Trollheart

And if you thought that was bad....


Title: Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny
Year: 1972
Writer: R. Winer
Director: R. Winer
Genre: Fantasy
Stars: Jay Ripley, Kim Nicholas (the rest are only credited by their first name, and are all kids)

Before I begin, I read in the Wiki and IMDB reviews that this contains a film within a film, that much of it was padded out with a version of Thumbelina or Jack and the Beanstalk, depending on which version of the movie you get. I have no intention of telling the story of either, since a) they neither of them have anything to do with Christmas and b) it’s clearly a cynical attempt by the director to get his other failed movie(s) some extra oxygen, and I’ll be fucked if I’m helping him. So when it comes to the internal story, I’ll just introduce it and then move on past it to where this film picks up again. I say “picks up” in the widest possible meaning of the word, of course.

Sadly, whoever decided to cast children as the main stars and do all the singing didn’t check to see if they were able to handle simple things like rhythm, harmony and, well, carrying a tune in a metal container with a handle. The result is a confused, out-of-tune, out of time cacophony as kids sing, or try to, and it’s not a good start. The basic premise seems to be that the kids (I assume these are meant to be elves, as they’re all dressed in blue - why not green, I don’t know - and wearing pointy hats) are watching for Santa but there’s no sign of him as yet. If he has any sense he’s probably down the local, which is where I should be, and where I may end up after this trainwreck.

The narrator’s voice (yes there’s a narrator in this one too) is provided by Dorothy Brown Green, and whoever she is, she sounds more like a wicked witch pretending to be nice than anything else. Anyhoo, turns out that Santa is mired in the Florida sand, his sleigh having crashed and the reindeer having fucked off back to the NP. Oh look! Santa can’t sing either - he sort of speaks the song and even that is out of tune. Lordy. He falls asleep - I know how he feels - and summons children to him by mind-melding with them or some fucking thing. At least this is the only time we are subjected to the ordeal of him mangling music with his tuneless voice, so there is that.

And for no reason I can discern, and completely flouting the laws of logic, time and reality, and just for good measure (or crippling lack of budget) dressed in contemporary clothes, Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer come too, on a raft on the river to the strains of “Old Man River”. Played on a kazoo. I kid you not. And one of them has a cat. A cat that clearly and very definitely does not want to be there, as it keeps trying to escape. Again, I know how it feels.

Okay, now that all of the kids have gathered on the beach and Santa has explained his predicament, they run off to see what they can do to help. Now one of them is coming back with, um, a gorilla. No, you heard me right. A gorilla. Well, a guy in a gorilla costume, actually, making gorilla sounds. He tries to pull the sleigh out, but given that fat bastard Santa is still in it and does not get out he is doomed to failure. Two other kids drag a very reluctant donkey on to the beach to try but it fails too. Well, as they haven’t even scared up any kind of rein or halter or fucking anything to attach the donkey to the sleigh, it was a non-starter from the beginning, wasn’t it? I mean, what did they expect? Hardly future CEOs of major corporations, these kids, are they? Or wait: maybe they are.

And now a black pig, who is not happy, and who would be? Who ever heard of a pig pulling anything? This is followed by a sheep - at least this time the fat cunt gets out of the sleigh and tries to help. Well, it is a girl on her own, and she can hardly be expected to handle the animal all alone. Not that there was ever any chance of such a harebrained scheme working. Well, about as much as any of the others I suppose. Up next, a cow, then a horse (again without any harness of any sort) with similar results.

And then Santa starts telling the story of Thumbelina, at which point I hit the fast-forward button.

Thankfully, when we rejoin the actual movie there’s a mere ten minutes to go, as I don’t think I could take much more of this crap. So Santa is still stuck up the chimney sorry in the Florida sand, and the kids are all sitting around, having done nothing since the last attempt, when having complained constantly about how hot it is, Santa only now hits on the idea of actually taking off the big fucking coat and hat and jacket. Jesus H! What a gobshite.

Finally, for no reason at all and with no explanation, an old fire engine appears, driven by a big white rabbit (presumably the Ice Cream Bunny who shares the title with Santa). Driving at about a mile an hour it takes about five minutes on screen to arrive, driving, for some reason, though a carnival and attracting some odd glances as it goes, full of children and driven, as mentioned, by a large white rabbit. Why it has to take so long is beyond me. Couldn’t they have time lapsed it, or cut the scenes together? Oh right: the kids have to sing again. Do they? They do, unfortunately.

Now, I assumed old mister icy cream face was going to use his fire engine to pull out the sleigh. I mean, why else did he come here, right? But no. Santa climbs on board and off they go on a road trip. And at the end of it all, the fucking sleigh, left behind, vanishes, and we’re told that it went back to the North Pole, leaving the very reasonable question of if this was possible then why the hell did Santa not just do this in the first place, instead of trying to physically drag the thing out?

Kind of a metaphor for the whole movie really.

Notes

Hard to make any, but I will of course take issue with the fact that this movie, which runs for just short of two hours, is actually about a half hour long, the rest of it taken up with the unrelated and complete (including credits) movie of Thumbelina, which has fuck-all to do with Christmas and was obviously this guy’s attempt to show his stupid poxy movie again to people who, most likely again did not want to see it. I will thank him though, because at least it saved me from having to suffer through a longer piece of garbage than I could have comfortably stood.

Nevertheless, questions raise their heads, other than the obvious two: why would someone waste their time, energy, and presumably very little money filming this? And why did I have to suffer through it?

Was there anything good about this movie?

In a word: no. The most basic logic goes to hell in the storyline. We’re not told how Santa crashed in Florida - because of course that would require some thinking, some creative input, and this movie doesn’t work that way. He just crashes. I mean, he’s clearly expert in handling his sleigh, has been for hundreds of years. What happened? Was it a hurricane? Did he get buzzed by a fighter plane? Did he get drunk at the wheel?

The idea of using animals to haul the sleigh out holds a certain amount of water, as long as you’re familiar with the simple mechanics of how harnessed animals work! You can’t just put a horse in front of a cart and expect it to pull it. You have to lock it into the mechanism, hook it up, just as you can’t back a cab up to a trailer and pull away with a container of goods. You have to secure the container to the cab first, link the two. So putting a variety of animals in or around or near the sleigh doesn’t even make the slightest sense if you’re not going to harness them to it.

In actual fact, stupid and out of place though it was (who sees one in Florida?) the gorilla - guy in the gorilla suit - at least made a proper effort. Everything else was just nonsense. To say nothing of the fact that the fat fucker doesn’t even get out of the sleigh the first few tries, lamenting “it’s no use”. Well, yeah, it’s no use with you sitting in the poxy thing, you stupid fuck. What are you? 300 pounds? Think it might have been helpful had you moved your fat talentless arse out of the sleigh and tried to help the children pull the thing out of the sand? Might have been a plan? No?

And who or what the blue jumping fuck is the ice cream bunny? Santa welcomes him as his old friend, but there’s no explanation as to where he came from or what he is. He’s the worst possible deus ex machina; a way to resolve the plot without justifying his presence in any way. Might as well have had God’s hand reach down and pull the sleigh out of the sand. And crushed the writer, while He was at it.

Why did it take Santa so fucking long to realise that if you’re wearing a big red suit in the Florida heat, you’re gonna sweat buckets, and the best thing to do is take it off? But no: he sits there complaining (sometimes in song, lord help us) about how hot it is. Is he an idiot?

No, there is nothing about this movie I can recommend, other than not to watch it, even under pain of death. Dying would be preferable. The singing is awful (especially from Santa, but the kids come a close second), the story is ludicrous, the inserting of an entire other unconnected movie just shows how wafer-thin the plot is and how the writer had to pad it out, the effects are non-existent and the direction is at best chaotic, with kids running everywhere, appearing, disappearing, but Santa basically staying in the one shot for the entire fucking film, until he finally fucks off at the end of it. The acting is awful - and since Santa is the main character, most of that has to be on Jay Clark, who can neither sing nor act - and the ending is so bizarre you would think it had been written by a three-year old. I take it back: a three-year old would have written a more coherent plot.

Avoid, at all costs.

Oh, and what the fuck was the point of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer? Answers on a used fifty euro note please...

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Two for two; can we make it a clean sweep, so to speak?
Sure we can.

Title: Jack Frost
Year: 1997
Writer(s): Michael Cooney, Jeremy Paige
Director: Michael Cooney
Genre: Comedy Horror/Slasher
Stars: Christopher Allport, Stephen Mendel, F. William Parker, Scott MacDonald, Shannon Elizabeth, Rob LaBelle

Now here’s an interesting thing. Six years ago I featured this in the abovementioned 25 of the Worst Christmas Movies Ever - Probably but it seems I got it wrong. There are in fact two movies named Jack Frost, released within a year of each other. One stars Michael Keaton as a dad who comes back as a snowman (weird enough) and that’s fine, probably worthy of inclusion anyway on my original list. However when I was making a follow-up list this year (no I didn’t check it twice: you think I have that kind of time? I’m programmed to be very busy, you know!) I included the sequel Jack Frost 2: Revenge of the Killer Snowman, released in 2000. It seemed odd to me that an actor of Keaton’s standing would take part in what appeared to be a cheap slasher comedy, but I thought, maybe he did it for laughs.

Turns out that’s not the case.

The sequel is the follow-up to this movie, which is the original slasher comedy horror one and Keaton’s is, well, not. I’m pretty sure I saw it on some list on its own merits, and I’m not going to go back checking it now - and I’m certainly not going to watch it - but I may have been doing it a disservice, and if so, I apologise Mr. Keaton, if somewhere in cyberspace this article comes to your attention. My bad. Though blame the writer of the movie for not checking if the title had already been used before going ahead. Still, my bad.

This, on the other hand, seems pure slasher comedy gold, in all the worst ways possible, so I’m hoping it will finish off our trio of the terrible and leave us all with an uncomfortable ache in our stomach that has nothing to do with the third helping of turkey, and a headache that can’t be blamed on the booze.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow...

From the off I’m disturbed at the idea of a little child asking for a story and being told about a serial killer named Jack Frost. I mean, yes, obviously it’s acting but you can hear the child get upset as the story turns from what she thought it might be to a very dark and terrible one, and the sadistic delight the adult seems to take making the account as visceral and graphic as possible, while clearly aware the child is becoming terrified, and even asks for the story to stop, but he goes on - this is very troubling. It’s not a good start. Yes, it’s just a movie. Yes, they’re both actors. But do we need this sort of gratuitous, well, you can only call it meanness, can’t you? And towards a kid? Bah.

The movie opens (all the above nastiness has taken place over the credits, possibly turning some people off before the thing even starts) with a prison van heading into deep snow at night, in the back serial killer Jack Frost, being conveyed to prison for his execution. Of course it crashes, colliding indeed with another van carrying genetic experimental material. As Jack exults in his reprieve, the hatch on the van blows and he is doused in the genetic material. Next we see a flashback to the sheriff who caught him, after the FBI had failed over several years, and now that sheriff passes, with his family, the point where Frost’s accident has just occurred.

When an old man is found dead just outside of Snomonton (I kid you not, again), sitting in his rocking chair outside his house, nobody can figure it out. No sign of injury, no weapon, no suspect. The sheriff, Sam Tiler (seriously? Like, Sam Tyler from Life on Mars? Different spelling sure, and he was a detective, but still…) gets in touch with the FBI to ensure Frost is dead. The murder - his head was forced back with such strength that it snapped - sparks unrest in the village and men arm themselves. Meanwhile Tiler’s son is menaced by a group of bullies as he tries to give the finishing touches to a snowman someone - not him - has built in his garden. The bully - Billy (yeah, Billy the bully, ho hum) knocks the head off the snowman, and promptly loses his head - literally. His own snow sled slices it off after he has, um, lost his balance.

Billy’s dad is not convinced and thinks the sheriff's son was to blame. Given the disparity in their sizes, this seems unlikely, and the fact that he puts his hands on the sheriff, even considering he’s suffering from grief-related anger, and Tiler doesn’t react really, is a little hard to believe. Out in his garden that night, Jake Metzner, Billy’s father, thinks he hears someone talking to him, but there’s nobody there. Except that snowman. Taking an axe and ready to confront, as he sees it, the psycho who killed old man wotsit, he ends up with the axe buried in his head. The snowman (look, let’s just cut all the mystery and spoilers out here, huh? It’s Jack, obviously) then kills his wife by strangling her with the Christmas tree lights. Nice. Paul Davrow, the general store owner and friend of Sheriff Tiler, comes upon the scene and can’t believe it. He runs off.

The FBI turn up. Are they the FBI? One of the guys is Stone, a research scientist for the company that made the genetic material Jack was doused in, and he’s already been talking about how they now have a live subject, and that it’s a “pity” it happens to be a serial killer. They examine the water footprint left at the Metzners’ home and Stone is aghast. His doohickey shows him that the water can freeze, unfreeze and freeze again, which explains (kind of) how Jack got into the house, and indeed back out. Like a ghost he’s literally leaking in and out through the walls and doors, seeping in under the cracks, and reforming once inside. Not like a ghost then. Well, you know what I mean. Look, just shut up okay?

Tiler is told to put a curfew in place, and just as he announces this (at the Snowman Festival, no less!) a crazed Paul Davrow arrives and starts smashing all the snowmen outside, having seen Jack with his own eyes. He’s taken into custody for his own safety. Deputy Pullman is sent to his house to see what spooked him, but on the way Jack accosts him, takes his car and runs him over. Yeah you read that correctly: a living snowman can drive a car. What’s he using to grip the wheel? And how’s he sitting anyway? Questions that will probably never be answered, and it might be best for all if we just back slowly away without making eye contact, and continue on down this strange snowy rabbit hole.

Jill has set off to meet her lover, Tommy Davrow, in the sheriff’s empty house, and as they prepare to get down to it, there’s a Jack attack! The kid goes first, then the homicidal snowman has some fun with Jill. He then heads back to the station to take on the sheriff, where Stone and Manners are forced to come clean - kind of - about their intentions. When Tiler realises this is Jack Frost come back from the dead (not really; he never quite died, but, you know…) he attacks him with, um, a hairdryer. Well, seems an appropriate weapon to use against something made of snow, yes? It actually seems to be working until he advances too far and the cord comes out. Oops!

There emerges another problem: Stone doesn’t want to kill Jack. He’s the proof he’s been looking for that his experimental technology works, and he wants to study the snowman. Hard to do, of course, if you haven’t got a head, but you know how scientists are, don’t live in the real world that often. Manners - who turns out not in fact to have been an FBI agent at all (shock horror!) but a paid mercenary working for Stone - knocks him down, and Tiler, Sally and he prepare a bunch of, er, cleaning products with which to take on the crazy snowman. They escape, and then torch the building, Jack exploding in the process.

And that’s the end of that.

Of course it is.

Not.

Takes more than a little ol’ explosion to put our Jack Frost down!

Reconstituting himself - though slightly knackered, with his head sticking out of his side - Jack hobbles off, telling them he’ll be back. As they regroup, they consider forcing him into the boiler room, where the temperatures might be high enough to stop him reforming. (Look, there’s some technobabble which explains how Jack became what he is, what Stone’s research is all about, but it’s so stupidly tongue-in-cheek and up its own arse that I’m not going to dignify it with inclusion here. Watch the movie if you must know. Believe me, it’s not integral to the plot). They then attack him with more hairdryers, this time, Tiler having learned from his previous mistake, they use an extension cord, and Jack is forced back

Convinced all is done, as Jack is pushed into the boiler and melts, everyone heads off, but once again the terror snowman is not done, and he emerges from the boiler, kills Manners and Stone, and pounds outside. Actually, he doesn’t kill Stone so much as possess him (but then he kills him) and through a pretty unlikely chain of circumstances they find out that anti-freeze hurts him, so they drive a big truck full of the stuff up and the sheriff knocks Jack into it, and that’s the end of him. They bury what’s left, along with a bunch of anti-freeze, and the nightmare is over.

By which I mean, of course, the movie.


QUOTES

Tiler: “Look, old man Harper lived out here, way on the outskirts of town…”
Davrow : “What does that mean? We all live way out on the outskirts of town!”

Tiler: “It’ll be like a gold-dang turkey shoot!”
Sally: “Hey it’s quicker than a jury!”
(Fine words for a cop, huh?)

Tiler (to Billy’s dad): “It couldn’t have been a fight! Billy is two feet taller than Ryan!”
(Um, maybe one and a half feet, now…)

Jill Metzner: “Jesus dad! I love him!”
Jake Metzner: “Do not be forsaking the name of the Lord in my house, little girl!”
(Forsaking? Doesn’t be mean taking in vain? Nobody forsakes a name, much less that of Jesus. Not in that way anyhow. Also: Jake and Jill? Really? )

Deputy Pullman (on coming across the corpse of Mrs. Metzner): “You don’t think we should leave her up for the full days of Christmas then?”

Tiler: “I want you to call around and see if you can get in touch with Jill Metzner. Oh, and call the FBI too: some ******* in the field office. Who are you?”
Agent Manners: “I’m the *******.”

Manners: “Have the M.V.s been moved yet?”
Tiler: “Motor… vehicles?”
Manners: “Murder victims.”

Tiler: “I’m going to instigate a twenty-four hour curfew for the town. Now I’m not going to arrest you if you’re walking down the main street, but it’s for your own safety.”
(Right. So basically, a curfew you’re not going to explain, or enforce - and more, have told the fucking townspeople you’re not going to enforce - and you think they’re going to just, what, do the right thing?)

Tiler (about Manners): “What the hell’s eating him?”
Pullman: “I bet it ain’t his girlfriend!”

Tiler (after Jack has been melted): “We iced him!”

Jack (as Manners turns the hair dryer on him, only to realise it’s been unplugged): “Blow me!”


Notes

The van transporting Jack Frost is labelled STATE EXECUTIONAL TRANSFER VEHICLE. Executional? Is that even a word??

Go to love an entrepreneur grabbing the moment! When tensions rise in Snomonton, Davrow yells “I’ll be open all night if anyone wants to buy ammo! Twenty percent off for emergencies!” He’s not short on takers.

It’s absolutely hilarious that as Billy’s body - head carried separately - is taken to the hearse, the background music playing is the “Tidings of comfort and joy” part of God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen!

Agent Manners warns Tiler that if he doesn’t fall in line he’ll have him replaced. I’ve seen enough FBI shows to know that there is absolutely no way a Federal agent has the power to replace a town sheriff.

Again, kudos to whoever arranged the music. As Jill prepares to seduce her boyfriend and they take off their clothes, the tune playing is “The Twelve Days of Christmas”. As they get more passionate and heated, the tune speeds up into a jazzy, breathless number, certainly reflecting their excitement. Then, as she prepares to undo the last buttons on her blouse, it slows right down, like stripper music, and when she stops, holding off, not opening the last button, it goes into a warp and stops. Really well done. I haven’t seen music - certainly Christmas music - used this well in a movie since, well, almost ever. Guy should have got a reward. Who was responsible? Well, music is by Chris Anderson and Carl Shurtz, but it could be down to the director, or even the editor, one Terry Kelley. But whoever it was: best thing about the movie.

The bottle of champagne fizzing up while Tommy holds it at his crotch is another cleverly sexual idea. Clever too when the ice in the freezer looks as if it has a carrot poking out of it (which it may do) and so looks like Jack is in there. I also like the tiny cardboard snowman popping out of the drawer. All nice little effects that set you up for what’s coming.

I love when Manners is talking and Sally is behind him, he holds out his mug as if he expects her to take it like a good little girl. She doesn’t, and he’s left holding it, looking pretty stupid. Would have been perfect had he let it go and it smashed on the ground.

Good touch when the priest, firing a hairdryer at Jack like the rest of them, makes the sign of the cross with it, totally deadpan serious.

I would say they missed a perhaps obvious chance for a quip as Jack melts in the boiler. He doesn’t growl “I’m melting! What a world!” Oh well.

I must credit Scott MacDonald, who voiced Jack. Although he’s only seen on screen for a few minutes before he gets transformed, he has the best lines of all while a snowman, and plays the part with gleeful abandon, almost a Nicholson Joker. Bravo. His deep, gravelly voice is perfect too.

Is there anything good about this movie?

You know, it’s not half as bad as it … all right, it is as bad as it sounds, But they get something of a pass because it’s played for laughs. Even though lines are delivered with perfect straight-faced sincerity, it’s clear those saying them know they’re mouthing cliches and having fun. Nobody takes this seriously, which might have been a problem if they had, because how could you? But the fact that behind the mask, as it were, everyone seems to be in on the joke (especially MacDonald, who turns in a star performance surely worthy of some award as the maniacal snowman, firing off one-liners while that frowning snowman face just makes them all the funnier, to say nothing of the cigar in his mouth!) makes it okay.

The story line is ludicrous, the resolution, though inventive, damn ridiculous (who would put anti-freeze in porridge, which is how Tiler finds out how to inflict damage on Jack - couldn’t he just have I don’t know, thrown a can at him and accidentally hit him? Seems to be stretching it, and I say that in the full knowledge of how crazy this movie is) and the murders are just too funny to be scary.

It’s maybe a case of the movie being so bad it’s good, but that usually implies that it wasn’t set up that way, and I think this was. Nobody could have been expected to have taken this on its own merits, so surely they were just looking for ways to point out mad scenarios used in slasher movies and make fun of them? If so, they succeeded quite well. Mind you, the fact that there’s a sequel to this gives me the impression they may not have learned the lesson, though its being set on a tropical island - well, maybe the joke continues. Does it wear thin though? I don’t know, but here I think just about everything works, and it falls a gnat’s wing short of greatness.

Good fun, but I don’t think I’ll be checking my garden for homicidal snowmen next time it snows!

I mean, how could you take such a concept seri - uh? What’s that out there? Surely not! It couldn’t be! Oh fuck! I - I gotta go… Happy Christmas all!

What? No, of course it’s not a fucking giant living snowman! Don’t be stupid.

It’s much, much worse.

Oh God! It is, isn’t it?

Christmas carollers….

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Time to check out the last few of our


Santa Who? (2000)

The late Leslie Nielsen seems to have had some truly bad judgement when accepting movie roles. We all know he was perfect in Police Squad and its not-quite-as-funny spin off movies The Naked Gun (three movies which got progressively more annoying and ran out of ideas more with each sequel) and of course Airplane! And its sequel, in which he more or less made his name as a film star. But then you have Repossessed, 2001: A Space Travesty, Spy Hard, Men With Brooms, two of the Scary Movies, Stan Helsing, Mr (shudder) Magoo and on and on until ten years after this movie he passed away. I expect he will always be remembered as the strait-laced, unintentionally funny Lieutenant Frank Drebin, which is just as well, as he would not want to have left this as his legacy!

Trotting out the tired old story of someone losing their memory (a feat I bet everyone who watched this wishes they could emulate) we have Santa bopping his head and forgetting who he is. Now, since he fell out of his sleigh over LA (yes I know it rhymes) surely it can be assumed he was wearing his Santa suit and so could easily be identified you know what: let’s just not trouble the agents of logic with this one, as the writer clearly did not. Nielsen clearly did not learn his lesson from this movie, as the next year he was off starring in Kevin of the North, Men With Brooms and Scary Movie 3, but I guess that’s his funeral. Oh. Sorry. Well.

Rotten Tomatoes ratings

Tomatometer: n/a
Audience Score: 27%

IMDB rating

5.2/10

No critics would go on record, so we have only audience reaction, like this one:

Just an awful movie. Don't waste your time watching it.

And this

Many people claim this film can destroy Christmas. Although nothing is that bad, I can see where they are coming from. You'd expect a little bit of comedy from a film with Leslie Nielson about Santa losing his memory. Either I was completely oblivious to the humour, or the film was playing it straight. There's no real entertainment to be had, no fun in sight. It's cheap, and uneventful.

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A Christmas Prince: The Royal Wedding

Chick flick? Has to be. Surely gooey-eyed women are the only ones who would suffer through this tripe, tapping silk handkerchief to eyes as they burble about how beautiful and charming it is. Give me Die Hard any day. If you’ve seen the original you’ll know what to expect, however according to the critics this “holiday romance” movie fails to capture even the feel of the original. Colour me surprised.

Rotten Tomatoes ratings

Tomatometer: 50%
Audience Score: 33%

IMDB rating

5.2/10

Sigh. Magic has not struck twice for this franchise. Thought The Decider’s Lea Palmieri while Evan Dossey of The Midwest Film Journal pronounced it An overstuffed and desperate sequel that squanders the goodwill of the first film.

Ani Bundel from NBC News THINK agreed: The Royal Wedding is actually less entertaining than the original, mostly because it failed to produce more bizarre, fairy-tale inspired sequences - like the "heroine attacked by wolves" scene in the original version.

Writing in The Pittsburgh Daily Paper, Hannah Lynn noted This movie is frustrating and lifeless, more so than its Hallmark and Lifetime competitors because it's bad on purpose

And one person who saw it opined

A formulaic sequel, A Christmas Prince: The Royal Wedding is a mildly entertaining yet disappointing Netflix original film. The acting is pretty bad, but then again so is the script; which couldn't be more cliche or trite. There's just no heart in this supposed romantic comedy.

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A Merry Friggin’ Christmas (2014)

A Christmas film with Robin Williams in it? Must be good, right? Well, no. Not according to those who saw it. With a rather unnecessary expletive in the title, the formula seems trite to the nth degree - a road trip back home between a man and his estranged father to collect forgotten Christmas presents.
Critics seemed unanimous that blame could not be laid at the feet of the actors.

Rotten Tomatoes ratings

Tomatometer: 14%
Audience Score: 21%

IMDB rating

5.1/10

Metacritic rating

28


A slipshod comedy with Williams in default mode as a lovable grouch. A waste of a once-brilliant star. said Rafer Guzman of Newsday, an opinion backed up by Geoff Berkshire of Variety, who said

The makers of "A Merry Friggin' Christmas" sprung for the fancy wrapping but skimped on the gift inside. How else to explain the gathering of such a talented and likable cast in service of such undercooked, utterly laugh-free material?

Andrew Daley of One Room With a View was harsher: Time-worn jokes and Christmas cliches inhibit any form of innovation, resulting in a film of all round mediocrity.

And Nicholas Bell of IONCINEMA agreed: A Merry Friggin' Christmas is just too F'in lazy and milquetoast to register as more than mere background noise

EFilmCritic’s Rob Gonsalves felt sorry for Williams who shuffles around looking angry and depressed - more so than the script would justify.

But David Nusair of Reel Film Reviews had two words to describe it: Inconsequential and forgettable…

No respite from the audiences either.

With a paper-thin plot and an incredible cast that is given next to nothing to do, this film does get pretty tired, has it's moments, but is ultimately a dull, poorly lit Christmas film. Mediocre at best!

May he rest in peace, but it's no secret that Robin Williams' film choices after Good Will Hunting simply didn't match his best work. Terrible movie, at least it's super short, no more than 73 minutes at the most. It's not painless, but at least it's over quick.

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