User reviews

I've watched some garbage Christmas movies in my life, but this takes the Christmas cake!

Absolutely nothing happens, the acting is absolutely appalling, and there's a toe-curlingly long and pointless croquet match which appears unscripted and as if it was filmed on an iPhone.

-10/10

Robert Mitchum was no longer with us when this horror was filmed. I thank God for that. His son Christopher Mitchum plays the role of "Pop" in this...whatever this thing is.

Every single scene has the acting quality of an adult film. The bouncy Christmas music soundtrack is the icing on this cow paddy.

It's truly unfathomable that this exists.

What a load of garbage! I don't understand how films like this get made. Who thought a movie like Santa's Summer House was a good idea? Did anyone involved in the making of Santa's Summer House think it was going to be a quality movie? Is the straight-to-video market so lucrative that trash like this actually makes money? So many questions that I couldn't care less to learn the answers to.

There's really no point in listing all the bad aspects of Santa's Summer House. Everything about it is bottom-of-the barrel. The plot is beyond ridiculous, most of the acting is horrendous (Christopher Mitchum proves yet again that acting ability isn't inherited), the lighting is gawdy, and the sound is so poor you can hear echoes anytime a character walks across the tile floor. The plot has a message that's pretty decent, but it's handled so annoyingly hamfisted that it loses much of its effectiveness. The entire time I was watching, I was just hoping and praying that 90s martial art icon (am I overstating it?) Cynthia Rothrock would do some sort of spinning-scorpion-five-finger-Shaolin-death-kick on the rest of the cast.

If it's so bad, then why haven't I rated it lower? Well, as bad as it is, it's not unwatchable. There are a boatload of movies out there much worse than this. And, like I said, it does have a decent message. Finally, I'll give it a point for hilariously casting Rothrock in the role of Nanna, Santa's wife.

3/10

I watch a lot of these daytime Christmas films and surprisingly find most of them ok around the 6/10 standard but this one was woeful.

The plot was not actually the worst, but acting was atrocious, the married couple worst of all, along with Mrs Claus. The wife of the arguing couple seemed to have no interest at all in even being in the film or acting.

They were not given much by lines to work with and that added to one endless game of croquet, with no dialogue, no idea how the the game worked and awful editing where one of the phases of play was shown twice and images of Christmas items between scenes made it a arduous watch.

The guy who played Santa tried his best and the young boy and girl were fine but could not improve it.

The only thing that made this movie enjoyable was the fact that it featured 3 world champion real life martial artists weirdly.

It's a mess of the movie, but if you like really so bad they're good then you should hopefully enjoy this. In reality, it deserves a one, but I'm giving it at eight to help counterbalance all the 1 ratings, to help let it be known that it's terribleness in fact, simultaneously, redeeming itself.

It's true the acting in this movie would be improved if a computer read the lines and the croquette scene felt like it would go on for hours, but the story is as wonderful as a Lifetime or Hallmark Christmas film.

Either the acting gets a bit better after the croquette game or I was just worn down, but the unsurprising pay off at the end was worth the trouble. You have to be a sucker for Christmas movies to buy into any of it, but that's the joy of Christmas movies, they are just delightful indulgences that are probably the last bastion of good guys winning and bad guys either being put to shame or repenting, where the hero is actually someone trying to do the right thing. If you enjoy that formula you will like this movie.

Saw this as a Rifftrax presentation. Which is the only thing that made this remotely watchable (more so than most). Question 1: Who backs these movies? Question 2: Why? Question 3: Isn't this against the Geneva convention? As noted in other places, this has martial arts people but strangely does not make us of this talent. Not that they should be in this movie to begin with, but shows how much diregard the director has towards filmmaking and using acting talents. The dialogue is suitable for unlearning the English language or acting like an alien on their first contact on Earth after crashing their spaceship and suffering multiple brain injuries. The is no real plot, it's entirely predictable, the cute music is insufferable. Belongs in Lifetime's pantheon of 3 am Xmas filler spots 18 days before Christmas.

I'm watching Sony Christmas channel and have just caught the movie Santa's Summer House. It's by far the WORST movie I've ever seen. Acting, script, directing, sound and camera work all equally awful with a capital A. They even tried to shoot a full croquet game handheld. Filmed as badly as a 5 year old child's camera work would be. 0/10 rating. Amateur drama groups could make their own home movie much better. Surprised Sony put this on, but then again its showing at 3am. No wonder !

Only watched this movie because Cynthia Rothrock was in it. Who would have thought that a star of martial arts could look so good. Producers wanted to extend the film so they plonked in half an hours footage of a croquet match. Waste of time and so boring.

Well, this movie was never going to win an oscar but it is free from zombies, vampires, slaughter and mayhem which seems to be the general television fare these days. It has the lovely Jessica Morris to add a bit of glamour. It is a film you could watch in the height of summer or the depths of winter.

In this low budget film a feisty family go to have summer vacation on the Argentinian presidential palace, having as hosts no other than Cristina and Néstor Fernández de Kirchner. They do many local traditions, like eating pasta (it is well known half of Argentinias own an Italian passport), doing a traditional "Amigo Invisible" in which they randomly give each other lousy presents, or play an endless cricket game. I was hoping they were training and that the 3rd act would be the Kirchners fighting the British Royal Faimily in a game of cricket for the Falklands, but I fell asleep and missed the end, so I'm not really sure how it ends.

This one is a feel good classic that belongs up there with the magic of watching A Charlie Brown Christmas, Ziggy's Gift or Emmet Otter's Jug Band Christmas!