Do you like A Christmas Story? Well may I present to you its bastard brother, The Christmas Project. It’s a blatant ripoff, and a very embarrassing one. Almost identical, but vastly inferior.
It’s a “period piece”, but while A Christmas Story drips with nostalgia, this is just an excuse to have mom in teased hair and blue eye shadow. Even the Christmas Story-esque narration can’t make a good case for itself.
There’s a bully. There are broken glasses. There’s a snafu with the turkey. There’s a definitive homework assignment. There are dreaded Christmas gifts from a clueless 
aunt. How this movie did not result in a plagiarism lawsuit is beyond me. But as you know, in my books, the worst offense is to bore me. And this one bored me impressively, from tail to antler (that’s a new saying I just made up, in honour of the holidays). With nothing new or original or well-said, there’s literally nowhere to direct your attention to in this film. It’s the kind of movie where, as the credits roll, you’ve unexpectedly baked a pie or given yourself a manicure. Your brain just gets so thirsty for input, anything will do. You might compulsively online shop, or you might accidentally eat the whole bag of chips. And it’s not your fault! Santa will be leaving big lumps of coal in the director’s and writer’s and producer’s (etc) stockings this year; the movie is from 2016 originally but it only offended me this year, so another round of coal is due, on my behalf (and hopefully not yours).
I’m not even sure that coal is enough. I’m sharpening up candy canes – a shiv with a minty aftertaste. And I’m crushing up glass ornaments. And I’m going to leave little Elf on the Shelfs all over their homes in random places; not the joyful elf in regular houses, but elves whose eyebrows I’ve made dark and pointy, so when the person happens upon it, perhaps in some dark, out of the way corner, they’ll be startled, and then feel judged. And those little wooden eyes will bore into their souls, causing them to question their motivations and goals with the only possible outcome to realize that they’ve lived their lives entirely wrong. Merry Christmas everyone!
This is where the numerous A Star Is Born remakes made their jump from acting to pop music. My Mom had this soundtrack on vinyl when I was a kid – she was still a kid herself when this came out. She though Kristofferson was a dish.
surprise, alien, paternal feelings start to surface. Not only does he care for his daughter, he wants to be better for her. It’s a bit of a wake-up call. But then she goes off to summer camp and finding himself alone again, Johnny isn’t sure who he has become, or if he can sustain any of the positive changes. But we have reason to hope.
Rewatching it, I get why. Jeremy Renner plays hot shit Staff Sergeant William James, a…bomb guy. Pretty sure that’s the technical term. He gets all dressed up in a quasi-astronaut outfit and defuses bombs (ideally). His unit has only about 30 days left in their Iraq rotation when he’s assigned to them (their last guy got blown up) and they immediately want to throw him right back. He rushes into combat like he’s got a death wish, and worse, he puts his fellow soldiers at risk too. Sergeant Sanborn (Anthony Mackie), his subordinate, is particularly disturbed to be working so closely with what appears to be a straight-up crazy, reckless person.
that no one at Hallmark was literate enough to get a good read on even the Cole’s notes of Pride and Prejudice. Of course, I would never want hipster George hooking up with bawdy Elizabeth, so I guess I can’t complain too heartily. Now I know that readers of Assholes Watching Movies are, on average, about a kabillion times more astute than what passes for programming executives over at Hallmark, so if you’re at all familiar with Austen’s work, then you know some serious bumps and misunderstandings are coming the way of Miss Bennett and her beau Darcy. Why, the small-town holiday festival itself is at stake!
