Writer(s): Knudsen
Starring: Courtney Mathews, Aaron Noble, Robert Laenen, Sheena Monnin
I'm just going to come out and say it: Christmas Coupon is the worst fucking Christmas movie ever made. Well, to be more technically accurate, it's the worst one I've ever seen, but the thought that there might be something worse out there is almost enough to make me never watch holiday movies again, lest I actually stumble upon one. It's the first movie I've ever seen that's also lead to physical side effects: my holiday-obsessed wife and I couldn't even get aroused for 12 hours after viewing. And, as she declared in all honesty immediately after we fast-forwarded through the final twenty minutes to get to the end: “This just completely sucked the holiday spirit from me.”
It follows a former world-champion figure skater named Alison Grant, who has now resorted to teaching figure skating lessons on a frozen pond. One day, her ex-boyfriend—a semi-handsome man named Ivan Hall—brings his niece to class, and they hit it off. Well, “hit it off” as in have a bitter argument with each other. Of course, by the end, they will fall for each other—even though I've seen more chemistry in police beatings, and, even though Alison already has a long-term boyfriend. Seriously, the dialogue and interactions are so baseless that it actually creates an unnerving atmosphere, rather than one of holiday happiness—like the two leads are being held at gunpoint off-camera, forced to make their relationship work, or else they will be blown to smithereens. I'm halfway tempted to give them the money to reshoot that version.
The movie careens from one idea to the next with no natural flow—it's as if the writer just wanted to cram in as many holiday tropes as possible, without even contemplating things like “believability” or “narrative”. Take the title, for example, which is one of the most hilariously ridiculous titles in holiday history; the inspiration for the title takes place in one scene, and is never recalled again until the end, where it, of course, plays a role in bringing the two feuding lovers back together. Again, did I mention that Alison already has a boyfriend? Typically in these movies, they make it "okay" for the main character to break up with their significant other, by portraying him as a monster, or a cheater, or someone who's no good. Here, though, they forget to even do that: sure, he's kind of a dick, and he doesn't really believe in her, but he actually comes off as more of the victim here, as Ivan is everywhere Alison is every time the boyfriend comes around. So he has every right to act angry, which he does so with all the conviction of someone to whom "anger" is a foreign concept.
Please, please, please, for the love of God, do not see this, unless you want your soul to be forever ruined. This isn't some “reverse psychology” thing, either: it's an honest-to-God plea. Jesus is probably rolling around in his...heaven. It's the worst holiday anything I've ever seen in my entire life. It's one of those movies that's too amateurish to even work as an unintentional comedy: the editing is poor (dig those jump cuts), the music is bland, and the writing is absolutely abysmal. That it comes from a “faith-based” studio is both the ultimate irony, and completely unsurprising.
RATING: 0/10.
TRIVIA: The incompetent director plays an equally incompetent priest, who gets minor points only for slightly resembling Rickety Cricket, the disgraced priest from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
TRAILER
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