Girlfriends of Christmas Past

Early in the movie my wife and I were aghast at the actions of the three women who had been burned by the same guy and briefly wondered why the lead woman refused to take her partner Ty's advice to forget and move on. Then it became clear. This was strictly a comedy. We couldn't take seriously what any of the three exes did or said.

From that point on, we found the movie actually pretty funny; perhaps not as funny as a Marx Brothers movie, or the three stooges, but definitely funny, right down to a little slapstick. Everyone around the girls plays it straight, but just like the Marx brothers, they play it all for laughs. This is actually very good escapist fare, all things considered. But don't compare it to the RomComs like Hallmark and others turn out. I think it succeeds quite well as a comedy so we rated it accordingly.

It's your usual christmas movie with an event planning lead and overly-done lines. I was quite taken aback, however, when the love interest began blaming all of women for the negative things that some men have done. I'll take cheesy but I won't take misogyny (or rampant stalking, B&E, and poisoning). This is one of the first movies I've stopped partway through and given up on.

Well, not that the two movies are tied together, but I enjoyed the 2021 "Boyfriends of Christmas Past", and then I stumbled upon the 2016 movie "Girlfriends of Christmas Past" and of course I opted to watch that one as well.

But writer and director Jake Helgren just didn't manage to churn out a movie that provided me with much of any entertainment or enjoyment here. In fact, the movie was totally devoid of comedy that made me laugh. So sitting through an hour and a half of half-baked comedy that didn't even make me smile was sort of a drag.

The storyline told in "Girlfriends of Christmas Past" fell short of entertaining me, yet I managed to sit through the ordeal to the bitter end, hoping all along that the movie would pick up and become better. But that just never happened.

I only recognized John Brotherton in this movie, though it is not someone I am familiar with. But I will say that they definitely had managed to get together a good enough ensemble of actors and actresses to partake in the movie. Just a real shame that they had virtually nothing to work with in terms of a proper script or characters that you could relate to or even take a liking to.

This 2016 movie is not one I would recommend you waste your time, money or effort on. Some of us suffered through this ordeal so you don't have to.

My rating of "Girlfriends of Christmas Past" lands on a very generous two out of ten stars.

I'm not a fan of revenge themes in either comedy or romance. I sort of agree with the reviewer who said you need to look at this as comedy not romance, although there is a side of romance. Just don't take the movie too seriously. The trouble is that it's hard to reconcile the two given that it's not just comedy, but silly exaggerated comedy and then the romance has serious moments. So really you have to look at the two parts differently.

There are some funny, and mean revenge plots.

I am not opposed to campy Christmas nonsense but this movie misses the mark by a long shot. The premise of the movie is that three women who have never met before drop everything in their lives to conspire to break up the relationship of the man they all used to date because he cheated on them. The characters are poorly written idiots without any redeeming qualities. You want to try and grab onto something in this movie, but there isn't anything there. I won't lie there are laughs to be had because there are several layers of absurdity in this pile of garbage, but you don't feel good watching it. None of the people are likeable and there isn't anything fun about the revenge plot at the heart of the story. There are a ton of stupid fun Christmas movies out there that are far more enjoyable to watch than this one. Watch anything other than this. Really truly awful.