It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year…Except for Recent Christmas Movies

After a pleasant Thanksgiving feast, a couple of friends from home and I decided to hit up our local theater. I wanted to see Gus Van Sant’s Milk but my trusty cinema neglected this film in favor of showing everyone’s favorite Harry Potter-wannabe, Twilight, on four screens. So I was begrudgingly taken to see Four Christmases, another poor exercise in Hollywood’s recent slew of terrible Christmas-y films.

I say Christmas-y because this film had almost nothing to do with Christmas! Apparently, to have yourself a merry little Christmas movie, all you need are occasional Christmas songs and one or two shots of a tree. Ho ho horrible. Four Christmases is basically a less-crass version of Wedding Crashers (which is not a good thing) with a few scenes of gift exchanges. There isn’t even any snow!

You may think I am overreacting but I can’t ignore the vast differences in quality between modern Christmas silver-screen clunkers and the classics of Christmases long, long ago.

I don’t understand how audiences can accept sub-par entries such as Four Christmases, Christmas With the Kranks, Bad Santa, and The Santa Clause 2…and 3 as legitimate entertainment. I will always pop in A Christmas Story, It’s a Wonderful Life, and White Christmas before watching these trite attempts at capturing the Christmas spirit.

For some reason, this onslaught of Christmas movies where everyone hates Christmas or everyone is miserable has connected with moviegoers. I didn’t quite understand their appeal until this past weekend. While I was more focused on the odd-smelling woman next to me, the rest of the theater was guffawing along with the awkward and crude family interactions. Everyone was enjoying this anti-family message of the movie. The married couples surrounding me were laughing their asses off and I realized why: they must hate each other as much as the characters in the movie do and can relate to their miserable experiences.

I know that sounds harsh but what does it mean for our culture that the upcoming holiday is now more hell than holy? I guess it takes bad cinema to remind us every now and then. Thanks Four Christmases.

~Mike Estabrook