December 5, 2018

Do you love “Groundhog Day” but wish Bill Murray wasn’t in it? Well, TOO BAD, because we saw that movie and it was also a suckfest of questionable consent. A Blonde Woman will do anything to win back her ex (that she dated for an epic span of…two whole years? Oookay) including sabotage, showing How Cool She Is about stuff, and blowing off a date with a surprisingly patient Zack Morris (that’s right, two for two with the “Saved by the Bell” cast!…Does Mr. Belding have a Christmas movie?). When a department store elf spritzes her in the face with perfume, the Sleep Spray sends her down a time spiral where she’s forced to live Christmas Eve for twelve days, until she can find true love and break the cycle? It’s unclear whether this would have continued past twelve days or whether she just managed to nail it right when the Easter egg hints at the “Twelve Days of Christmas” run out. Seems like a lot to get through in 90 minutes, right? BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE! This movie is so cram-jam full of side plots and literal shaggy dog stories it’s spilling out of the stockings: there’s hapless Christmas lights decorators, two elderly singles who bond over their love for Mexican plants and baked goods, a nerd glow-up fashion montage, and an entire hockey team of orphans. ORPHANS!

WHIMSY: 🧝‍♂️🧝‍♂️🧝‍♂️3/5 elf ears. (Time travel!)
SPARKLE FACTOR: ✨✨✨3/5 twinkly lights. (Lots of decorations, charm, and ice skating!)
ADORKABILITY: 🙃1/5 faceplants. (Minimal adorkability. Mostly The Blonde Woman is just a horse’s ass.)
CHRISTMAS SCALE: 🎅🎅🎅🎅🎅5/5 Santa hats. (Downright ham-fisted in their literal depictions of the “Twelve Days of Christmas” gifts.)
DO YOU HEAR WHAT I HEAR?: 🔔🔔🔔🔔🔔5/5 silver bells. (Horrific corporate original songs reminiscent of your least favorite CVS holiday commercial. And don’t worry, “Twelve Days of Christmas” is played no less than four trillion times.
REASON FOR SEASON: 🤲Selflessness!

December 4, 2018

Melissa Joan Hart plays a waitress straining under the pressure of adult responsibilities, her dead-end job serving burgers and fries at an Indian restaurant (???), emotionally abusive parents, and having to Explain It All. When her rude-ass boyfriend gleefully dumps her at work, she cracks! And winds up using the antique pistol on display at this confusing diner to kidnap a hot lunchtime patron (a fresh-from-“Dancing with the Stars” Mario Lopez) at gunpoint, whisking him off to a zany madcap Christmas at her awful parents’ house. Since men can’t be victims of women’s crimes because of the patriarchy, the family (and a pervy gas station attendant) laugh off his pleas for help as a quirky joke. What’s a guy to do but dive headfirst into that Stockholm and don’t look back! He borrows Dad’s ugly clothes, they bond over art, Sabrina the Twentysomething Felon shows off her cool skating moves, etc. until the climax of the movie, a dinner scene so abruptly funny you might mistake it for a film with a theatrical release. And then the cops come!!! But eventually everyone is released, A.C. Slater does not press charges, and heads home to the woman he was about to propose to over cheeseburgers when he was taken prisoner. Some Time Later, on V-Day, he shows up at Clarissa’s art show to KIDNAP HER – not for revenge, but to show her he’s bought her art and is a more chill dude about stuff now. Kiss!

WHIMSY: 🧝‍♂️ 1/5 elf ears. (Nary an enchantment to be found)
SPARKLE FACTOR: ✨✨✨ 3/5 twinkly lights. (Snowcapped McMansion festooned in décor, DIY backyard skating rink).
ADORKABILITY: 🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃 5/5 faceplants. (MJH is pretty pitiful and makes a great “whoops!” face!)
CHRISTMAS SCALE: 🎅🎅🎅🎅 4/5 Santa hats. (Pretty Christmasy! Couldn’t have happened on a low-stakes holiday like Easter.)
DO YOU HEAR WHAT I HEAR?: 🔔🔔 2/5 silver bells. (Would give it 1 silver bell, but playful music keeps intense scenes lighthearted instead of terrifying and volatile.)
REASON FOR SEASON: Self-esteem ☺️! And crime 👀.

December 3, 2018

An ambitious Attorney, who has apparently never heard of hotels, has to live in the haunted home of a time traveling ghost bootlegger until it can be sold on Christmas. We open on a medium shot of this delightfully anachronistic underwear model sustaining a mortal blow to the back of the head and somehow falling face up into the snow. I kind of wished that would happen to me while I was watching it. His curse, a combo Ghost and Mrs. Muir/Brigadoon ripoff, means he materializes in meatspace for 12 days every year at Christmastime. For some reason, Whiskey Bro loathes his eternal Yuletide staycation. The Attorney decides that, despite his threatening physical presence (he forcibly hoists her over his shoulder and out of the house the day they meet AND, in another scene, looms ominously above her as she blacks out! WTFFF), she’ll help solve his murder because of Dem Abs. In the end, with the curse somehow lifted, I guess, he chooses The Attorney over his pregnant Prohibition bride whom he’s dreamed of every waking moment for the past century. Neat?

WHIMSY: 🚫🧝‍♂️ 0/5 elf ears. (A mirth-free feature. The only fun part is the Attorney’s deadpan boss.)
SPARKLE FACTOR: ✨1/5 twinkly lights. (The absurd costuming choices make no historical sense but do look cool.)
ADORKABILITY: 🚫🙃 0/5 faceplants. (Not even the Knockoff Trivago guy can make anything goofy happen here.)
CHRISTMAS SCALE: 🚫🎅 0/5 Santa hats. (Do they know it’s Christmastime at all?!)
DO YOU HEAR WHAT I HEAR?: 🔔🔔🔔 3/5 silver bells. (Background piano riffing on holiday classics was Highly Tolerable!)
REASON FOR SEASON: No clear winners emerge. Redemption 😇? Sleuthing 🔍? Time-travel bullshit 🌀?

December 2, 2018

The Princess Switch is a classic prince/pauper mixup with some seriously questionable romantic entanglements, and some deeply troubling haircuts. It takes place in a universe much like our own, but in this one, the only suitable kitchen implement to puree berries is a KitchenAid stand mixer, and peanut sauce is deemed an acceptable dressing for salad at a royal wedding. The cast of characters features a yoked Obama lookalike, unexplained governess/lady-in-waiting/nurse, charming Lennon-quoting man-sprite, a peeping Tom/royal valet/janitor?, and two identical but unrelated women who are way too willing to ditch their friends and loved ones after a two-day fling.

WHIMSY: 🧝‍♂️ 1/5 elf ears. (Only one magic omnipresent elf.)
SPARKLE FACTOR: ✨✨✨✨4/5 twinkly lights. (Pretty expensive costumes & sets overflowing with holiday decor.)
ADORKABILITY: 🙃🙃🙃3/5 faceplants. (One headfirst tumble off a horse, one self-referential Netflix-watching scene.)
CHRISTMAS SCALE: 🎅1/5 Santa hats. (Could have taken place any time of the year.)
DO YOU HEAR WHAT I HEAR?: 🔔 1/5 silver bells. (Strains of European carolers, but utterly forgettable Christmas background music.)
REASON FOR SEASON: 😘Romance!!! (And cake🍰)

Tomorrow: don’t miss “The Spirit of Christmas”! I wish I had!

December 1, 2018

Jenny McCarthy is Santa’s daughter and returns home to the North Pole to corporatize Christmas to new heights. With the labor now outsourced and automated and a new middle-management class now in place, capitalism is the reason for the season. Also she falls back in love with her hometown sweetheart, the dutiful mailman, who is visually indistinguishable from her urbane sophisticate boyfriend. The city slicker wants in on the ground floor of this development and writes an RFP to design the North Pole’s first casino complex for Santa’s workshop peons to spend their meager wages gambling at. With Santa’s gout/back pain/rheumatoid arthritis? flaring up again, only Anti-Vaxx Claus can deliver presents and stop the real estate plot before Christmas Day.

WHIMSY: 🧝‍♂️🧝‍♂️🧝‍♂️🧝‍♂️🧝‍♂️ 5/5 elf ears. (Toys and bumbling elven slaves feature prominently.)
SPARKLE FACTOR:✨1/5 twinkly lights. (Too corporate.)
ADORKABILITY: 🙃1/5 faceplants. (Too capable.)
CHRISTMAS SCALE: 🎅🎅🎅🎅🎅 5/5 Santa hats. (She’s literally the spawn of Father Christmas.)
DO YOU HEAR WHAT I HEAR?: 🔔1/5 silver bells. (No memorable musical numbers, thankfully.)
REASON FOR SEASON: Much like the Fast and the Furious franchise, this one is all about 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 family!

Stay tuned y’all, we’ll be here all season long!