The Christmas Classic

Utterly abysmal "The Christmas Classic" is a stinking Christmas turkey rather than any kinda Christmas classic. Malin Akerman returns to her small, mountain hometown to close a deal for her smarmy fiancé to turn Ryan Hansen's 'charming' ski resort into a corporate beast (boo!)... but as Hansen's reluctant she's stuck staying with the family she'd tried to avoid (including Amy Smart & Chris Mulinax) - might that teach her some life lessons? Director / co-writer (Austin Nichols) Shane Dax Taylor applies the lowest standards to his work, and the dire quality of some performances bear that out. It is a Christmas disaster. Dire. Avoid at all costs.

I don't know what it is with the parody parading as serious hallmark style cheesy Christmas movies being churned or in recent years but I can't imagine that anyone could watch these movies with any grain of seriousness when the plots are completely stereotyped and across who are generally decent actors purposely over (under?) act to be on par with actual holiday movies thar are supposed to be taken seriously. That being said, this movie made me laugh hard at the ridiculousness of how perfectly this movie played on those played out tropes. And, they did it better than the 2022 Christmas parody, Christmas with the Campbells which was just downright cringe-worthy thanks to my beloved Justin Long's awful, over the top nondescript southern/Midwestern small town cowboy accent. I hear Justin Long but I heart Chris Hansen almost as much and at least he didn't attempt a bad accent. Definitely worth a watch for a good laugh at the tongue in cheek, poking fun at sappy holiday romance movies.

I was hopeful for another decent holiday movie with comedy and charm, a great plot line and some romance.

What I got?

More than 40 dick jokes and a deep concern for one of the child actors. Never in my life would I have expected to hear a child be forced to say "would 6 inches make you happy, mommy?".

GROSS.

Was this supposed to be a parody? What was the point of this movie? To humiliate Malin and Amy? A waste of money and resources as far as I'm concerned. For anyone trying to avoid chauvinistic movies with dick innuendoes every 2 minutes- don't waste your time with this film.

If a parody this was to be, you missed the mark entirely.

Of course I had never heard about the 2023 Showtime Christmas movie titled "The Christmas Classic" prior to sitting down to watch it as part of my 2024 Christmas movie marathon.

But I will say that the movie's cover was sufficiently cheesy to instill that particular sense of being in for a sappy Christmas movie experience.

Writers Austin Nichols and Shane Dax Taylor put together a sufficiently enjoyable storyline, but it just wasn't standing out in the vast sea of similar movies. And as such, I have to say that "The Christmas Classic" is not going to become a Christmas classic. Watchable, for sure, just not memorable out unique.

There were some familiar faces on the screen, such as Malin Akerman, Ryan Hansen, Austin Nichols and Amy Smart. It should be said, though, that the acting performances in the movie were fair.

They mentioned The Griswalds in this movie, as they were talking about Christmas lights, which I found to be a nice touch and a lovely nod to the classic "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation".

My rating of director Shane Dax Taylor's 2023 movie "The Christmas Classic" lands on a bland five out of ten stars.

I started watching this show because it has several really good cast members. However, it seems that they all needed a quick pay check and agreed to do this movie without looking at the script first. I was really hoping that this would be one of the really good Hallmark type movies like Ex-Mas. However, this movie is so shallow, unrealistic and stupid that none of the characters are worth caring about. I think that the actors tried their best, but either low funding, bad locations or bad directing has crushed their efforts. There are hundreds of really good Christmas rom/coms. This is NOT one of them. Do yourself a favor and skip this one.