Top 10 Christmas Turkeys
24.12.09 # Top Ten # 10 Comments
Last year we looked at 10 Christmas movie greats (It’s A Wonderful Life, White Christmas, Die Hard), now let’s explore the flip-side.
The formula for a joyful Christmas movie is pretty simple – sentiment, comedy, Christmas cheer. So why are there so many Christmas turkeys? It’s our own fault, at this time of year we become less discerning about what we’ll pay to see, out of a desire to watch something Christmassy. So studios just pump out any old crap with ‘Christmas’ or ‘Santa’ in the title, knowing they’re guaranteed to make a quick buck. Last year’s Four Christmases, say, made a nice cash sum at the box office despite being universally panned.
So while there is an abundance of choice, here are the Top 10 Worst Christmas Movies.
Deck The Halls
Who put Danny De Vito in a Christmas movie and didn’t cast him as an elf? These guys. Instead, he moves into a new neighbourhood and starts a war with the guy across the street, Matthew Broderick, to see who can be the most Christmassy. Ass-y is right. Matthew Broderick looks exhausted with life and movie-making.
Ernest Saves Christmas
It’s one of the great mysteries of cinema why this series continued as long as it did. This was the third of 10 movies starring Jim Varney as the witless, charmless and utterly unfunny Ernest P. Worrell. Here he’s is on a mission to help Santa find a replacement in time for Christmas. Ernest was originally created by a commercials company, which seems somewhat symbolic when talking about the festive season.
Jack Frost
Not to be confused with the horror B-movie, this sees Michael Keaton killed in car crash and returning as a snowman to look after his son. Possibly the worst concept ever, this also features terrible CGI.
Santa With Muscles
In a ludicrous plot with a dodgy moral core, an evil millionaire played by Hulk Hogan gets amnesia and believes he is Santa Claus. He then saves an orphanage by beating up a load of bad guys, proving to children that violence is the solution to problems. It may surprise you to find out that Hogan’s acting skills are very limited. In fact he makes Ernest look like Daniel Day Lewis. Currently rated the 53rd worst movie in the history of film by IMDB voters. The writer sued to have his name taken off the credits.
Surviving Christmas
Tim Allen, Vince Vaughn and Ben Affleck are the three actors vying for the title ‘King Of The Christmas Turkeys’. Here’s Affleck’s chance to really show what he can do and sh*t the bed. In Surviving Christmas he plays a wealthy guy who feels a void in his life so pays the man now living in his childhood home (James Gandolfini) to let him join their family for the festive season. As with other perennial Christmas non-favourite Reindeer Games, this movie came during a dark time in Ben Affleck’s career – the 10 years between Good Will Hunting and Gone Baby Gone.
Fred Claus
Vince Vaughn can be hilariously funny when he is trying to act serious (Psycho) or painfully unfunny when he is half-trying to be hilarious (Fred Claus). Here he plays Santa Claus’s resentful elder brother Fred who ends up being forced to move to the North Pole, with very lacklustre comedy results. Also starring Paul Giamatti, Kevin Spacey, Kathy Bates, Elizabeth Banks and Miranda Richardson this gets a place on the list for being the biggest waste of talent.
How The Grinch Stole Christmas
Carrey’s maniacal comedy act, mixed with bright garish colours. Like being trapped inside an ADD child’s brain for two hours and force fed Smarties ’til you throw up. Wants to be like a Tim Burton movie but Ron Howard is no Tim Burton. This is a shiny bright light to distract retards.
The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause
The first ‘Santa Clause’ movie worked thanks to the charm and comic ability of Tim Allen. By the third film in the series Allen has the look of a man who knows he’s crapping on kids’ heads but just doesn’t care anymore. Overacting Martin Short plays villain Jack Frost. He was nominated for a Razzie.
Home Alone 3 and 4
The spectre of puberty claimed Macaulay Culkin. Old age and self-respect claimed Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern. So the Home Alone franchise continued, unnecessarily, with a trio of highly lacklustre replacements. Actually different trios for 3 and 4. Bad kid acting, and grown ups being hit in the nuts. John Hughes wrote the third one. It’s a grim situation all round.
Santa Claus Conquers The Martians
The worst Mars movie before Mission To Mars, this sees the kids on the red planet revolt against their miserable lives and send their infantry to kidnap Santa, so they can be as happy as the children on Earth. The ones not in the third world anyway. Featuring alien outfits that would make Doctor Who blush, this has attained a sort of romantic, mythical status of awfulness that puts it up there with Troll 2 and Plan 9 From Outer Space. No Christmas turkey list is complete without it but I suspect some of you will be tempted to watch it anyway.
Any Christmas movie duds you can think of? Please add your comments below.
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All Christmas films are great in the correct state of alcoholic stupor.
The Grinch is a great movie. A perfect visualisation of Dr Seuss’ books. Tim Burton would have made it too dark. My kids & I both love it, we watch it every year.
Are you sure you’re not thinking of the old animation? Cause the Jim Carrey live action Grinch doesn’t exactly capture the old Seuss book, unless in that book all the grown-ups have a key party and the grinch dresses up in costumes to make lame, dated jokes about famous film directors.
@ Dalmationjaws
That key party thing was *so* wrong
@Dalmationjaws – I literally meant the visual aspects of the film e.g. costumes, sets, make-up etc.
There are lots of weird/absurd bits in it but they seem to fly over the kids heads LOL
the only thing I disagree with on this list is the use of retard. Mentally disadvataged would be better and less offensive.
I think Fred Claus deserves a little more credit. The banter between the two main characters was fun enough for me. I can’t believe you missed Jingle All the Way. Also, doesn’t the first two Home Alones teach kids that violence is a solution too? I think we take these things way to seriously sometimes. Jack Frost is the creepiest holiday movie, how did anyone think that a movie about a kid being haunted by his dead dad thorugh a snowman that looks like Michael Keaton is beyond me. Then again, someone thought Tropic Thunder was worth making too.
I am proud to admit that Santa With Muscles, AND Santa Claus Conquers the Martians are watched annually around the holidays in my house! Christmas has become so commercialized and hokey anymore that I find these movies absolutely appropriate around the holiday season – besides, these flims offer a refreshing change of pace from the predictable boredom of watching A Christmas Story for 24 hours every year…Long live the B-Rated film genres!
None of the Santa Clause movies are especially good, but the second one is offensively bad and is far worse than the third. The plot forcing a woman that has managed to attain the job of school principal to quit her job and drop her life to be whisked away to the North Pole when she just met the repulsive Allen sets women back a good ten years.
I can’t believe How the Grinch Stole Christmas and Fred Claus are on here, I thought that Jim Carry was the perfect man for the job and that it captured the ideas of the original while taking it in a new direction as well. As for Fred Claus, it was a new take on the story of Santa and had Paul Giamatti as the best Santa I have ever seen, sure Vince Vaughn isn’t a great comedic actor but the two of them together made for a great kids movie. And I am proud to say that I have always liked the movie Jack Frost, the idea of a dad who feels the need to be with his son all the time is amazingly heartfelt to a kid growing up in a family where their dad can’t be with them sometimes, much like my childhood was. So ok the effects were below subpar that shouldn’t ruin the message the movie brings, which is that u need to live life to the fullest. Which ment spending time with the family he loved.
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