megawhoosits

I don't doubt that this film appeals to a Christian audience, but even for a Christian film, it's idealistic and naive.

However, it makes for great riff-fodder. This film has taught us a number of things:

1) A guy only needs to say "Prove you love me" to get a Christian chick in the sack 2) Dating is the gateway to all evil...until you graduate. 3) Why have your own social activities, when you can benefit from the social network of your father's workplace? 4) You can't forget to pray with your father before you have sex on your wedding night...you just can't. 5) Always ask for the promotion BEFORE you ask if you can drive your boss's daughter to a remote area out of nowhere, right after she's hit the big 1-8

I found Super Troopers only mildly amusing at best (seemed like a glorified Police Academy ripoff to me), and I rented this movie in hopes of it being better. It wasn't.

The writing is absolutely horrible and the pacing of this film is even worse. It doesn't feel like a whole lot happens in this film, or that it really gives us a reason to give a damn about any of the characters.

The actor who plays Felix is totally uninspired, though possibly due in part to the dialogue he had to work with. In short, this movie just went wrong in so many places.

I get the impression that since films like Clerks, independent filmmakers seem to think that they can make movies like this with long, rambling scenes of dialogue where characters are trying to be funny. But, where dialogue in Clerks pushes the story forward, in this movie, it hopelessly weighs it down. Films are supposed to have a decent balance of action and dialogue, and as tempting as it is for filmmakers to try to have tons of snappy, funny dialogue, it just doesn't always work. Especially if they're not that good at writing dialogue. I hate to say it, but even "Extreme Heist" was more interesting than this movie- and that movie was so low-budget it was shot on video.

You know what, this movie is not a "Miracle on 34th Street" or a "It's A Wonderful Life" or a "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer". It reaches its apex through a winding road of logic that makes very little sense. I actually liked where this film was going at the beginning- a delightful commentary on the commercial obsession that is Christmas, and I felt a little jilted when it fell back into the feel-good Christmas movie at the end. HOWEVER, after I thought about it for awhile, it started to make a little more sense.

Let's face it, Christmas is an insane holiday. It gives people a lot of grief, stress, and sometimes depression. In many ways, the amount of money that we spend on it is downright ridiculous. We don't NEED the to spend that much, but we do because we love this holiday so much. We put ourselves through hell for the perfect Christmas, a holiday who's many rituals mostly don't even have any roots in Christianity.

This is a bizarre, crazy film about a bizarre crazy holiday- a bunch of neighbours get wrapped up in the trivialities while trying to express why they love Christmas so much. Are they psycho neighbours that 'turn on a dime' and suddenly become forgiving saints? No, they're just people. Christmas makes people insane, and insistent on tradition, but it also makes them forgiving and generous. And as much as this is not the most well made movie in existence (far from it), I admire the fact that it shows both sides of the coin- an amusing little glint of originality.

It's a fun film. I've seen films WAY worse than this one.