Depressing af with strong anti-Christian sentiment. Just what I look for in a Christmas movie (!)
It's too bad because I think it's a good premise and the characters had promise but this movie was not fun. Production values were fine, it looked fine, acting was good, and I wouldn't call it boring. It was not predictable. So those are all plusses. There were a few nice moments and some laughs buried in this bog of misery but I can't say they were worth it. It also has very little to do with Santa, really, and isn't Christmassy.
I can only imagine what the pitch meeting for this movie looked like. It's hard to picture the studio saying, "OK, but make it sadder" for each new draft of the script, but that must have been what happened. This should have been a comedy, and not a drama with a few jokes. The premise lends itself to a comedy.
I thought, OK, they're taking us really low, to make the uplift at the end even more powerful. Nope. The payoff isn't there, in my opinion.
