The Christmas Switch
Ready for something a little different from your
Christmas movie? And by different I mean
a real Christmas movie. Not real in the sense that we’re focusing on
the life and times Jesus Christ… that’s crazy talk… but real in that it’s all
about redemption, giving, and forgiveness.
Real in that we will see no closed cookie factories, no Christmas ambivalent
heroines, no near miss kisses and virtually no romance. I didn’t even know they made those anymore.
Eddie (Brian Krause) is a slimy con man, and quite
honestly that’s the best we can say about Eddie. He and his crew slither around NYC running
various scams on people, such as his fabled three-card-monty Reindeer
trick. We see this trick in an alley where
some sucker puts his Christmas Gift money on the table, despite the wild
protestations of his young son, and loses it all.
Now should this cat be wasting all his holiday money on what is
obviously a street corner grift? Of
course he shouldn’t, but we’re supposed to think Eddie’s to blame for this guy
being dumb, so I guess we gotta buy into that.
On the other side of town we meet old man Sam (Cedric Smith) who is
almost at the end of the line. He is
being cared for by his loving daughter Susan, as played by the ageless Natasha
Henstridge, who keeps a pretty tight rein on the old dude. This is necessary because it’s Christmas and
for the last fifty years Sam has been Santa at the local Toy Store and he just
wants to bring joy to children one last time.
Alas, his daughter will not allow this, despite the high pressure begging
by the Toy Store owners, because apparently finding old white dudes to play
Santa in New York City is very hard.
Still, Sam really wants to do this one last time and prays to the Man Above to make this happen.
Not long after that, while Eddie and his crew were
hanging out at their slum tenement basement lair, a tough looking old dude
(George Buza) shows up. I think he’s
supposed to be Santa, that is if Santa wore faded wranglers, a Hell's Angels
leather jacket, and looks like he would f@#k you up good if you looked at him the
wrong way. If David Harbour played
Santa, he’d look like this guy. Anyway,
Tough Santa decides to make Eddie, of all people, a deal. Switch bodies with Sam so he can be Santa one
last time and in return Tough Santa will grant Eddie redemption. Redemption don’t buy no groceries, so once
Eddie finally believes this magical dude is on the level, he wants a million
dollars for his trouble. Tough Santa is
disappointed in Eddie, almost as if he just met Eddie, but agrees to the deal
and the switch is on.
Sam, now in Eddie's body,
immediately goes to work making kids happy as the best Santa ever. Eddie, now in Sam's body, hates
being an old, broke down, dying old man… but damn his daughter is hot. That the one thing seems to be keeping him going through
the two weeks that he has to suffer in this old man’s body. Eddie, being a criminal to his very heart,
also believes that Tough Santa and Sam may being trying to double cross him and
keep his younger body, because that’s what he would do, so he has one of his
crew members keeps an eye on Sam.
The days pass, younger Sam keeps making people happy, Old
Eddie spends more time with the hot daughter and has gotten past the fact that
she’s hot and has noticed she’s just real good people. He’s even started to appreciate the life that Sam has led. Not to the point he wants
to give up the loot, but he’s learning.
Now comes the time for the return switch, no double
cross as Eddie feared, and they switch back. Eddie gets his money, Sam got his last Christmas… it’s
all good. Or is it? Empathy hits Eddie smack dab in the
face. He’s sad for Susan and her loss,
he regrets the things that he has done with his life and gives the money away, just like
Tough Santa figured he would, and he’s also ending his criminal ways. Even though I’m sure there are warrants out
for his arrest out the wazoo. And if at
all possible, considering his inside info, he’s gonna make that hot daughter all
his. At Christmas.
As we mentioned earlier, this is just a regular
Christmas movie, and a dark one at that.
I mean it’s darker than A Charlie Brown Christmas, which I think we all
know was dark AF. Our main character is
an unapologetic criminal, and a pretty severe victim of child abuse as he so
vividly points out in a particularly sad scene.
Corporate greed and commercialism is also a major theme, just like a
Charlie Brown Christmas, not to mention the frail existence of human
mortality. And I would not want to meet
this Santa in a dark alley. For real.
Since this is regular Christmas movie drama there are no
snow ball fights, no cookie baking, no caroling, no mistletoe, no ugly sweater
contest, none of that nonsense we’ve come to expect. What you do get are fairly well developed, well-acted
characters, particularly Cedric Smith as both versions of old-man Sam, a well-worn
but well executed narrative, though it was wildly uneven in tone swinging from
super sweet to super gritty to near slapstick from scene to scene, and a pretty
satisfying conclusion. And while we didn’t get
Orphan kids, per se, younger Sam did drop off some presents to an orphanage which
kind of counts.
The Christmas Switch is not a bad movie, and I’d
almost call it a good movie.
Almost. Just don’t go in
expecting a Hallmarky romance movie.
That, you will not get.
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