Did you ever wonder what would have happened had Charles Dickens been raised in a trailer park? Me neither, actually, but this movie is determined to answer the question that nobody asked, and it turns out the answer is even more dismal than you may have (briefly, just then) imagined.

Cindy (Taryn Manning) is a trashy trailer park fixture. She’s allergic to work and has a collection of scruffy kids from different daddies, one of whom has just died in a paint balling accident as untragic as they come. His redneck funeral is an occasion for her to once again lean on her generous boyfriend while flirting with the bad boys who impregnate and leave her. Cindy hates Christmas, and it looks like the tree will once again be bare, as “the claw machine ain’t been kind to Mama.”

Second-rate Cindy gets a second-rate redemption. She is visited by 3 ghosts (you guessed it: past, future, present), and the sad thing is, even Scrooge got a better reception. Her ghosts are just as junky and bargain basement as she is, which is a damn shame. For once I found myself sympathizing with Cindy, in that these ghosts were doing a piss poor job of convincing me too. Will Cindy ever come around? Um, yes. What else is the point? This is a Christmas movie, albeit a difficult to identify one, and there are certain protocols to be followed. Happy endings are a must. And even a writer dumb enough to rewrite Dickens isn’t fool enough to think he can best him.

Taryn Manning is of course perfect for this role, as long as we all agree that this role needed to exist in the first place. She parades around in booty shorts that are mostly booty and hardly shorts. Her hair is never brushed, her kids are never tame, she hasn’t got a touch of class. Beverly D’Angelo plays her mother, and I assume that was a pretty low point in her career – probably didn’t make the D’Angelo family Christmas letter, despite its being seasonally appropriate. The movie is dumb. I wish it was at least dumb fun but it’s not, it’s just a frustrating, useless ball of goop, like gum on the sole of your shoe. Better to have not stepped in it in the first place.