A Dogwalker’s Christmas Tale

Luce is a spoiled little rich girl who LOVES Christmas. But her perfect Christmas is threatened when her imaginary boyfriend breaks up with her and her parents fly to Botswana for charity work. Left alone in a big empty house, her neighbours ask her to walk their adorable dog Hank while they’re busy over the holidays. At the dog park she meets a keen young man named Dean who’s everything the pretend boyfriend was not, but his love of animals means he pressures her to broach the subject with her new dog employers – because of course they’re the nasty developers responsible for tearing down the dog park.

It almost sounds like someone picked random holiday elements out of a jar and strung them together (loosely) in this movie. It’s pretty awful, but you can spice things up by counting the times you’d like to throw an ice-encrusted, gravel-stuffed snow ball straight through Jonathan Bennett’s perfect, shit-eating grin. Will they save the park? Will they fall in love? Of course they will, it’s a goddamn Christmas cliche-a-thon. Oh, and Sean suggests fans of Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers may enjoy a mini reunion: Dina Meyer and Patrick Muldoon both find themselves in this spectacular ensemble.

How Sarah Got Her Wings

Sarah is a good person; in fact she dies performing an act of kindness. Spoiler alert! She dies! And she “wakes up” in The Lobby, the purgatory outside the gates of Heaven, and she “isn’t on the list.” Which is confusing because she’s prudish, non-smoking, church-going, and charitable – what more does Heaven want? She gets sent back to Earth and she’s got until Christmas Eve to do whatever she must to earn her wings, as such.

Trouble is, Sarah’s ghost gets sent some hot, naked dude’s apartment. Even better: it’s her ex-boyfriend, whom she unceremoniously dumped last Christmas! Now it’s her task to, I don’t know, make his Christmas dreams come true or possibly just get him to shave. But earning a spot in Heaven won’t be as easy as she thinks…after all, there are 90 whole minutes to fill! Added bonus: features a Steve Jobs cameo – or at least the back of the head of an actor pretending to be Steve Jobs’ ghost.

Back to Christmas (or as it’s known on IMDB: Correcting Christmas)

Last year, Ali expected a ring for Christmas from her boyfriend Cam but she didn’t get one, and promptly broke up with him. This year, the normally Christmas-obsessed Ali is down in the dumps, but a roast-beef-loving angel lets her take a mulligan on that fateful Christmas. She Groundhog-days the Christmas Eve that sealed her fate, and this time she’s determined to be totally cool about it for the health of her relationship. But just because she’s repeating Christmas doesn’t mean it’s going to play out exactly the same!

People in Christmas movies never love Christmas a regular amount, they always have to be weird about it. Like, DSM-diagnostic weird. But then, Ali seems to love her brother a not-regular amount also, so passion just runs high in these films and if you can’t deal with it, I guess you’d better chug a little eggnog to make up the difference.