Santa's Summer House

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.

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

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.

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.

-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.