Metacritic reviews

The film’s mix of elements of “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” and “Bad Santa” is amusing.

It’s a testament to Williams’s energy that even in an unfortunate part as Virgil, an angry, alcoholic dad, he comes across as the most vivid member of the cast.

There are a few nice moments of performance and filmmaking (including the elaborately choreographed final shot), but not enough to redeem a film that seems to flinch from the harsh truths it was presumably created to address.

Whereas "Bad Santa" was nastier and riskier, as well as more mischievously winsome, A Merry Friggin' Christmas is as curiously timid as it is morally dubious.

Williams made some terrible movies, but he never phoned them in. On both counts, this one’s no exception.

A Yuletide comedy so slight, it sometimes feels like a bonus-sized Christmas episode for a sitcom that never should have been green-lit in the first place.

Representing one of Robin Williams' last films, A Merry Friggin' Christmas lives up to its bah, humbug title. Not only because it's terrible, although it is, but rather because one desperately hoped that the beloved actor would go out on a high note.

Neither warm and fuzzy in the best holiday movie traditions, nor edgy and irreverent a la “Bad Santa” (coincidentally also co-starring Graham, to better effect), it’s something of a mystery what audience A Merry Friggin’ Christmas intends to serve.

The atonal script is credited to first-timer Michael Brown, but there’s still no explaining Shapeero’s lump-of-coal debut.

In attempting to work through its family issues, it arrives at catharses that are contrived and unearned, and in attempting to find humor in this pungent situation, it fails to deliver laughs.