An average movie

I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but, since I have a weak spot for Gabrielle Union and since it was available on Netflix, I thought I might as well check it out. To be honest, I’m not a huge fan of Christmas movies so I was probably not the target audience for this material. And, indeed, this one turned out to be rather underwhelming but it’s too bad because I think it actually had some potential. Sure, the intro was such a blatant rip-off of ‘Up’ but it was effective and, in a few mins, I actually did feel a connection with this family, especially with Danny Glover’s character. Unfortunately, for each solid scenes like when the one when they all danced together, you had to endure so much garbage though. For example, even though Mo'Nique’s character was supposed to be loud and obnoxious, her schtick was actually barely entertaining. However, I’m afraid J.B. Smoove was even worse though. Seriously, his character was just rather pathetic with no redeeming features. Eventually, you might wonder how a bright and attractive woman like Cheryl could ever marry him and to have another gorgeous woman like Keri Hilson supposedly falling for his ‘charms’ was borderline insulting. But he wasn’t the only one to blame though. Basically, the whole thing was pretty random which wasn’t necessarily an issue but, as I mentioned before, even though some moments were actually solid, most of it was either boring, idiotic or even rather cringe-inducing. It’s too bad because I actually liked these characters, there was something genuine about them and I think it could have been much better than that. Anyway, to conclude, even though I have to admit that the damned thing was rather harmless, it was still too weak and I don’t think it is really worth a look, except maybe if you are a die-hard fan of such Christmas movies. 

5/10