For YouTube Red "original programming," there is barely anything original to speak of in Rudy Mancuso's holiday musical comedy "The Keys of Christmas."
In it, Mancuso plays a fictionalized, grumpy version of himself, a holiday grinch who has had enough of the commercialization of Christmas and the completely nonsensical traditions therein, all the while obsessing over his cell phone. He's a hypocrite, yes, but gosh, is he ever an unpleasant one.
He drops his phone, loses his girlfriend Bella (Mariah Strongin) and inadvertently meets his guardian angel -- D.J. Khaled, naturally, playing himself. The good D.J. must then act as the Clarence to Mancuso's George Bailey and teach him the Keys of Christmas. Don't get too excited; we never actually learn what these titular Keys of Christmas are. To help him is Mariah Carey. She plays herself, because apparently, YouTube Red shows and movies can't cast celebrities and have them actually play characters.
As for the plot, it's a story as trodden and overused as that of Smosh's YouTube Red film "Ghostmates," if not moreso. It at least comes as a relief that Mancuso -- I'm assuming he's the writer, as no one is credited for writing this garbage -- finds some fun twists to add into the most predictable of Christmas tales. From a sassy Latino puppet to an overworked and underpaid elf worker (Anwar Jibawi), there are some good comedic ideas floating around in the undercooked holiday stew of "The Keys of Christmas."
The comedic tangents the film takes are humorous, but they don't progress the plot. The movie stops for a few jokes, and just as it builds up steam again, the movie stops again for another comedic bit.
If it's not for laughs, it's for full-length songs, of which the film squeezes TWELVE into its 47-minute runtime. (And at 47 minutes, it's barely feature length. In fact, it ISN'T if you remove the six-minute end credits.)
Take that in. 47 minutes to tell a story.
And there are 12 full-length songs in the film.
The film's surplus of music exists to pad out an otherwise 12- to 15-minute short film. I wouldn't be so mad at "The Keys of Christmas," its nonexistent writer, its seven editors and its 25 producers if these songs served a purpose in the story. They never progress plot or character, however, and most of the time, they don't even have to do with Christmas!
The only two times the music fleshes out the characters is when Rudy is singing, and his song (the second time is a reprise) only repeats things we've already established in Rudy's conversation with Bella at the beginning of the film!
The movie is best as disposable entertainment, something to put on in the background while you do the dishes or iron some clothes. Its meandering plot, incompetent editing, and useless musical sequences make it worthless to sit down and enjoy.
It at least looks and feels a lot more like a movie than a lot of the other material YouTube Red has to offer (*cough* *cough* "Ghostmates") and it's certainly funny, but its horrible ending completely ruins the entire film. Correction: The problem is that the film doesn't HAVE an ending.
When the conflict is at its peak, when the story is at the end of its second act, the film abruptly ends with a rushed voice-over and a crammed-in, lazy moral. There's at least 15 minutes missing from this movie. As bad as "Ghostmates" might be, at least it has a beginning, a middle, and an end.
It's like if, in "It's a Wonderful Life," George Bailey is about to jump into the river and end his life when all of the audio fades out and we hear Jimmy Stewart say in a cheesy voice-over, "So in the end, I learned that Christmas isn't terrible. Family rocks! Uncle Billy is just the worst, though," and then credits roll! As if THAT'S a satisfying ending!
Although I'd like to have learned what the true meaning of Christmas is, or at least earn some semblance of resolution for Rudy's story, I at least got a chuckle out of Mike Tyson punching a grown man in the face and knocking him to the floor.
And that's kind of like the true meaning of Christmas, right?
