La Magie de Noël

These kinds of "uplifting" family-oriented movies sometimes tend to be a bit on the cheesy side, but this one was extremely moldy. Wow.

Bad, woody dialog. Plot holes big enough to drive a semi-truck through. Undeveloped characters. Actors who can't act. Characters who act without motivation. Even for a fantasy movie, the relationships between characters isn't believable.

Tom Arnold, the only recognizable actor in the movie, must have been really hard up for some pocket change. Even his three brief appearances come across as stiff, lacking sincerity, and awkward.

My wife had control of the remote, so I could only hold my nose through the last third of this stinker.

This movie accomplishes just what it set out to, I believe. I align the theme and lessons learned here with those of my favorites classics like A Christmas Carol and How the Grinch Stole Christmas. It was VERY Funny, entertaining and it ended on a high note like it should. Okay, there was some over acting and some cheesy things, but it was deliberate and genius (I think).

Despite loving Christmas and loving many Christmas films and specials, 'All I Want for Christmas' didn't appeal to me on paper and looked cheesy from the advertising. It just sounded so predictable and unimaginative and Tom Arnold usually does little for me (with a couple of exceptions). Plus reading about the female lead being one of those characters with overblown character flaws filled me with further dread, as that is a peeve of mine when watching something.

'All I Want for Christmas' was not just more or less what was expected (very low expectations despite my love for the holiday, the only reason for watching as well as completest sake and curiosity) but was pretty much worse. Have seen worse films and Christmas films, but this was very bad in almost every area (and this is coming from someone who always tries to find the good in something that is overall bad) and is very close to being towards the bottom.

The soundtrack was quite pleasant.

Other than that, 'All I Want for Christmas' was a waste of time. The acting is mediocre at best and absolutely awful at worst. Faring worst is Melissa Sagemiller, who overacts and comes over as neurotic in a role that is as badly written as people say it is. She has no chemistry with not as bad but bland and too laid back Brad Rowe, really was not feeling the charm or the romance and that he saw any appeal in her suspends some disbelief. Arnold's character was completely pointless, one that the film does absolutely nothing with, and Arnold is a plank of wood in it.

Really disliked the characters, they are not interesting or well developed and almost all of them have deeply unpleasant and over-flawed personalities. 'All I Want for Christmas' has a cheap and rushed look to it, especially the choppy editing. The script is cheesier than the cheesiest of burgers, as sugary as the sourest sweet and there is a mean spirited quality. Plus it never really flows naturally.

Furthermore, the story has nothing imaginative in it. Lots of well worn tropes with very fatigued execution. There is no charm or heart to it either and the pace lacks energy.

In summation, very poor. 2/10.

As another reviewer mentioned, a script written by AI might be better than this one. I swear I just watched another equally terrible movie with the gender roles reversed.

As another reviewer mentioned, this movie reeks of stinky, cheesy, non-creative plot.

I wish these writers and directors would change careers.

I really shouldn't bother commenting because I recognize that this movie is simply holiday schedule filler featuring actors that don't get cast very often. And I admit I watched only the first 10 minutes. But those 10 minutes were enough to get me to turn off the TV and head to IMDb to comment. I'm going to blame the writers and director rather than the cast for how awful it was. Melissa Sagemiller's Elizabeth is so abrasive and unprofessional that not only would she not be an ad agency vice-president, she wouldn't even be employed. And the repeated drink spilling gag: I guess it's lucky for the characters that the only beverage in their universe is room temperature water served in coffee cups because no one screamed in pain from being scalded or got their clothes stained. There was a profound amount of lazy film making just in the opening 3 scenes and I assumed things would go downhill from there.