Like most peoples Christmas our Christmas revolves around traditions. One of our traditions is Boxing Day soup. We take all the leftovers from the previous day and with good stock make a thick, nourishing soup to eat. The result is a cheap satisfying meal that leaves you feeling full and happy for virtually no effort.
I mention this because this film is like a soup of other films. Groundhog day, Switch, Family Man, Scrooge, Scrooged, Christmas Do-Over and a few others thrown into the straight to TV blender and zhushed together to make a hearty broth of Holiday movie with a little cream on top to make it sweet. Its not original, overly sickly, clever or particularly brilliantly executed but the whole is better because of the sum of its parts.
Steven Weber is slickly cynical as Carter, getting frustrated as he can't figure out how to buy his way out of his predicament. Jesse Carter pitches just the right side of perfect without being smug as his brother looking after the Dad. Molly Shannon is totally likable as Angie. The kid is not utterly annoying. The whole cast pull together to make this chug along in an enjoyable way to reach the climax. There genuinely is a point where you think he isn't going to get there. But hey, its a Christmas movie it has to have a happy ending, thats the point. There's some nice little comic touches, and a couple of genuine laugh out loud moments. Not huge belly laughs, its not Christmas Vacation. Some of it is quite dark, but you need the dark to make it light and sure enough it all works out.
Sure it drags a tiny bit in the middle, a lot of films do, and not every single thing works but in the main its a perfectly nice, perfectly good, perfectly watchable film to get you in the mood for Christmas that you can watch round about the beginning of December and it'll make you feel all warm and fuzzy and full of that familiarity of Christmas. Just like Boxing Day Soup.
