The Christmas Classic

Utterly abysmal "The Christmas Classic" is a stinking Christmas turkey rather than any kinda Christmas classic. Malin Akerman returns to her small, mountain hometown to close a deal for her smarmy fiancé to turn Ryan Hansen's 'charming' ski resort into a corporate beast (boo!)... but as Hansen's reluctant she's stuck staying with the family she'd tried to avoid (including Amy Smart & Chris Mulinax) - might that teach her some life lessons? Director / co-writer (Austin Nichols) Shane Dax Taylor applies the lowest standards to his work, and the dire quality of some performances bear that out. It is a Christmas disaster. Dire. Avoid at all costs.

So in the first 3 minutes the female lead yells "S**T!" and then "OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD" half a dozen times. Several minutes in we hear "Not a chance in H**l" and then her sister starts with the "OH MY GOD." Whoever the writers are needs to broaden his/her/their vocabulary and knowledge of proper English that would be appropriate for a Christmas movie that (assumedly) children will be watching. The female lead character is a spoiled, arrogant, entitled and thoroughly hateful brat--so nothing at all "nice" or uplifting about this pile of detritus. First thought is "Well the children won't be watching this," and second thought is that the exclamation "S**T" in the first few minutes is a very suitable description of this film. Turned it off at 20 minutes in. An offensive waste of time.

Malin is the reason I watched it on the first place, I really like her. The plot was weird, the whole contest "christmas classic" was never well explained, kinda of just happened and that was it, and wasnt funny at all, not once - actually, the six inches joke made by a CHILD felt so off and weird! This whole movie has a weird vibe, i cant quite put my finger on it, but the vibe feels off, weird and nonsense. If "island Christmas" started to play again one more time i would loose it! Even Malins fiancé character is extra weird, seems pointless to the story, I dont know! I was mesmerized by the weird vibe, though. I watched until the end just to see what would happen lol. So weird, I swear, never watched something like it!

Of course I had never heard about the 2023 Showtime Christmas movie titled "The Christmas Classic" prior to sitting down to watch it as part of my 2024 Christmas movie marathon.

But I will say that the movie's cover was sufficiently cheesy to instill that particular sense of being in for a sappy Christmas movie experience.

Writers Austin Nichols and Shane Dax Taylor put together a sufficiently enjoyable storyline, but it just wasn't standing out in the vast sea of similar movies. And as such, I have to say that "The Christmas Classic" is not going to become a Christmas classic. Watchable, for sure, just not memorable out unique.

There were some familiar faces on the screen, such as Malin Akerman, Ryan Hansen, Austin Nichols and Amy Smart. It should be said, though, that the acting performances in the movie were fair.

They mentioned The Griswalds in this movie, as they were talking about Christmas lights, which I found to be a nice touch and a lovely nod to the classic "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation".

My rating of director Shane Dax Taylor's 2023 movie "The Christmas Classic" lands on a bland five out of ten stars.

I started watching this show because it has several really good cast members. However, it seems that they all needed a quick pay check and agreed to do this movie without looking at the script first. I was really hoping that this would be one of the really good Hallmark type movies like Ex-Mas. However, this movie is so shallow, unrealistic and stupid that none of the characters are worth caring about. I think that the actors tried their best, but either low funding, bad locations or bad directing has crushed their efforts. There are hundreds of really good Christmas rom/coms. This is NOT one of them. Do yourself a favor and skip this one.