This is the second week in a row where I’ve inducted a film into the Dungeon of Horrors that had Leslie Nielsen portraying Santa Claus. Last week was the appropriately forgettable “Santa Who?” and this week is “All I Want for Christmas”. The difference here is that Nielsen was the star of last week’s film, where this week he’s wasted in a glorified cameo. He gets to portray a mall Santa that may or may not be the real deal. He gets about three minutes of screen time at the most.
He should count his blessings, as this film turned out to be even worse than “Santa Who?”! It’s possible Thom Eberhardt & Richard Kramer’s script was a sweet film about children dealing with their parents’ divorce on Christmas, but the lazy direction of Robert Lieberman tarnished that. He would rather fill the film with cheap gags and drown the audience in saccharine.
Take for example the two children. Both are cute and innocent kids who constantly spout out one-liners. Ethan (Ethan Randall) is the older brother who looks after his sister and rambles a lot. Hallie (Thora Birch) is the younger sister who is incredibly smart and talks like a screenplay writer’s prized concoction. She’s making jokes every minute, most of which she probably doesn’t even understand. It’s played off as cute, but becomes aggravating very quickly.
As for the adults, they don’t fare much better. Catherine (Harley Jane Kozak) now lives with her rich mother, Lillian (Lauren Bacall) and does…something. All I know is she’s dating Tony Boer (Kevin Nealon), a seemingly nice individual who everybody thinks is a boring jerk. Hence why his last name is Boer. Get it? Michael (Jamey Sheridan) is the father who owns a diner & lives in a loft that’s conveniently located on top of it. I felt it was way too big to be sitting atop a diner, but what do I know? I do know him investing his life into the diner caused their split. At least, that’s what I think they blamed the divorce on.
You see, the film is never quite clear on what the issues at hand are. It knows the basics, but Lieberman doesn’t bother to fully develop them. He presents them quickly, lets them float aimlessly, then creates a problem to drive them to their conclusion. Half of the subplots don’t even get developed. The girl that Ethan has a crush on believes her mother doesn’t love her. However, she doesn’t bring this up until the very end. The film casually acts as if we know of this information. Was there a companion film that I needed to watch before this one to know all of the details?
The worst subplot is the pregnant maid! We’re introduced to her in the opening, then she’s shuffled off to the side. She’ll pop her head in the background throughout the film, but not enough to make an impact. Then, during the finale, she goes into labor. All of this occurs in the background, as the film’s main issues play out. Then she’s casually forgotten about and we never learn if she successfully delivered the baby. What was the point?
Speaking of the finale, it’s a mess. The buildup to it is that Hallie asked Santa to reunite her parents for Christmas. Not wanting his sister to be disappointed, Ethan devises a plan to get them back together on Christmas. His bright idea is to lock Tony in an ice cream truck headed for New Jersey, have Hallie pretend to be sick, causing both parents to be at her side. Meanwhile, he pretends to be sleeping over at his friend’s house (on Christmas Eve, no less), but instead is hiding out in the diner with his crush. I assume it’s to make sure the plan worked, but I think he was going into business for himself. He clearly wanted to impress his crush, whose name I’ve already forgotten, and the only way to do that was by rambling incoherently while eating stale burgers.
While all of that is sugary garbage, what I want to dissect is the Tony situation. Up until this point, he was never presented as an asshole. Everybody acted as if he were, but he seemed nice. He treated Catherine well, was polite to the kids and tried his best to make everybody happy. It’s hinted that he works on Wall Street, which I guess makes him a blowhard, but we never see him act that way. That is until he emerges from the ice cream truck and (rightfully) snaps on the kids. Of course, everybody believes he’s overreacting and is being very rude. How is he supposed to act after being locked in the back of an ice cream truck all night?
I won’t deny that “All I Want for Christmas” had good intentions. It wants to be a warmhearted story about two kids reuniting their parents on Christmas. The problem is it doesn’t try hard enough. Lieberman chucks every cliché at the screen and hopes that, because the subject matter is divorce, you’ll forgive it’s shortcomings. I didn’t. I found the film to be incredibly annoying and insulting! If you’re going to present me with a heartwarming story, you better earn that heart. This was a halfhearted attempt. Scratch that. It was barely an attempt!
Final Rating: D