Starting again with Netflix and That Christmas which is an animated feature based on Richard Curtis’ book series of the same name. It tells the story of entwined lives of the residents of a small town at Christmas. The talented voice cast includes Bill Nighy, Brian Cox, Jodie Whittaker, Katherine Parkinson, Rosie Cavaliero and Alex Macqueen. Grown ups should not get too bored but the animation is incredibly generic and the kids’ shenanigans seem too familiar.
Carry-On is a Christmas action movie from one of my favourite directors, Juame Collet-Sera, so I was all in for it. Taron Egerton stars as a Transportation Security Administration employee at LAX who is blackmailed into letting a dangerous package onboard an upcoming flight on Christmas Eve. This is one of the most purely enjoyable films of the year. Collet-Sera keeps the action going at full throttle and the plot stays just plausible enough. Egerton and Sofia Carson, who plays his girlfriend, are pretty good though the acting honours go to Danielle Deadwyler as a cop and a coolly creepy Jason Bateman as the blackmailer.
Ratings out of 10:
That Christmas: 5.5
Carry-On: 8.5
Movies 24 remains the place to go for a large number of variable quality releases. A Perfect Christmas Carol features an independent pastry chef, called Carol, who stays with her boyfriend’s family over Christmas and finds out he is a Mummy’s boy. There is a terrible montage early on and the film does not recover. Additionally, Carol is pretty annoying.
In A Novel Noel, a book editor regains her zest for life when she starts running a bookstore. Very much a standard Hallmark plot with a Christmas element bolted on.
A couple decide to get married after only dating for a few months in To Have and To Holiday. The bride’s father agrees to officiate, but only if they undertake a series of festive challenges to prove their commitment to each other. I thought that set up could be fun, but I found the child-like characters mostly irritating.
Believe in Christmas stars John Reardon from the hugely enjoyable Hudson and Rex, as the love interest for Meghan Ory (his real life partner) who plays a woman who rediscovers her festive spirit on a trip to a festive themed town. Reardon and Ory are both good, but this is a deeply odd movie. The levels of deception by the town’s inhabitants is disturbing, as is the general atmosphere in the town, making it feel more like a horror movie.
Philadelphia-set Christmas on Call has a novel premise for a Hallmark movie. Sara Canning stars as an emergency room doctor who has to juggle the demands of work and a budding romance with a paramedic, on the lead up to Christmas. Not enough is made of the set up, the story needed a little grit amongst all of the sweetness.
Lacey Chabert returns with her second festive offering this year with The Christmas Quest. She plays an archaeologist who teams up with her ex-husband (Kristoffer Polaha) searching for legendary treasure in Iceland at Christmas. Again, we have Hallmark going for something different and it mostly works. A little bit too much time is given to subplots and there is a glaring plothole at the end but Chabert and Polaha work really well together and the clue chasing is fun.
In Santa Tell Me, Olivia (Erin Krakow) finds an old letter from Santa that tells her that she will meet the love of her life by Christmas Eve, and he will be called Nick. She then meets three men with that name. I feared that Olivia would be really irritating, swooning over various men, but Krakow manages to make her likeable enough, and there are even a few chuckles along the way.
Ratings out of 10:
A Perfect Christmas Carol: 2.5
A Novel Noel: 4
To Have and To Holiday: 3.5
Believe in Christmas: 4
Christmas on Call: 5
The Christmas Quest: 7
Santa Tell Me: 6
ITVX has Enchanting Christmas which stars Emily Sweet as an ice sculpture that comes to life. She is fine and has nice chemistry with Brando White, the sculptor, but his kid is way too sweet.
Rating: 4.5 out of 10
On My5, A Match Made for Christmas wheels out the hoary old plot of a woman hiring a guy to pretend to be her boyfriend at Christmas. It actually works well enough, with the major flaw being the miscasting of Andrew Rogers as the male lead.
Rating: 5 out of 10
The big release on Amazon Prime is Red One, which has had a brief and largely unprofitable cinema release with bad reviews. When Santa Claus is kidnapped, Callum Drift (Dwayne Johnson), the head of North Pole security, must team up with Jack O’Malley (Chris Evans), a bounty hunter, to find and rescue him. Despite some poor effects, and, in the end, a plot that gets too bogged down, this turned out to be reasonably engaging, with a couple of decent one liners.
Rating: 5.5 out of 10
Also just after a brief theatrical release Sky is showing the indie drama Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point. A family gathers together on Christmas Eve for what might be the last time in the family home. This had real potential, with a disparate group of characters and overlapping storylines, but it is a mess. There is a complete lack of coherence, too few scenes with anything approaching interesting dialogue and some terrible performances, especially from Chris Lazzaro and Gregg Turkington. Admittedly they are having to play boring or simple minded characters, but most of the cast struggle, with the exception of Maria Dizzia, Tony Savino, a criminally underused Elsie Fisher and Matilda Fleming who rises above the material.
Rating: 3 out of 10