Every Christmas season one can count on the fact that we will be inundated with TV shows recycling the It's A Wonderful Life story, Hallmark Channel will overwhelm us with treacle, and a spate of Christmas-themed films will multiply at the cineplex to raise holiday spirits. I give extremist Christian Kirk Cameron dubious credit for crafting a Christmas-themed film that actually seems to be completely clueless about the meaning of Christmas.
It goes without saying that the film resembles a glorified home movie, with horrible writing, worse acting and horrendous production values. Most of the film functions as little more than an unwieldy frame for Cameron to lecture at the audience using the most spurious of "facts" and a dubious re-writing of history.
The basic "story" opens at a family Christmas party where Kirk's brother-in-law, Christian (oh the irony!) is all rather overwhelmed and depressed by the materialism of the holiday and feels that the true meaning of Christmas has been lost. This "attitude" apparently irritates everyone else, and so Kirk follows Christian to his car to harangue him on his misguided foolishness for the extraordinarily padded 80 minutes running time. Most of this has the camera focused on Cameron's perpetually smug smirk while he relentlessly lectures his hapless brother-in-law with outright lies, heavily abridged stories, and general all-around shaming. Interspersed to pad the running time, we take some brief breaks back into the house where completely ridiculous one-note flamboyant caricatures indulge in laughable conversations that no one you know not in a padded cell will ever have with you in your lifetime. The pathetic point though is that during Cameron's often incoherent and misleading ramblings, he never once truly addresses any of the issues that Christian had about the materialism of the modern celebrations. Nevertheless, Kirk's relentless verbal diarrhea utterly astounds Christian and makes him "see the light" and he returns to the party to beg the forgiveness of everyone there for negatively impacting their celebration.
Then, Kirk launches into yet another lecture where he urges us to buy the biggest tree, get the richest butter, and max out the credit cards because this is all a part of Christmas and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. I myself was raised a Christian and I can assure you that if anyone were to parrot this thought back to any of my religion teachers, their mouth would be washed out with soap. It is a perfectly despicable moral and abysmal coda to an already dreadful "holiday" film, which does the unthinkable of surpassing Christmas with the Kranks and Jingle All the Way as the most morally jaded holiday film in history. The film also includes a relentless unfunny blooper reel AND a dance sequence that must be seen to be believed...or better yet don't see it at all.
It goes without saying that the film resembles a glorified home movie, with horrible writing, worse acting and horrendous production values. Most of the film functions as little more than an unwieldy frame for Cameron to lecture at the audience using the most spurious of "facts" and a dubious re-writing of history.
The basic "story" opens at a family Christmas party where Kirk's brother-in-law, Christian (oh the irony!) is all rather overwhelmed and depressed by the materialism of the holiday and feels that the true meaning of Christmas has been lost. This "attitude" apparently irritates everyone else, and so Kirk follows Christian to his car to harangue him on his misguided foolishness for the extraordinarily padded 80 minutes running time. Most of this has the camera focused on Cameron's perpetually smug smirk while he relentlessly lectures his hapless brother-in-law with outright lies, heavily abridged stories, and general all-around shaming. Interspersed to pad the running time, we take some brief breaks back into the house where completely ridiculous one-note flamboyant caricatures indulge in laughable conversations that no one you know not in a padded cell will ever have with you in your lifetime. The pathetic point though is that during Cameron's often incoherent and misleading ramblings, he never once truly addresses any of the issues that Christian had about the materialism of the modern celebrations. Nevertheless, Kirk's relentless verbal diarrhea utterly astounds Christian and makes him "see the light" and he returns to the party to beg the forgiveness of everyone there for negatively impacting their celebration.
Then, Kirk launches into yet another lecture where he urges us to buy the biggest tree, get the richest butter, and max out the credit cards because this is all a part of Christmas and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. I myself was raised a Christian and I can assure you that if anyone were to parrot this thought back to any of my religion teachers, their mouth would be washed out with soap. It is a perfectly despicable moral and abysmal coda to an already dreadful "holiday" film, which does the unthinkable of surpassing Christmas with the Kranks and Jingle All the Way as the most morally jaded holiday film in history. The film also includes a relentless unfunny blooper reel AND a dance sequence that must be seen to be believed...or better yet don't see it at all.