Josh Bell
The flood of Christmas movies on VOD and streaming starts earlier every year, and even though it’s not yet December, there are still plenty of new holiday movies available. This year’s selection includes ski resort owners and horse farm managers falling in love, Christmas ornaments and toys coming to horrific life, and Mrs. Claus pole-dancing.
The Christmas Classic (VOD and Hoopla): Malin Akerman and Ryan Hansen have honed their chemistry across three awful direct-to-VOD comedies set at holiday celebrations, going from Thanksgiving (2020’s Friendsgiving) to a birthday party (March’s The Donor Party) to this truly pathetic Christmas tradition. The title refers to a supposed annual tournament at the ski resort now owned by Hansen’s Randy Collins, who inherited it from his late father. Elizabeth Bird (Akerman) has returned to her New Mexico hometown to negotiate a purchase of the ski resort for her corporate employer, and Randy inexplicably agrees to sell if Elizabeth can defeat her sister Lynn (Amy Smart) in the Christmas Classic. There appear to be no other competitors, and only three actual events, which are judged by unclear standards. The perfunctory romance between Elizabeth and Randy barely registers, with the abrasive sibling conflict taking most of the focus. Maybe someday Akerman and Hansen can find a worthwhile vehicle for their onscreen connection, but this isn’t it. Grade: C-
Christmas With Jerks (VOD): The title overstates the jerkiness of the main characters in this amiable Christmas romantic comedy that adds a slight edge to the format. Eve Carter (writer and co-director Leanna Adams) is a former child star whose acting career has taken such a rough turn that she can’t even get cast in the reboot of the beloved Christmas movie that made her famous. She wants to hide out for the holidays at her sister’s empty house, but when she arrives, she discovers that stuntman and family friend Ace (Tyler Buckingham) is already there, house-sitting in exchange for a place to recuperate from an injury. They engage in some low-grade sabotage before agreeing to a truce, as Eve proposes to help Ace win back his ex-girlfriend if he’ll vacate the house by Christmas. Of course, that brings them closer together, and while the romance is predictable, the characters are charmingly crass. Adams engages in some honest soul-searching for her middle-aged protagonist along the way to the predetermined outcome. Grade: B-
Elf Me (Amazon Prime Video): If nothing else, this Italian family comedy puts its Amazon-backed budget to good use, with plenty of elaborate, fantastical set pieces. The story is less successful, featuring irritating elf screw-up Trip (Lillo Petrolo) accidentally getting ejected from Santa’s workshop and finding himself stranded in a small town in Italy. There, he befriends lonely boy Elia (Federico Ielapi) and Elia’s mother Ivana (Anna Foglietta), who runs an artisanal toy shop that’s being overshadowed by mass-produced junk. Trip uses his questionable elf magic to draw attention to the toy shop, help Elia stand up to some local bullies, and battle an evil black-market toy dealer. The tone is as manic as Trip himself, and the filmmakers throw in various arcane rules to create an artificial sense of urgency, including the threat of Trip’s death if he can’t get back to the North Pole before Christmas. The special effects, especially in a final battle against the villain’s army of enchanted toys, are impressive, but the chaotic plot exhausts itself long before then. Grade: C+
El Sabor de la Navidad (ViX): Produced by Salma Hayek and screened at the Toronto International Film Festival, this Mexican dramedy has a more refined pedigree than most streaming Christmas movies. It’s still pretty basic, but it effectively realizes its small-scale ambitions, at least in two of its three intersecting holiday stories. The thread about two best friends becoming rivals when they both get jobs as Santas for hire is pretty weak, but there’s more heartfelt emotion in the other two storylines. In one, a chef and her assistant fall in love while preparing catered Christmas meals, and in the other, a trans woman returns to her family’s Christmas gathering — and her insensitive mother — for the first time since her transition. There are some gentle life lessons and affecting bonding moments, with strong performances and likable characters. The conflicts all wrap up neatly with a karaoke sing-along, but it’s not hard to forgive the simplicity of a movie with such genial holiday cheer. Grade: B
Family Ornaments (Tubi): Although Tubi has billed this as a family movie, it’s far more horrific than the title and description would indicate. Rather than a heartwarming story about a dysfunctional family coming together, it’s more like a kid-oriented take on the low-budget Demonic Toys franchise. Exasperated mom Meredith (Alicia Blasingame) makes an angry wish on a magical ornament, and soon her family’s homemade Christmas decorations spring to life, but they’re closer to Gremlins than to the Elf on the Shelf. The deranged sentient ornaments attack the family members, who must figure out how to defeat them while also healing past emotional trauma. The CGI ornament monsters look hideous, the plot makes no sense, and the actors fail to convey either the terror or the angst of their characters. There are occasional moments of enjoyable ridiculousness, but most of the movie seems like an off-brand holiday-themed Goosebumps story that couldn’t quite make the cut. Grade: C
A Holiday I Do (Tello): LGBTQ-focused streaming service Tello dutifully debuts a lesbian Christmas romance movie every year, but that admirable inclusivity only goes so far when the movies are this underwhelming. A Holiday I Do features slightly higher production values than last year’s Merry & Gay, but it’s similarly bland, just placing two women in a stock Hallmark-style Christmas love story. Hopelessly single Jane (Lindsay Hicks) runs her family’s quaint horse farm and is the “best woman” for her ex-husband’s upcoming wedding. Sue (Rivkah Reyes) is the no-nonsense wedding planner hired by Jane’s ex’s fiancée to deliver the perfect event. Mild sparks fly when Jane and Sue meet, and circumstances place them together in various pre-wedding activities. The sweet but slight romance fights for screen time with multiple underdeveloped subplots, including the requisite rush to save the farm from foreclosure. Supporting characters come and go at random, and the awkward green-screen effects — even in straightforward outdoor scenes — are especially distracting. Grade: C
Hot Girl Winter (Tubi): It’s rare that Mrs. Claus gets the spotlight in a Christmas movie, but director and co-writer Patricia Cuffie-Jones corrects that oversight with this good-natured but dull comedy about Santa’s wife cutting loose on vacation. Jess (Golden Brooks) may live at the North Pole, but she’s a modern woman who expects her husband Nick (Jason Mimms) to pay as much attention to her as he does to his work. When he bails on their annual couple’s vacation because of impending Christmas deadlines, she heads to Miami without him, partying with her college friend Tamira (Schelle Purcell) and flirting chastely with a pair of hot men. She even ends up in a viral pole-dancing video. It’s all pretty tame, and aside from some sporadic Christmas magic, it could easily be a story about any woman attempting to teach her neglectful husband a lesson. If you ever wanted to see Santa show off his chiseled abs in a Magic Mike-style climactic striptease, though, this is the movie for you. Grade: C
Nightmare on 34th Street (VOD December 5): Such a clever title is wasted on this terrible Christmas horror anthology. Disappointingly, writer-director James Crow’s movie is not a cross between A Nightmare on Elm Street and Miracle on 34th Street, but rather a tedious, disjointed series of horror tales recounted to a frightened child by a grim, homicidal Santa Claus (Pierse Stevens). Over the course of a punishing, interminable 130 minutes, Crow presents several meandering, confusing, poorly acted segments, all of which last too long yet never come to satisfying or coherent resolutions. There are two nested framing stories, making the simple premise even harder to follow, and individual episodes often detour into flashbacks or fantasy sequences. None of the Christmas menaces, including Krampus and a possessed snowman puppet, are remotely scary, and the gore effects are as dismal as the rote holiday spirit. The only real nightmare is waiting for the movie to finally end. Grade: D
