turns out.

WHIMSY: 🧝‍♂️🧝‍♂️🧝‍♂️🧝‍♂️🧝‍♂️ 5/5 elf ears. Even though the girls bear no resemblance, the switcheroo caper’s a reliable party trick.
SPARKLE FACTOR: ✨✨✨✨ 4/5 twinkly lights. Pretty glittery! A few lovely gowns, Rich family has mad decorating budget (Poor family decorations = flannel).
ADORKABILITY: 🙃🚫 0/5 faceplants. There’s almost a shred of something here with Poor family uncle brother who makes the world’s worst BBQ and gets dunked on by the domestic worker for having like no football game to speak of. Then again, nah.
CHRISTMAS SCALE: 🎅🎅🎅🎅🎅 5/5 Santa hats. Super Christmasy! Santa even showed up at Poor family’s house before the pageant (although it was not yet Christmas, and he was not a character we knew dressed up, but just some dude on the couch)!
DO YOU HEAR WHAT I HEAR?: 🔔🔔🔔 3/5 silver bells. There was music! It was distinctly unpleasant. The girls have to sing solos, but I guess aren’t singers, so a computer stepped in to correct the pitch, so the end result is like a restrained T-Pain Christmas album. Yeeuuck.
REASON FOR SEASON: Family secrets!

CW: alcoholism, arson, dog euthanasia (discussed)

After the interminable “A Dogwalker’s Christmas Tale” last year, Zac has imposed a moratorium on all films in the Dog Christmas genre this year. But he was out of town so I tricked my two dear dog-loving friends into watching this one with me while we worked on a real hard puzzle. If you watch this movie, and you shouldn’t, be sure you have something to occupy your hands. And eyes and brain.

We open on a teenage boy’s aggressive spray cleaner sales pitch to a woman just trying to get in her car and leave, when the owner of the shop she’s parked in front of hollers at the kid to get lost or he’ll call the cops. Somehow he manages to elicit a genuine smile from the beleaguered woman before she drives off (ugh); his sale lost, he pivots to lighting the shop owner’s sidewalk sign on fire! Why? “To give you a reason to call the cops!” Aha, we grok, this kid is Troubled! Cut to:

[INT. OFFICE – DAY]
REGINALD VELJOHNSON (really!)
Arson? Why, Troubled Teen, why? You know you’re on *Intensive* Probation! I was your mom’s probation officer too! I failed her! I won’t fail you! You’re getting a job!…I shot a kid!

TROUBLED TEEN
Whatever. Eye roll. [He ACTS as hard as he can.] Job. Eye roll. Mom. Big eye roll.

Cut to: INT. ANIMAL SHELTER – DAY. Three CUTE GIRLS are here, each holding a different type of SMALL DOG. They’re all dressed really nice, like people who don’t work with slobbery poopy stanky dogs all day (maybe the dogs have Christmas magic that makes them super clean and never shed?). Aggro Youth has a bad attitude until like ten seconds into meeting a dog for the first time. Then he’s all about animal rights! It takes like two kennel shifts for him to transform into a dude who’s super compassionate and loving with dogs and even a little bit sometimes with people. Good for him! He’s HEALING! Not too quickly, though – he’s still pretty nasty to his foster parents (although he’s pretty cool with his two little foster brothers, a couple of very cute Black children who are unfortunately just used as set dressing).

SUDDENLY, the animal shelter is in danger of closing. No real reason, just like, funding probably. If they don’t start moving these dogs and fast, they’re gonna get a lump of euthanasia in their stockings for Christmas. When one of the staff members mentions “target marketing” in conversation, Troubled Teen seizes upon the phrase and (as far as he knows) invents the concept of an adoption fair and uses his smooth-talking persuasion skills to market certain dogs to specific people. This helps reduce their inventory somewhat, but not fully, so he and the cute redhead go door-to-door, like some shitty magazine subscription fundraiser, trying to offload the rest , and he’s SO MAD when this doesn’t work that he flies off the handle at a very patient man and his family as they’re leaving for a Christmas Eve service. The angst of knowing these dogs may have to be put down, coupled with the complicated emotions he had earlier in the day when he ran into his deadbeat mom outside the liquor store, sends him into a full-blown Harry Potter Book 5 rage! He trashes the kennel room that the other staff members spent all day cleaning, wailing and gnashing his teeth. Guys, HE’S THE DOGS, NOBODY WANTS HIM AND HE FEELS ALL ALONE LIKE THE DOGSSSSS. Mid-tantrum, he lashes out (verbally!) at a little terrier with severe alopecia, scaring the little furball and causing her to flee–all the way out the front door and into the street, where she gets hit by a car! Horrified by what he’s done, Troubled Teen and the staff rush Petunia to the emergency vet, where the doc looks at some (pretty wild lateral thorax/abdominal) x-rays, and pronounces all of her bones intact. She’s 100% unharmed after being hit by a car! It’s a Christmas miracle! His boss gives him a righteous talking-to and he realizes that his actions affect other people. And DOGS.

The movie wraps up in a neat, tidy bow: the foster parents take the two li’l brudders and move to Arizona, Reginald VelJohnson retires so Troubled Youth can come live with him and his wife, he gets a kiss from Red, and the last dog comes home with him. Hairy Christmas to all!

WHIMSY: 🧝‍♂️🧝‍♂️🧝‍♂️ 3/5 elf ears. I expected a LOT more silly dog comedy, but there aren’t really any fun tricks here. Couldn’t afford a dog trainer?
SPARKLE FACTOR: ✨✨✨ 3/5 twinkly lights. The dog runs are decorated beautifully, which is a fun way to add hazards and potential exploratory surgeries!
ADORKABILITY: 🙃🚫 0/5 faceplants. We didn’t even get a scene of The Youth being pulled along by Too Many Dogs on Leashes. I am disappoint.
CHRISTMAS SCALE: 🎅🎅🎅 3/5 Santa hats. For a movie shot on location in Louisiana in the spring, it manages to be pretty festive. The countdown of 12 dogs is pretty Xmastastic. (Although to get pedantic, it’s the 12 days leading up to Christmas, which isn’t…whatever)
DO YOU HEAR WHAT I HEAR?: 🔔🔔🔔 3/5 silver bells. Some pretty great/dumb original(?) music. I don’t remember it now, but it made us bob our heads a little while we worked on our puzzle.
REASON FOR SEASON: Adoption! 🐕🐩🐶

Another guest post today, this time from my other very good sister Rose Nealon!

This movie is tagged “arthouse” on Amazon Prime, but I don’t know by what definition of arthouse, unless looking like it’s filmed on a Flip Video is one of the criteria. Other than the atrocious video quality, it’s not actually a bad flick, if you can get past overdone cliches and a buttload of sex jokes. (Teehee…butt.) Full spoilers ahead.

Big Gay On Campus Olaf “Gunn” Gunnunderson and his boyfriend Nathan are headed to their respective homes for the holidays. When Nathan’s parents–mean, nagging Beverly Crusher (no, really, it’s actually Gates McFadden) and English knockoff Pierce Brosnan–ditch him for a Christmas cruise, Nathan decides to skip the empty house and show up at the Gunnundersons’. But Gunn is keeping something from Nathan: He’s not out to his parents! Whoopsie-daisie!

It takes a record thirteen minutes to get to the first “you’ll never meet a nice girl like that” line, and Gunn’s mom, Anya, attempts to set him up with the girl next door less than two minutes later. So if you were worried about the movie not drowning in cliches, breathe a sigh of relief. Anya’s obliviousness practically carries the movie. She catches the boys getting handsy and thinks they’re “roughhousing.” She walks in on them them ripping off each others’ clothes and brings in the laundry and oohs and ahs over Nathan’s cute monkey underwear. Anya is a classic cheerful Midwesterner, don’tcha know, who puts up at least three trees in the house, and the dad, Sven, is a stoner with an unsubtle “Ho ho ho!” laugh. He is so high so early in the day, that when Nathan first shows up, he answers the door in nothing but a wide-open bathrobe. Charming! Anya wishes Sven would stop smoking pot all the time, but she doesn’t tell him that, and it’s never spoken of again. Listen, schlubby husbands are fun and dissatisfied wives will be happier if they keep it to themselves!

Eventually, Nathan pushes Gunn to come out, because he’s tired of pretending to just be a roommate and wants to be part of the family. His own parents are classic Distant Rich Parents: big trust fund, no love. He almost cries when Anya and Sven give him a stocking full of candy canes, just so he’d have something to open with them, which was actually pretty sweet and–excuse me, there’s something in my eye.

The climax comes (TEEHEE) when Gunn comes out during Christmas dinner. Sven proceeds to hand Anya a hundred dollar bill. Because these sweetheart parents had figured he was gay, since high school, and were waiting to see if they were right. And had made a bet. With money. Sven then has the damn gall to say, “By telling us you’ve proven what kind of man you are. An honest one. We love you no matter what, son. Don’t you know that by now?” Should he? This entire movie Mom and Dad have done nothing but hassle him about getting a girlfriend and marrying her! Was faking their obliviousness intended to bother him into coming out? Why not foster a more gentle environment where they first put it out there that they would be just as happy for him to bring home a man? Since they knew all along? Is this supposed to be funny? This is stressful!

In the stinger, Mean Bev Crusher On Valium listens to a message from her son and states her plan to make friends with the Gunnundersons, but maybe not until next Christmas. Which makes sense, because putting things off and waiting for them to work out is basically the theme of this movie.

WHIMSY: 🧝‍♂️ 1/5 elf ears for the monkey undies.
SPARKLE FACTOR: ✨✨✨✨ 4/5 twinkly lights. No snow in ¿Southern California?, but Anya absolutely covers the yard in lights, and Nathan’s eyes sparkle just about every time the camera zooms in on him.
ADORKABILITY: 🙃🙃🙃 3/5 faceplants, mostly for the mom’s determined Midwest accent and excitement over the Cheesehead hat she got for Christmas.
CHRISTMAS SCALE: 🎅🎅🎅🎅 4/5 Santa hats. No Santas or reindeer made an appearance, but golly gosh, Anya Gunnunderson sure does know how to decorate.
DO YOU HEAR WHAT I HEAR?: 🔔 1/5 silver bells. Sven sings Good King Wenceslas and O Holy Night like…well, like a stoner, and that’s the extent of the Christmas tunes. I guess Anya doesn’t have a record player.
REASON FOR SEASON: Betting money on your son’s sexuality!

Guest post: Veteran reviewer Andi Nealon is joined today by brave guest contributors David Stark Rodriguez and Laura McHenry!

CW: dead parents trope (ew, two in a row? Sorry about that.)

Not gonna lie, y’all, this movie slaps. While the usual disbeliever heroine is fed up with twinkly lights and tinsel, Vanessa Hudgens’s Brooke Winters shines with Christmas light, dimmed only by a douchey cheating ex and a dead cop dad. And a dead non-cop mom who is mentioned briefly but sweetly. Sir Cole Lyons of Norwich, a big ol’ sweetie who chugs Respect Women Juice nonstop, is magically transported from a hawk hunt (?? Note: Harris’s hawk with red-tailed hawk screech over it. C’mon, movie) in the 1300s to modern day Ohio. The town of Bracebridge embraces this new weirdo because he’s hot and strong I guess, even if he refers to many old women as Old Crone. Don’t worry, this is only because an actual Old Crone told him he has to fulfill his quest by midnight on Christmas Eve or he’ll NEVER become a True Knight. Never mind that he doesn’t even know what that quest is!

When Gabriella Montez hits him with her car during a blizzard, he’s spared by his shining armor and shining smile. Certain he’s an amnesiac cosplayer from the SCA, the hospital just says “he’ll be okay, probably” and yeets him off to the only cop in town, who then pawns him off on Brooke because she feels guilty. This works just fine for her, because she has an entire huge-ass guest house attached to her manor that she can afford on a public-school teacher’s salary (Laura’s note: hot men falling into your lap and luxury teacher salary? Sounds like just the kinda place I’d like to live!).

The liberal yet fresh dusting of Christmas snow barely conceals that the path they are walking throughout the whole of the movie is that of Natalie Portman and the titular character in “Thor”. What ensues is a jingle-jangly romp of him not quite knowing what to make of modern-day stuff, which everyone excuses because a) the hospital said he’s a mild amnesiac who will be just fine we think and b)he’s a severe hottie. B plots abound, including a guy who is too poor to get his kids Xmas presents (ack! my heartstrings!), and “will stellar, generous child get a puppy for Christmas or not?”

WHIMSY: 🧝‍♂️🧝‍♂️🧝‍♂️🧝‍♂️🧝‍♂️ 5/5 elf ears. Time travel, Crone Magic™, and all-around warm feels.
SPARKLE FACTOR: ✨✨✨✨✨ 5/5 twinkly lights. off the chain! They visit a Christmas Festival in like every other scene, elaborate Christmas deco, huge charity feast, many many lights.
ADORKABILITY: 🙃🙃🙃🙃 4/5 faceplants. Could have been more facepalm moments, but even the most innocuous faux pas were fun to giggle at.
CHRISTMAS SCALE: 🎅🎅🎅🎅🎅 5/5 Santa Hats. This movie bleeds Christmas. It’s Christmas in the past. It’s Christmas in the future. You can’t fight Christmas.
DO YOU HEAR WHAT I HEAR: 🔔🔔🔔🔔 4/5 Silver bells. SLAPPIN’ orchestral score. Original song that isn’t that bad! Pretty solid Christmas covers. The only complaint is that they failed to deliver on Chekhov’s Lute.
REASON FOR SEASON: Threatening to “run through” your new friend’s cheating ex!🗡

CW: dead mom trope

You know when you’re in the mood for a sappy Christmas movie with a Dead Mom trope, but your couch companion is jonesing for a Corporate Sleaze vibe? Good news: this movie doesn’t make you choose! Sasha from “Walking Dead” traded in her AR-15 for a successful second act as a radio producer for hotshot fun-dad hip hop DJ Romany Malco (you know, from…stuff?). They’re an unstoppable duo preparing to pitch co-ownership to the station bigwigs, when Charlie from Blackish pulls the rug out from under their dreams. The station, it turns out, has been purchased by ClearChannel Analogue (Zac’s contribution: “No, make it ‘IFartRadio’!”), and the new station manager is replacing them with a drive-time Tomi Lahren lookalike. Now they’re both out of jobs before Christmas – but worse, what’s he gonna tell his four awful, entitled, utter garbage children (one of whom – SPOILER ALERT – has just been accepted into Harvard…via email. Is this normal now? Genuine question)?

He’s gonna tell em they’re moving into their crappy old house that their aunt has been comfortably occupying for lo these couple years. They have to sell off their estate and many fine country manses like a [Jane Austen reference], and it surprises no viewers when the kids learn that being regular people sucks butt. They stop wearing all the nice clothes they have, you know, for solidarity? Or they sold them? Unclear. Dad has to cut back on the Christmas gifts too – the twins get little stuffed horses instead of the actual livestock they requested; Bratz Doll Incarnate Daughter receives her dead mom’s bitchin’ sapphire necklace (did we mention? The mom (Lala Anthony) died a few years back, presumably after Carmelo was traded to OKC); Junior has to trade his dream of a car he can drive to Harvard for a bus pass to get him to Queensborough Community College (Go Tigers!). Also, Dad and Junior share some complicated, honest emotions and talk through their grief in a solid representation of positive masculinity! Right on!

Family holiday morale boosted, our two leads (you know they’re in love by now) decide to buy the old defunct station down the street where they can go wild and play anything they want, not what the BOSS tells ’em! Meanwhile, back at their old station, new boss is driving everyone up the wall, and Charlie decides to bail while he still can, taking his cash and Rolodex with him. The roadblocks in this plan clear themselves up super fast, and the station launches on Christmas Day – commercial free to jingle all your bells! (Actual line. I think.) We don’t get to see if the station lasts longer than a day, if the kid gets to go to Harvard, if the kids stay all humble now, if their old station retaliates or buys them up immediately, or…anything. It’s just over. Not complaining though, this had some very warm moments but it was long as shit and just so boring.

WHIMSY: 🧝‍♂️🚫 0/5 elf ears. No twinkly winks of the magical/supernatural. Plot is a realistic possibility for upper-class Americans, if capitalism gives you coal for Christmas.
SPARKLE FACTOR: ✨✨✨ 3/5 twinkly lights. Family had matching PJs, nice old man helped kids put up the lights and had them relay a sly wink to Aunt Jo for him.
ADORKABILITY: 🙃🚫 0/5 faceplants. Refreshingly, no pratfalls. Sadly, this tradeoff means no physical comedy anywhere.
CHRISTMAS SCALE: 🎅🎅🎅🎅 4/5 Santa hats. We got shouts out to baby Black Jesus, a festive-ass house, even got Aunt Jo dressed up singing a number at the Christmas party!
DO YOU HEAR WHAT I HEAR?: 🔔🔔🔔 3/5 silver bells. There were a few Black household Christmas favorites that they could afford the rights to, but otherwise a surprising lack of scenes where this famous DJ plays any music.
REASON FOR SEASON: Business investments! 💵💰📻

Ok so I know you all like and subscribe to this series for those good goofs on terrible movies, but unfortunately this is going to be a change up. We have the rare, non-Razzie-worthy Christmas movie that is pretty well made and manages to make us laugh a few times. In the spirit of the season we’ll do our best to throw water on this Yule log but maybe keep this movie in your Watch Later list for when your 91 year old grandma comes over or when you’re nursing a nog hangover.

Eponymous heroine Holly is a Career Lady who gets a Big Important Assignment to design the new holiday ad campaign for an international (blood) diamond corporation. She has to work with the Hipster Photog to get it all done before Christmas day (this company is really cornering the market for those last-minute Boxing Day jewelry gifts, I guess). Their disagreements over the direction of the campaign reflect their respective opinions about their ideal relationships: she’s looking for a perfect fairy tale romance like with that dreamy mannequin in the shop window, and he’s seeking a manic pixie dream girl who will share all her flaws and imperfections with him. She convinces him to come out to Da Club and let loose for once while she searches for boyz/a Christmas snag with her excellent Tiffany Haddish type friend (no joke, this actress could lead “Girls Trip 2”). They have some Awkward Flurty Moments and a selfie accident where photog “drops his phone” that just manages to capture a one-in-a-million unprompted hand-holding shot. Amazing.

She’s still daydreaming about it when she crashes into some Dickensian carolers the next morning and falls ass-over-parietal-lobe onto the pavement. And wouldn’t you know it, she’s awakened (“rescued”) by the corporeal assemblage of her fantasy man(nequin). His name is Beau (Bo?), and he is everything she ever dreamed of: tall, blond, and dead inside. Chivalrously, he takes her back to his apartment (a too-spacious loft that is almost certainly a coworking space IRL, but kind of looks like a kill room) where he tells her about all the places he’ll take and fantasies he’ll make real for her. She gets the feeling he’s moving too fast but DAYUM is he fine. If this dreamboat is a Titanic, at least there’ll be fireworks first.

She tells all her friends and coworkers about him, leading Hipster Photog to reveal his true colors as a redpill MRA type about how women don’t want Nice Guys they just want Actual Mannequins and That’s Not Fair. They put their heads down and get to work in a solid layout montage. That night, Bo (Beau?) surprises Holly with dinner…at her place with his parents! They are just as wooden as he is (joke!), but they have a great time recreating their favorite window lewks from holidays past. (This scene is genuinely funny and we truly laughed aloud.) While Bo (Beau?) and the ‘rents live it up, Holly stews in her annoyance that they’ve rearranged her furniture and starting family planning for grandbabies they’ll soon have. (She’s known him a total of 3 days.)

Bo (Beau?) ruins the photo shoot by taking over direction (he has years of experience posing, remember). At this point, Holly is done with Manfred Mann(equin) and breaks up with him at the workplace Christmas party, explaining that she’s had enough of this “perfect” relationship she thought she wanted. She runs to profess her love to Hipster Photog, but in a completely unpredictable turn of events!, her impossible heels cause her to suffer her second concussion this week. She wakes up in the hospital, where it’s revealed (SPOILER ALERT!) she has been in a trope-induced COMA for THREE DAYS. None of it happened! Beau (Bo?) is still modeling scarfs in the Peebles display on 5th Ave and Photog hasn’t yet shown her his redpill darkside! (Maybe they’re saving it for the sequel, Holly’s Horrorday.) With no time left to complete their ad campaign, they settle for their hand-hold selfie accident with a tacky ring hastily photoshopped onto her finger. Is it really that easy? Shit, I should have gone into advertising.

WHIMSY: 🧝‍♂️🧝‍♂️🧝‍♂️🧝‍♂️🧝‍♂️ 5/5 elf ears. Mannequins come to life and “it was all a coma” are pretty whimsical tropes.
SPARKLE FACTOR: ✨✨✨✨ 4/5 twinkly lights. Not a ton of Christmas decorations, but it’s plenty full of winter cozy charm and quaint brownstone backlots.
ADORKABILITY: 🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃 5/5 faceplants. TWO cute sidewalk concussions! We didn’t even mention the delightful NPCs up in this joint, but there’s a fun DJ-ing intern/assistant, a philandering Euroboyfriend, and a crazy ex girlfriend womannequin that arrive in scenes purely for laffs.
CHRISTMAS SCALE: 🎅🎅🎅 3/5 Santa hats. Very Holiday Seasony but not quite Christmasy. This is what happens when New York City libruls take over #waronchristmas
DO YOU HEAR WHAT I HEAR?: 🔔🔔 2/5 silver bells. Barely remember the music, but at least it didn’t detract from the movie at all.
REASON FOR SEASON: Nice Guys! 👱‍♂️👈

Nothing reunites a broken home like a weeklong destination holiday with your estranged spouse! See, the plan was for each parent to have one kid with them for Christmas, but when the vacation renters suddenly cancel and some other logistical plot devices happen, the family winds up all together for Christmas at their southern California beach home. Despite the title, this Christmas was a fully deliberate one, a scheme orchestrated by the sad weird kids to The Parent Trap their folks into loving them.

Mom is just getting back into her design career after 15 years raising her children. Dad is a petty AF attorney who looks like an upside-down Eric McCormack who suffered an unfortunate Face/Off incident with John Travolta. The two of them have been separated for a while for reasons we never learn. Even though they are deeply incompatible and do not enjoy each other’s company anymore, their children resist the new dynamic of “fulfilled Mom” and “Dad who needs to really work through his stuff by himself” and hatch a plot to make everything go back to how it was before, when…what? When they just yelled at each other and Dad had to sleep on the couch? When they had to pull over the car because Mom decided to walk home from Bob Evans?

When they all inevitably arrive for the “what are YOU doing here!?” moment, everything’s really weird because Mom’s crushing on her boss (when you’ve been out of the workforce for 15 years, you lose perspective on what constitutes appropriate workplace relationships), and wouldn’t you know it, he happens to be at the very same beach that week! Dad is like “UGH OK I’M OVER IT” and in a jealous rage, furiously decorates a potted indoor palm with seashells and beach trash to demonstrate value to his family (ah, a fellow devotee of the D.E.N.N.I.S. system!). He also takes a walk to clear his head and ends up in an alpine lake (???) where he joins two racist caricatures sipping Hennessy from the bottle as they cast their lines and spend a leisurely afternoon brainstorming some ways he can make up for being such a petulant asshat. With a cunning plan in mind, he collects his family and takes them all out to a…horse grooming? (They roll up and start brushing horses they don’t know, and they even brought a feedbag full of horse food. This is a weird Groupon) But the plan backfires when Mom manages to fall into a horse trough while staring right at it. Then Dad “falls” into it. The kids stare. The turtle-faced boy says nothing. They all leave angrier than they arrived five minutes ago.

Mom has a drink with Boss, then flounces out of the bar as she berates him for thinking she could ever put work ahead of the family she loathes. Reflecting on the events of the past week, and the events of this morning when his wife asked him straight up for a divorce, Dad makes the logical and rational decision to purchase a diamond engagement ring to win her back. After both of them look at an old photo album from their wedding and hear a speech by the host of a Christmas party (the same old guy that was sipping Grey Goose while fishing), they both decide they want to give it another shot. The reconciliation is as inexplicable as the separation. The kids celebrate with a conga line. (The turtle-faced boy says nothing.) The Boss gives Mom a promotion anyway, showing women everywhere that you really can Have It All. Merry Christmas?

WHIMSY: 🧝‍♂️ 1/5 elf ears. The Parent Trap plot was chock-full-o-holes. They live in Nevada, so…they probably caught the same flight to San Diego International.
SPARKLE FACTOR: ✨ 1/5 twinkly lights for Dad’s top-notch tree decorating. The two leads physically recoil whenever the script requires them to touch. This is the opposite of chemistry. This is a black hole of charm.
ADORKABILITY: 🙃🙃 2/5 faceplants. There’s a lot of “uh oh I’m wet” gags. We mentioned the horse trough, but the Mom also goes out for a date into typhoon conditions, then has the gall to be angry when she gets wet. The turtle-faced boy crashes his bike and has to get rescued from dangerous log proximity. (Heroic opportunity for Dad!)
CHRISTMAS SCALE: 🎅1/5 Santa hats. Zac firmly believes the beach is no place for Christmas. Everyone wore swim trunks; no mentions of reindeer, ho ho ho, or presents to pretty girls (engagement ring notwithstanding). Nary a Santa to be Claused here.
DO YOU HEAR WHAT I HEAR?: 🔔 1/5 silver bells. Soundtrack was understated baby bland piano music, sort of like when you eat out at a pho restaurant. Didn’t even hear a single “dong” from a bell.
REASON FOR SEASON: Marital strife! 💔

Ed. note: We have a guest contributor today! My dear sister Andi Nealon bravely screened a holiday flick and lived to tell the tale. Enjoy!

I heard a lot of hype about this, because it was shooting at Shenandoah University, which is about 45 minutes from our home in the Valley. It’s also a place I applied to when I was transferring schools, and was rejected from their Acting Conservatory. So imagine my relief watching this movie, which was apparently a collaboration between the production company and the university, and seeing that it was just terrible. Dodged a bullet there! Go Tribe!

Harper from “Wizards of Waverly Place” is back, and this time, SHE’S the one who doesn’t care about other people’s feelings [Ed. note: love how this joke really highlights our age gap!]. To protect an arranged marriage contract between Jack Frost Jr. and Santa Girl (shouldn’t it be “Santa’s Girl”?), Jack Frost Sr. sends Jr. to spy on Cassie Claus during her first semester at the College of No Name. With a sentence like that, romantic hijinks are sure to ensue! Well, kind of. Mostly, people are bad at communicating and lie to each other the whole time and every college student acts like a middle schooler. Still, it had its fair share of fun times, such as: Cassie sustains a Frisbee to the face and collapses from the indignity/fright, Cassie buys a guy’s textbooks (because the Claus name bespeaks selective generosity), Cassie tries alcohol for the first time and promptly Old Faithfuls her vodka shot into a girl’s face, Cassie gets an A- on her Intro Calc test thanks to formerly textbook-less boy, Cassie keeps bothering the beleaguered library barista for marshmallows (can’t a Claus just conjure those?!), Cassie calls off her wedding at the altar/tree [Ed. note: tree?] [Auth. note: yes, and a leprechaun officiates], and Santa says, “Elves are people too…kinda.” SHEN-AN-IG-ANS. Highly recommend this movie if you have ever found yourself saying, “I wish these romantic leads were less sympathetic” or “Gosh I wish there was a movie where a grown man makes a 2009-style meme about a girl and it destroys her college experience somehow.”

WHIMSY: 🧝‍♂️🧝‍♂️🧝‍♂️🧝‍♂️ 4/5 Cassie’s elven servant Peppermint is great, they spend a lot of time in a gazebo next to a pond, and hot chocolate is like, a HUGE deal.
SPARKLE FACTOR: ✨✨✨ 3/5 The Shenandoah Valley is pretty, but you will be forced to relive eating in a dining hall your freshman year. Also, while the elf costume design is great, everyone else’s is boring.
ADORKABILITY: 🙃🙃🙃🙃 4/5 Did you guys see the part about the Frisbee and the vodka and the altar(/tree)? Yeah. One point taken off for absence of dog, cat, or baking-related hijinks.
CHRISTMAS SCALE: 🎅🎅 2/5 Half of the movie takes place in the summer and fall, and when Christmas does come they don’t even sing or exchange gifts. there’s only a little snow!
DO YOU HEAR WHAT I HEAR?: 🔔🔔 2/5 Orchestral stuff was all right, and there were a couple cute Xmas covers, but the soundscape was mostly late 2000s DCOM rubbish.
REASON FOR SEASON: Passing Calculus! 📚🧮📝💯

WELCOME BACK Y’ALL!

You’ve waited patiently all year for this, the best part of the holiday season: our exclusive reporting on the awful, awful movies cranked out by the Christmas Industrial Complex that perpetuates the crass betinseled consumerism and feel-good schmaltz machine that keeps the western world turning. Anyway. To the couch we go!

Our first installment this year features a prepackaged “Home Alone” framework hot-glued together, dusted with a bit of “School of Rock” shine. A Fender-obsessed, tweenage Natasha-Lyonne-haired youth, who really only attends school to take free music lessons from the kindly old black janitor/secret blues legend Danny Glover, gets abandoned at school by her Busy Business Parents who forget to both a) attend her recital and b) pick her up from school. Facing the prospect of spending her Christmas vacation alone in a school that apparently employs no adults responsible for checking that there aren’t, like, abandoned kids in there before locking the doors, she spends about ten minutes Breakfast Club-ing around the empty hallways before Some Dopey Bandits, fresh from a real stealthy Salvation Army heist (???), break in to seek shelter until the snow lets up.

Eventually the parents, played by Denise Richards and Some Schlub (are you keeping track of these tropes?), call Old Janitor (whose cell number they definitely have) after they run their 4wd crossover vehicle into a small snowbank and promptly decide to die of exposure by walking through the winter dangerland to reach the school. Old Janitor, who was headed to a gig (still in his coveralls), drops everything to go rescue Kid Vicious. And then of COURSE gets held hostage by the Three Amigos, who are smart enough to tie him up, but also dumb enough to believe when he tells them the school is *HaUnTeD*. Using his Shining non-copyrighted magic Negro telepathy, he and Izzy come up with a scheme to distract and divide the party of bandits involving an unplugged box fan, a foot length of chain, and an automatic tennis ball server set off by a tripwire! Look, it’s not very elaborate, but Kevin McCallister had home field advantage, OK?

Danny Glover manages to convince one of the Cold Bandits that he’s not cut out for this life and they instantly become BFFs. Main Bad Lady flees just as Big Brother (did we mention Izzy has an older brother?) finally appears after hours of Basement Robotics Club to Kool Aid Man into the scene via drone-powered snowboard and ollie her and her leopard-print jacket into the snow. Thanks to the kindness of an Old Bearded Man* driving a semi for the North Star Express, parents arrive at school and reunite with the children they clearly loathe. Cops arrest bad guys, the Salvation Army gets their “valuables” back (again, ????) and Bluesman Glover joins them for Christmas dinner. In the shuffle, they still forgot to buy her the guitar they promised her, because they really do hate their children, but whenever white people drop the ball, there’s a POC ready to make a real sacrifice for the greater good, and Muddy Mopwaters forks over his beloved Telecaster to Izzy.

*And that parcel delivery man’s name? Guess. DID YOU GUESS CHRIS (KRIS)? Ten points. Keep the change, ya filthy animal.

WHIMSY: 🧝‍♂️ 1/5 elf ears for montage of kid running wild in school hallway. I believe there could be some jokes hidden within this movie but neither of us is skilled enough to detect them.
SPARKLE FACTOR: ✨✨ 2/5 twinkly lights. For the blizzard, but nothing else. They dangled the promise of a Christmas pageant, but it didn’t even happen!
ADORKABILITY: 🙃 1/5 faceplants. With the exception of a few amateur pratfalls, the closest thing to adorkable is when big brother’s love interest says “We should fly drones together sometime”. That’s not adorkable. That’s just dork.
CHRISTMAS SCALE: 🎅🎅🎅 3/5 Santa hats. Zac argued for 2 hats, but the prospect of being snowed in for the holiday wouldn’t really have the same shine as being snowed in for MLK Day.
DO YOU HEAR WHAT I HEAR?: 🔔🔔 2/5 silver bells. Despite Danny Glover’s prison blues lessons, all we get is riff-heavy Christmas standards that a computer wrote and performed. Damn, I’m getting too old for this shit.
REASON FOR SEASON: Child neglect! 👩‍🦱🥺