Film Critics United

A Diva's Christmas Carol (2000) - VH1 Last year I decided to try to watch every Royal Christmas TV movie I could find in succession, so this year I made the preliminary decision to watch every Christmas Carol TV movie I could find in succession.  After watching VH1's entry into the Christmas movie fray, from almost 20 years ago, I've decided that's a bad idea.   This isn't to say that 'A Diva's Christmas Carol' is a terrible movie, because it's not.  In fact, of the other two Scrooge knock-offs I've seen, those being 'It's Christmas, Carol' and 'Ms. Scrooge', this one would be the better of the three.  It's a bad idea, as I've learned after trying to watch another scrooge knock-off after this one, is that watching basically the exact same movie, over and over again, is excruciating.  Sure, all of these Hallmark type Christmas movies are kind of the same, but they aren't exactly the same.  Dealing with some m...

Santa Baby (2006) - ABC Family I think I got my mind right again, for after watching the Netflix production of 'A Christmas Wedding Planner', a movie which took what little that is good about these Hallmark styled Christmas movies and made it bad, then took everything that's bad about these Hallmark style Christmas movies and made it terrible... I needed a break for a bit.  And I had to put Netflix on suspension as punishment, meaning I won't be watching the lovely Vanessa Hudgins in The Princess Switch or Kurt Russel as Santa Clause in The Christmas Chronicles for a while.  Do you have any idea how bad a movie has to be that forces one to put Kurt Russell as Santa on hold?  Fortunately 'Santa Baby' from a few years back rights the ship.  It's not good or anything, but it's competently predictable, completely run of the mill, and totally inoffensive.  We'll take it. Mary Class (Jenny McCarthy) is a work obsessed consultant who doesn't have ...

Christmas Wedding Planner (2017) - Netflix Wait... what just happened in this movie?  Um... okay...  yeah... I'm kind of scratching my head trying to process this, that I have seen, and to be honest the process is malfunctioning.  Probably not too uncommon at my age, but yeah...  So what we're going to do, is what we always do, and just describe the movie to you and hope that after that's done this sad excuse for a holiday movie will reveal itself to me. Simple enough, Kelsey (Jocelyn Hudon) is a budding wedding planner, planning the gigantic Christmas wedding of her beloved cousin Emily (Rebecca Dalton) to the dashing Todd (Eric Hicks).  Kelsey narrates for us via texts, detailing her various insecurities, that she sends to someone who never texts back.  Pretty certain already who this person is. Then at the bridal coming out party there's this clown Connor (Stephan Huszar) hanging around who Emily's super stern mom and Kelsey's Aunt Olivia (Kelly ...

A Christmas Melody (2015) - Hallmark The description on the IMDB page of this movies reads as such... ' A gift of music transports people back to another time and place where they find their truest feelings' . Hell if I know what movie that is because it sure ain't this one, because that description sounded kind of interesting.  No... A Chrstmas Melody is pretty much stock Hallmark Christmas tripe, so prepare accordingly. Kristin (Lacey Chabert) is an L.A. designer shutting down her failing shop, but as he she's heading out the door she gives homeless begging ass Santa Claus(Kevin Chamberlain) a framed five dollar bill from her first sale so he can get some food.  Or some hooch.  What it actually does is inform begging Santa what a great heart Kristin has and he will be dipping his toes in her biz for the rest of the movie.  Note that begging Santa never gives her the fiver back. What Kristin needs is a reboot, so she and her daughter Emily (Fina Strazza) hea...

Christmas Getaway (2017) - Hallmark As reviewed by Lisa Sue.  Note that she followed Brittany Grimes now widely recognized Christmas movie rules drinking game while discussing this movie. In these turbulent and terrible times, I needed to do something to settle my mind. Something that didn’t remind me of the ongoing horrors of the world, the mendacity of my job, and the sheer incompetence and horribleness of people. What is one to do but succumb to the mind-numbing joy that is a Hallmark Christmas Movie. Purists may scoff that I did not watch the whole movie (dear reader you can clap back if that really impacted my understanding of the movie) and that no I’m not doing this as part of any challenge, I didn’t lose a bet. That I of a disturbed and unsound mind, did freely and of my own volition, click on the Hallmark channel to be whisked away… in this case to the winter wonderland of Pine Grove (again dear reader, correct as needed. Minimal research and even less notes and ...

Correcting Christmas (2014) - Ion Now this is more like it.  Unlike the last TV Holiday movie we saw, Hallmark's 'Christmas in Conway' which was actually a pretty good movie, it's good to get back on track with a completely terrible, totally predictable, but yet a somehow baffling and confusing Christmas movie with Correcting Christmas, or as I prefer to call it, 'A Collection of Asssholes at Christmas' Ali (Kelly Overton) is an angry, hard working executive, with no man, who doesn't care for Christmas too much.  On Christmas Eve, instead of heading up north to spend time with her family, she decides she will spend it alone and sulk.  That's when she meets the magical Ginny (Jennifer Elise Cox) at a diner who asks her if she could change one thing, what would that be?  For Ali, that's an easy one.  Apparently last Christmas her boyfriend Cameron (Michael Muhney) gave her a small box for Christmas which Ali thought was going to be an engagemen...

Christmas in Conway (2013) - Hallmark - ABC Not fair Hallmark... not fair.  When we started this foolish endeavor a few years back of watching these TV holiday movies around Christmastime, a definite pattern emerged.  It's a pattern to a point where it's almost a constant.  A Holiday averse working woman doesn't have time for these holidays, or her family, has to close down an orphanage or cookie factory, meets a generically handsome guy, love blossoms, one of them is holding a secret from the other and love fails, until orphan kids or some magical entity brings them back together.  And Hallmark has this special series of Holiday films call the Hallmark Hall of Fame, and of the ones I've seen, they have generally followed this loose pattern, only using actors you actually recognize.  What I didn't expect was to see an actual film that was actually, I don't know, good.  I've been blindsided.  Clipped.  Intentional flagrant foul with free throws...

The Christmas Gift (2015) - Lifetime Why do we have a picture of one of this movies tertiary characters, this being Tarheel standout, Lakers 6th man and stiff actor Rick Fox, forefront and center to represent this movie as opposed to stars Michelle Tracthenberg and Sterling Sulleman.  For one, I could find any pictures of the two stars of this movie together, even though they are together an awful lot in this movie.  Secondly, because Rick Fox is F'n beautiful!  And I'm a straight man saying this!  Just look at that dude! Anyway, little Wesley is the sweetest boy ever, he is a secret Santa that makes gifts to send to the less fortunate.  One of these gifts he sent lands in the lap of poor little Megan, which includes a journal with an inspirational quote inside and Wesley's name as the author, which kind of defeats the whole purpose of being secret.  This journal was critical in shaping the life adult of Megan (Trachtenberg) who now works at the magaz...

So, I used to be a serious film critic.  No joke.  I reviewed hardcore cinema like Mega Piranha or Mega Python vs. Gatoroid or Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus.  Serious cinema.   But alas after a decade of it, I believe it became too much for me and I had to retire.  But I've learned, while you can take the critic away from the boy. you can't take the boy from the critic... which actually makes no goddamn sense once I read it back, but whatever.  Anyway, I decided to only to dust off my critical chops during the holiday season and a couple years ago I did 30 TV holiday movies in 30 days.  And amazingly, I completed that task even though it nearly cost me my life.  Last year I decided to scale back and do 25 movies in 25 days.  But apparently I hadn't recovered from 2016's endeavor and I managed to complete a mere fraction of those.  This year, we make no promises.  We will start early however and do as many as we can.  It cou...