I heckle a lot of Christmas movies, especially the Hallmark ones, for being unforgivably cheesy and predictable. Those are the staple ingredients of their white bread movies, and you need to add a LOT of your own salt in order to make it palatable. But Wish For Christmas is bad in an entirely new way.

Anna (Anna Fricks) is a typical high school student, gearing up for the winter ball. Her parents, Luke (Joey Lawrence, with eyebrows so perfectly sculpted they’re suspicious) and Elizabeth (Leigh-Allyn Baker), are super religious. They “bring light to the law” in their law practice, which is not-for-profit, actually turns away paying customers, and focuses only on helping poor people whose homes are being foreclosed. And somehow they stay afloat. Don’t question it. Their family puts god first, which means never missing church, and praying before you eat pizza, and forbidding your teenage daughter from dressing like a teenage daughter. Although they’ve still managed to raise a real bitch. But then disaster strikes: the winter ball gets moved to Christmas Eve, which means Anna can’t go, as she is obligated to attend services at her uncle’s church. So she did the only thing that makes sense. She uses her nightly prayer to wish that her parents do not believe in god anymore. And it works!

So now her parents are non-Christian, which means her dad says things like “Hey, man” and her mom lets her buy a dress that doesn’t suck, and they toast their business with actual wine that they actually drink. And they get very worked up when a very expensive vase gets broken. Oh and they don’t pick up their phone on the first ring. But the rest of the town still thinks of them as religious, so they still show up for Bible study and such. Oh boy is it awkward. Consider them added to the town’s prayer list.

This movie gives Christians a bad name, and makes them look like fools. And when the screenwriter imagines the nefarious things nonChristians get up to, it’s even more ludicrous. Like, the secretary now has to say Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas. It’s impossible to take this shit seriously and important that you don’t. Jesus needs to fire his publicist. Wish For Christmas is every kind of bad except the kind that’s so bad it’s kind of good. This is so bad it stays bad, and makes you feel dirty, leaves a grimy film on the holiday season, and on movies generally.  It’s going to take a real miracle to adequately cleanse myself of this movie’s awfulness.