hillwalker3000

Like anyone who got hooked on season 1, and binge-watched every episode that followed, we were looking forward to the closing season (10 episodes).

Unfortunately, it fell rather flat.

Far too much time was spent on the 'affair' between Joe and Bronte. It made no sense why she would fall for his sickly sweet efforts at telling her how much he loved her. There was nothing romantic about his obsessive, over the top behaviour and yet she fell for his charms. Ridiculous, and no fun to watch as he simpered his way from one cheesy line to the next. If this had been season 1, we would have given up.

The magical appearance by the end of three people who earlier appeared to have died was also difficult to swallow. And the 'happy ever after' race to the closing credits was a cheap trick at tying every loose end.

Someone came up with the brilliant idea to have the Rock appear in a dumb movie as the 'muscle' - how original, since he is neither heart-throb material nor an actual actor. He doesn't let us. Wooden delivery, blank expression and buried under so much CGI during the action sequences that he might as well be a cardboard cut-out.

Selling this as a 'Christmas' movie is also a cop out. Santa Claus is kidnapped from his high security compound (!) on Christmas Eve - which is the only reference to the festive season in the entire movie. The rest is a super-hero movie that makes the Marvel franchise look like Kurosawa or Godard. It's that bad.

The plot makes very little sense - Santa's brother is in league with a witch to punish all those kiddie on the Naught List by hi-jacking Santa's delivery system. So far so good, but then we have a super-hacker who is your standard absentee dad and a random crew of mythological baddies who do battle against the Rock and his band of goodies.

Far from a classic Christmas film - this is a Christmas Turkey.