Tag: Christmas Movie

Dear Santa (2024) Review

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Quick Synopsis: A dyslexic child accidentally writes a letter to Satan instead of Satan. That’s it, that’s the movie.

The Farrelly Brothers have directed some of the most well-regarded comedies of the modern age; Dumb and Dumber, There’s Something About Mary etc. Jack Black also has a pretty damn good history in comedies; the modern Jumanji movies, School Of Rock, Kung Fu Panda. With that much comedy pedigree, and with such a simple premise, this should be fantastic.

It isn’t. It isn’t the worst film Jack Black has been in recently (Hello, Borderlands), but it is definitely in the lower half. None of the issues are with the performers, Black is on form, and even though she’s only in it a little section, I LOVE Cate Freedman as the crossing guard (disappointingly she’s not even mentioned on the Wikipedia page). The issue is the script. It’s incredibly disjointed. The main problem is a lack of cohesion in terms of audience. Much like Red One, this feels like it needs to either age up or down. At times it feels like a kids’ movie. The “here’s what I can do for you” sequence feels like it’s aimed at pre-teens. Some moments feel like they’re lifted directly from a 90s Christmas movie. But then it makes jokes about the sexual abuse of a minor and the consequences of fucking a dog, which makes you feel it’s aimed more at 15-year-olds who want to be thought of as mature and think that just means swearing and sex jokes.

There’s also a surprising lack of heart to the whole thing. It attempts to have heart with a dead brother subplot, but it feels incredibly tacked on, and the way it comes back at the end just raises more questions than answers, to the point where the “wait, but how does the world react to this?” reaction overshadows any sense of narrative closure. That would be acceptable in a kids’ movie, but not in a film with some of the jokes that Dear Santa has.

I get why a studio would diversify their jokes, to appeal to a wide audience. But the way they’ve done it here means that it ends up appealing to nobody. It’s too childish for kids, too mean-spirited for kids, and too one-dimensional for adults. I put more thought into this review than the scriptwriters did into the screenplay, and considering I did this while watching an episode of Smallville, that says a lot.

Spirited (2022)

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Quick synopsis: A musical version of Charles Dickens’ story of a miserly misanthrope who’s taken on a magical journey.

It can’t have escaped your attention that there are quite a few streaming services available, and they all need a hook to justify their own existence. Netflix has Stranger Things (and good branding), Amazon Prime has more recent movies (and the ability to add digital purchases to it), Shudder has horror (and also a shocking customer service team, but that’s a story for another time), Mubi has an extensive range of foreign-language cinema and independent films (as well as a sending you a notification when a film on your list is leaving), whereas AppleTV+ has…………yeah I’m not sure. I’m currently on a free trial of it, and it has a select few things, but nothing that makes me think it’s going to be worth paying for while the trial ends. It is aiming big though, and this film is an example of this. You don’t hire Ryan Reynolds and Will Ferrell if you’re not aiming for mass-market appeal.

I’m not really sure this is going to be the film to break Apple into the next level. I mean, it’s funny, and it is good at what it does. But it’s not essential. It also hasn’t really been advertised much, a film like this needs to be unavoidable to the point of being annoying. If this has any hope of becoming a Christmas cult classic, it needs to be everywhere, it needs an audience. It also needs to be fun.

It at least achieves that. It’s almost two hours long, but doesn’t feel it. That’s helped by the music being very good. Music is a big part of Christmas films, think of how much the music improves Home Alone or The Muppets Christmas Carol. This is a musical, so obviously the songs are even more important. I can only remember one song from it. I try to remember more and all I get is the one from Community. Outside of a few songs I can’t see listening to the soundtrack in full, you can probably cut all of the songs from here and it wouldn’t affect the story that much. It makes it feel like the script was written, and then the songs were handled separately and inserted randomly, and nobody likes random insertions (citation needed). I get why this film is a musical, Christmas films have a higher allowance for joy and music than others. But it doesn’t really work for me, I think part of that might be because, let’s be honest, Will Ferrell isn’t a great singer. At least they have a logical reason for it to be a musical. Apparently the afterlife is a musical, so whilst heaven isn’t clarified as existing, hell does.The script could be improved too. There’s nothing inherently bad are embarassing about it, but moments could be better. Ryan Reynolds establishing character moment should be better. The movie talks about him being irredeemable, but doesn’t show it. He has moments of heartlessness, but not enough. Yes, he lies, manipulates, and stokes fear/division, but that doesn’t make him the worst person in the world, it just makes him someone involved in sales.

On the plus side, this film does have the suicide of a child in it. I didn’t think it would include that, but it does. So that shows that it’s not afraid to get dark and disturbing when it needs to, so if they did that at the start it would make his character arc more effective. I appreciate it taking a new angle on the cliche Christmas Carol plot. It approaches it in a way that works, and makes sense in-universe if you don’t think about it too much. I like a fresh take on something I’ve seen before as it makes it easy to compare and notice the strengths. The strengths are that it’s funny, has some great scenes (the opening is the best way for this film to open), and is unique.

But that also highlights the weaknesses. The biggest weakness being, of course, that it’s a comedic musical film based on Christmas Carol, and the best one possible was already made in 1992. You can’t be better than that, and it’s just not different enough to work.

Home Sweet Home Alone (2021)

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Quick Synopsis: Disney kills your childhood

When I look back on this year there will be a lot of trends I will think of in regards to film. 2021 was the year of female leads fucking shit up (The Columnist, I Blame Society), weird Nicholas Cage films (Pig, Prisoners Of The Ghostland, Willy’s Wonderland), and terrible sequels/remakes of things from the 80s/90s (Space Jam, Tom And Jerry, Coming 2 America). This belongs in the terrible sequels/remakes, but also fits another trend this year: I’ve watched A LOT more stuff online this year. Some have been brilliant, some have…..really not. I think this is the first year since I started this blog that the number of new releases I’ve watched at home has been bigger than the number I’ve seen at the cinema. That…….that kind of sucks to be honest. The advantage of watching at home though is that I get to make notes while watching it. This means that when I type up these incoherant rants I insist on calling reviews, that I can reference parts I otherwise would have forgotten. My notes while watching this? Well, they’re not really detailed. They’re just two sentences long:

  1. THAT’S NOT HOW PHYSICS WORKS!
  2. Just step to the side.

The thieves in this are idiots. There’s a moment where icicles are dropping from a roof as someone runs underneath them. If he stopped running then by the time he moved forward all the icicles would have already fallen, he’s really just walking into his own torment. I mean, it works cinematically because you might not realise that, but if you do, it ruins it. There’s another one where they walk on lego, instead of just, you know, sweeping it away. The worst “trap” is one that’s SOOOO stupid and unbelievable. He wakes up with VR goggles on which make him think he’s standing on the edge of a canyon in the middle of the day, instead of the reality which is he’s standing in a house in the middle of winter, in clothes that are covered in snow and soaking wet. Somehow this fools him, despite you know, him being able to feel his wet clothes clinging to him, him being cold, and there being no wind. I mean, I don’t want to be brag but I reckon that even if I closed my eyes I could tell if I was outside in summer or inside in winter in wet clothes. But some of us are just built different I guess.

But if you shut your brain off then it’s still funny, right? Well, no. The first two worked because you knew what Kevin was like, the film spent a lot of time with him so he was definitely the main character and you sympathised with him. This goes in the other direction, it gives the thieves a tragic back story. They are not looking for money or jewels, they think the kid stole something from them and they need to get it back because if they don’t then they will lose their house and end up thrown out on the street with their family. So we sympathise with them, a small part of us wants them to succeed because they’re obviously good people, and they’re scared of what will happen if they don’t get the thing back. This makes it less funny when you see them get set on fire or have snooker balls launched at their heads. Coupled with how damn annoying and brattish the kid is and it seems less “Christmas comedy” and more “Spoilt rich kid tortures poor people for his amusement”, it’s comedy, but only if you’re a rich sociopath who takes joy in the suffering of those less fortunate than you (Hi Donald, Boris, merry Christmas).

It’s a shame this is so bad as the cast is incredibly talented. It’s baffling that people as talented as this would be in a film this bad. It’s a massive disappointment, and one that I kind of expected.