What you normally get in this season of gifting and family are stories with an aura of nostalgia in regards to film. However, praising things like “A Christmas Story,” “Miracle on 34th Street” and other such touching and incredible movies has been done to death. This is going to be a list of some of the worst holiday movies ever released.
When thinking of bad holiday movies, if you haven’t heard of “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians” consider yourself lucky. It’s just bad. There’s no other way of describing it. The story makes no sense, the general directing is just horrible and the acting, even at its most passable, is awful. You see more passable acting in one of the films about to be brought up. The basic idea of the film is that the Martians want to kidnap Santa Claus in the Christmas season to bring holiday cheer to their dreary planet. OK. It makes sense, if you’re high.
Speaking of more “passable” acting, there’s the only holiday movie with the misfortune to feature Arnold Schwarzenegger AND Sinbad at the same time, a festering wound in cinema’s side known as “Jingle All the Way.” What’s wrong with this movie? It’s easier to cover what’s right with the movie. Some of the soundtrack is actually a little fun to listen to. That’s all that’s right with the movie. What’s wrong with it? The writing is horrible. All the movie happens to be is a shill for the materialism of the season and has some of the least buyable acting out there. The story, while being halfway accurate with rush-and-spend mentality of the season, is completely implausible and, in the end, glorifies a pitiful excuse for a father figure since he keeps letting his kid down by focusing only on work and almost completely neglecting his family. Speaking of which, with the amount of time he spends working and letting his family down, how does he even manage to make his marriage work? The other problem is Sinbad’s attempt to be funny throughout the entire movie and he only manages to be funny in a combined two scenes out of the entire movie. Sure, I kind of respected him as a comedian. Then again that’s when I didn’t know any better.
Seeing as we’re continuing down this road, take “Jack Frost.” Before you ask, this is the Michael Keaton movie where he plays a musician who is also a father. Yeah. It’s quite bad. The good thing is that it looks good. It’s very artsy in terms of some of the special effects but it’s not artsy in an obtrusive way. Some of the acting is pricelessly hilarious too. What’s wrong with it? It’s yet another movie that glorifies the disappointing father figure that just has better things to do than spend time with his family. Sure, a man needs to make money. Then again you’d think that the character would learn in death how to appreciate his family. It closes out with the father turned snowman pretty much saying “thanks for forgiving me, now I’ve got better things to do, bye.” It’s the Warner Brothers Christmas message of friends, family and – sorry, I’ve got something else to cover.
Following “Jack Frost,” there’s a two-part horror franchise by the same name. Wow. Talk about a rip off. It’s the holiday version of “Child’s Play” without the endearing traits of “Child’s Play.” Actually, it’s the holiday version of every slasher flick known to man without the endearing traits of ANY of them.
There’s more. There’s many more, however I’m working on a deadline. Speaking of dead, how about the remake of “Black Christmas?” That movie dealt with death in a lot of ways, including dying at the box office. It took a fairly good horror story regarding the Christmas season and, much like most horror remakes whether they are seasonal or not, failed to stay at the same quality as the original. Sure, holidays might not seem like the proper horror movie time or environment so there’s the problem of message with “Jack Frost I&II” and “Black Christmas” but if you’re going to put out a movie, you might as well at least try to make it good. There might not be any redeeming features to either “Jack Frost I&II” or “Black Christmas.”
OK. With the amount of bad holiday movies there are, it would take a while to actually get through which are legitimately bad. So I guess these six would amount to movies to avoid this holiday season. It’ll make your holiday season much happier and a little less stressful.