Prime Time: My Old Ass (2024)

Here's the thing about My Old Ass, and I'll refrain from making any jokes that confuse the title with what I view as my actual old ass. It's a cute film. There's some nice comedy. There's also some decent emotional weight throughout. It's good stuff. But writer-director Megan Park set herself a very high bar with her debut feature, The Fallout. I would recommend My Old Ass to people after an enjoyable distraction for an hour and a half, but I would recommend The Fallout to anyone wanting to explore strong and intelligent cinema that ranks up there with the best films from the last decade.

Maisy Stella plays Elliott, a young woman looking forward to the time when she can soon leave home and start what her adult life. Before that time comes, however, she decides to have some fun time with her friends (Ruthie, played by Maddie Ziegler, and Ro, played by Kerrice Brooks) and has some magic mushrooms. That doesn't just lead to the usual strange and trippy experience. It leads to Elliott having a meeting with her older self (Aubrey Plaza). Older Elliott tries to get her younger self to start appreciating the time with her family more, and also warns her against spending time with a young man named Chad. That's okay, Elliott doesn't know anyone named Chad. And then, inevitably, Elliott meets Chad (Percy Hynes White).

It's worth noting here that Megan Park is 38 years old. So she may have been a bit younger than that when she wrote this screenplay, and she was even younger when she gave us The Fallout. You wouldn't know that from the final product though, with both films displaying a maturity and thoughtfulness that make both much better than they otherwise would have been. The fact that My Old Ass wasn't more focused on the potential comedy of the premise was a pleasant surprise to me, as was a finale that had equal respect for the wisdom that comes with older age and the fearlessness that can often be found in the young.

Stella, making her feature acting debut, is excellent in the lead role, just the right amount of energy and carefree spirit tempered with a good nature that stops her from being irritating. Plaza works well as her older incarnation, and she gives another solid turn, another in a growing list of performances that allows her to move a step away from the eye-rolling and morbid snark that looked in danger of becoming her entire range for a few years. White is very sweet, although viewers are wary of him throughout most of the runtime, simply due to him being named Chad, and Ziegler and Brooks are well-cast as the friends, with the latter having a bit more screentime, and always brightening up the screen whenever she's around. Elliott's family are played by Maria Dizzia (mother), Alain Goulem (father), Seth Isaac Johnson (brother), and Carter Trozzolo (younger brother), and all four do well as they loiter at the edge of the central narrative, eventually moving more towards the centre as our lead starts to appreciate them more and consider how she can still value what is around her while looking forward to her future.

There's nothing here that really stands out. The technique on display, the look and sound of everything, it's all just perfectly fine, working in service of a script that uses a cute idea at the heart of it without making things extra complicated. But Park writes with a great knack of being able to blend emotion and intelligence in a way that is satisfying for film fans without ever feeling too patronising. She also brings great performances out of her leads, perhaps due to her own time spent in front of the camera for projects that range from a Romero zombie movie to standard Christmas TV movie fluff. Cinema can take us to previously-unimagined worlds and show us great marvels, but it's equally enjoyable when it gives people a group of actors all working with quality writing. Park is two for two when it comes to features that she has directed. I hope she soon makes it three for three, whether staying in this kind of film or taking us on a tour of some more fantastical sights.

7/10

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Netflix And Chill: Emily The Criminal (2022)

Although I like her onscreen presence, and although she tends to pick a variety of interesting projects, Aubrey Plaza being in a movie isn't ever a guarantee that I will enjoy it. That seems to be changing though, especially in the movies that also have her serving in some kind of producer role, and Emily The Criminal is one of her best roles yet.

A feature debut from writer-director John Patton Ford, this is the tale of a young woman who struggles to get a decent break in life. She is weighed down by mistakes in her past, including a felony charge and a whole lot of student loan debt, but she knows that the current system is making things much harder than they need to be. Eventually offered the chance to make a quick $200 in a credit card scam, Emily sees a way to massively improve her life. The scam is overseen by Youcef (Theo Rossi), who ends up teaching Emily more and more ways to improve her profit-making opportunities. But with greater reward comes greater risks, of course.

While I went into this expecting a decent little character study, from the title and the marketing of the movie, I soon realised that it was interested in offering a bit more than that. Emily The Criminal IS all about Emily, and her new-found talent for some criminal activities, but it's also a reminder of just how badly the system works against people who struggle and sweat through years to make up for the ongoing repercussions of past mistakes. Although it won't happen to everyone, many people will have made one or two mistakes in their youth that lands them in trouble with the police, and even more people will end up in some kind of debt (planned or unplanned) at least once. Emily The Criminal shows how hard it is to move away from those things, especially in a society that has now seemingly stacked the odds in favour of employers who want to make use of unpaid interns, employees trapped by the need to keep working all hours of the day to make the most of their low wage, and the apparently blissful move towards a "gig economy". That last part was meant to be completely sarcastic, by the way.

Ford packs a lot of great little moments into the 97-minute runtime, whether it's showing us Emily attending a job interview being conducted by someone trying to blindside her with information about her past, the tense transactions where Emily wants her fraud to go undetected until she is away from the shop/seller/buyer, or a fantastic exchange between our lead and a powerful employer (Gina Gershon) who thinks she is doing someone a huge favour by offering them, well, something that isn't a huge favour.

Plaza is excellent in her role, adding a tooughness and determination to her usual constant eye-rolling at the awfulness of the world and people around her. It's arguably the best role she's had in a long time, and she sinks her teeth into it with vigour. Rossi is also great in the role of Youcef, a young man who ends up running a successful crime scene without having to be the typically brutal and unfeeling crime boss. The real sense of menace comes from Youcef's partner/cousin, Khalil, and Jonathan Avigdori does very well with that character. Gershon tries hard to steal her one scene, and it's a great back and forth with Plaza there, and there is also excellent support from Megalyn Echikunwoke (a friend, arguably), Bernardo Badillo (a colleague who leads Emily to her new "career opportunity"), as well as Craig Stark, Sarah Allyn Bauer, and everyone else helping to make the onscreen world feel busier and more realistic than it actually is.

I'm not sure if this will win over anyone yet to come around to Plaza, she's an acquired taste and some just won't ever take to the various shades of her standard onscreen persona, but it's certainly a film that I recommend everyone makes time for. Some will view it as a justification of criminals committing crimes. I view it as a condemnation of a society that doesn't do anything more than give lip service to the ideas of rehabilitation, self-care, and self-improvement.

9/10

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Prime Time: Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre (2023)

Guy Ritchie has certainly settled into a new groove in recent years. His output has increased, and he seems to enjoy moving between comedy capers, like this one, and darker fare (such as Wrath Of Man and his upcoming film, The Covenant AKA Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant). Working again with Ivan Atkinson and Marn Davies on the screenplay, Ritchie and his cast probably had a lot of fun making this. It’s a shame that viewers don’t get to enjoy themselves quite as much as those onscreen.

Something has been stolen, and it is due to be sold off to the highest bidder. It’s not important to know exactly what the stolen item is. It’s important to know that it is very dangerous. The person most likely to be brokering that deal is the super-rich and super-dodgy Greg (Hugh Grant). A team is assembled to get close to Greg. That team is made up of action man Orson (Jason Statham), tech whizz Sarah (Aubrey Plaza), and a man who can support both, JJ (Bugzy Malone). Cary Elwes plays Nathan, the man trying to remain in charge of this small team, and problems arise when he realises that they aren’t the only ones assigned to this job. But they are the only ones who come up with the idea of getting close to Greg by introducing him to his favourite actor, Danny (Josh Hartnett).

I am not going to use this review to try and pretend that I didn’t enjoy this film (and to hell with typing out that unnecessarily unwieldy title every time I am referring to it). This is a fun time, thanks largely to the cast obviously having fun in their roles, but it’s an insubstantial and lesser fun time than many other films directed by Ritchie.

Timing is a big part of that, especially when the central idea is so close to the plot of The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent (which had the added bonus of letting Nicolas Cage playing a version of Nicolas Cage), but there’s also a script issue. This is an action comedy that doesn’t quite have enough action or comedy in it, and I cannot imagine how people will react to this if they aren’t already fans of the cast.

Statham is on good form in the lead role, doing what he does well (being charming, cocky, and good at punching people in the face), and both Plaza and Malone work well alongside him, the former getting more of the laughs with her constant playfulness and teasing. Elwes has to roll his eyes often as he tries to keep his team in order, and he is subsequently ordered around by Eddie Marsan, fun in an all-too-small role, while Peter Ferdinando does well as the head of the secondary team. Hartnett has a great time portraying a slightly precious actor, roped into a scheme he would rather know nothing about, and Grant delivers yet another hilarious rogue that seems to be his forte nowadays.

A lot of people will enjoy this. There certainly isn’t much here to hate. It just doesn’t do anything as well as expected though, sadly, with the 114-minute runtime feeling overlong, the soundtrack disappointingly sticking very much in the background, no major set-pieces, and a third act that lacks real tension. Nobody ever feels as if they are ever in proper danger, which means that you never get the sense of the stakes being very high. I don’t regret passing some time with this, especially as I like every main player, but I would rewatch either The Gentlemen or Wrath Of Man ahead of it, and I highly recommend both of those films to anyone who hasn’t seen them yet. The former is in line with the tone of this film, the latter is quite a bit darker and more violent.

6/10

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Mubi Monday: Black Bear (2020)

Warning - I wouldn't consider the following information spoilers, BUT I would advise that it is best to go into Black Bear completely blind. So please do yourself a favour, avoid any reviews of the film until you've seen it for yourself.

The second full feature from writer-director Lawrence Michael Levine, Black Bear starts off feeling like something very familiar - a filmmaker (Aubrey Plaza) is welcomed as a guest into the home of a couple with a strained relationship (played by Christopher Abbott and Sarah Gadon). Snippy conversation turns increasingly sour as tension rises. You've seen moments onscreen that explore that kind of atmosphere before. But then things change. A second part presents the actors given different roles, and viewers are now looking at the actual act of creating a fictional piece akin to what we've just been watching. And this is where things really start to get interesting.

Although I appreciate that I didn't know what Black Bear was going to be about, I think I would have enjoyed it even more if I'd been aware of the structural upheaval that was coming along after the first main section. The constant sense of discomfort and unease had me feeling that the film would become a tiresome experience. Thankfully, the big shift in focus makes everything so much better, including what you've just been watching.

Although they take on different roles within each main story segment, Plaza, Abbott, and Gadon are consistently excellent. Plaza is especially impressive in a role that feels more removed from the kind of thing she's done before (and the casting initially, and cannily, allows her to first embody exactly the sort of thing we've seen her do so often already), and both Abbott and Gadon are happy to play characters with layers of deviousness and unpleasantness to them.

Apparently based on some of Levine's dreams, what you get here is a thought-provoking look at just how far some people go to produce a performance from actors, and how manipulative that process can be. You can equate that with any of the more innocuous moments you may have heard of - such as Wes Craven helping Drew Barrymore to act upset by reminding her of stories of animal cruelty - or you can easily consider onscreen performances that came from much more difficult, and problematic, circumstances. The most egregious example of this, in my view, would be some of the work of Bernardo Bertolucci and Alejandro Jodorowsky - men who have delivered some amazing art, but at what cost to women being directed by them.

A film that works well for the actors, as well as being ABOUT actors, Black Bear also explores gaslighting, consent, and abuse. There are toxic relationships on display, as well as toxic environments. Perhaps it's all a very clear analogy for sexual abuse, or perhaps, even more disturbingly for us film fans, it's a damning indictment of methods that are used far too often on film sets where the person in creative control gets to do whatever he (and it's invariably a male in such cases) damn well pleases.

8/10

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Happiest Season (2020)

Directed, and co-written, by Clea DuVall, Happiest Season is the LGBTQ+ Christmas movie that you never knew you wanted. And it's yet another great role for Kristen Stewart, who continues to prove herself with performances so often ignored by her detractors.

Stewart is Abby, a young woman excited by the prospect of spending Christmas with her partner, Harper (Mackenzie Davis), and Harper's family. She hasn't met any of them before, which makes the whole thing a very big deal. There's just one problem. Harper hasn't come out to her family. She asks Abby to play along for the time being, pretending to be just a flatmate, and assures her that she will tell everyone when the time is right. The expected shenanigans ensue, with Abby trying her best to please everyone.

A great blend of comedy, Christmas trimmings, and moments that feel painfully honest, Happiest Season really brings out the best in everyone involved. DuVall has been honing her directorial skills for a number of years, and shows just how good a match she is for this material (which feels very autobiographical at times, a personal movie that allows DuVall to share some of her own feelings/experiences from her life). There are moments that many viewers may think take things a bit too far, with people watching and insisting that if they were Abby then they would have left almost at the very start of things, but think back to your own relationships, to times when someone has asked you to just play along with a white lie, or to attend a function you didn't want to be at, and remember how long you would put up with it for the sake of someone you love. Meanwhile, your partner starts to relax, and forgets how uncomfortable, or neglected, you might be feeling. That's what happens here, but with the added tricky knot of sexuality, and someone being too afraid to show others who they really are.

Stewart is a great presence in what is arguably her best role yet, perhaps giving her moments she also already felt familiar with. Davis is also very good, and her casting in the role of Harper makes it a bit easier to tolerate her character as she continues to become a bit more selfish and insensitive. Alison Brie and Mary Holland play two very different sister, both competing alongside Davis for the affections of their parents (played by Mary Steenburgen and Victor Garber). Brie does her all-too-perfect act that she's done a number of times before, while Holland, who also co-wrote the movie, is a scene-stealer as someone who hasn't achieved as much as either of her sisters, but is at least relatively happy in her life. As for the aforementioned Steenburgen and Garber, both are excellent, with Steenburgen having much more of the screentime, and a number of moments in which she is snippy to people destabilising her planned perfect Christmas. Aubrey Plaza and Jake McDorman are two very different ex-partners, allowing Abby to find out more about the woman she loves, a woman she is now not sure she even knows, and Dan Levy is wonderful and hilarious as John, a gay BFF who spends a lot of the movie advising Abby over the phone.

The best thing about Happiest Season is that every different element feels genuine. There are genuine laughs, there's a genuine authenticity to the central premise, and the moments that bring the drama and heart of the film feel genuine, and serve as a constant reminder of what so many people still go through in far too many households. Oh, it's also very much always a Christmas movie, so don't think I am suddenly viewing this as cinéma vérité, but the many small moments that need to feel real DO feel real.

Highly recommended, and I hope DuVall has enough success with this to allow her to pick another project that she connects to just as strongly.

8/10

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Child's Play (2019)

Much like the killer doll at the centre of it all, there's something about Child's Play that is just a bit off from the very first scenes. I am never automatically against remakes, but this one just seemed like a pretty bad idea, and one that was being churned out for the wrong reasons. Whether you like them or not, the original movie series was still growing under the watchful eye of Don Mancini. All seems to be going ahead with the TV show idea, which I hope comes out soon enough for me to be able to forget all about this attempt to reboot a fresh money-maker.

As you may have already surmised, I didn't like Child's Play. It's a film that doesn't ever make the right decisions at any point, treating viewers as if they will all be situated perfectly within the teen age bracket that it is aiming for (and I know some teens who won't be impressed either).

It all starts with a disgruntled factory worker removing safety protocols from a toy doll before then committing suicide. One thing leads to another, and that doll (a Buddi who decides to name himself Chucky, voiced by Mark Hamill) ends up being owned by young Andy Barclay (Gabriel Bateman). Andy lives with his mother (Karen, played by Aubrey Plaza), it's a new home for them, there's a man on the scene, there's a police detective who is often in the building as he visits his mother, and a few other characters that are supposed to be worth watching. Chucky starts killing, all for the sake of his friendship with Andy, and his ability to be linked to various apps makes him a lot more dangerous.

I am not familiar with the previous film by director Lars Klevberg, or writer Tyler Burton Smith, but it seems, rightly or wrongly, that they were picked here as a couple of people who would toe the line and give the studio what was expected. I am assuming an awful lot here, and may be being very unfair, but it's hard to see anything here that represents a unique vision or talent. If that was the case, it would be easier to believe that Klevberg and/or Smith were chosen because someone had seen something prominent in their work that they thought could work well with the  Child's Play concept.

Here are the things that work in this movie. The music, another great bit of work by Bear McCreary (who has been on top form recently). The casting of Mark Hamill in the vital voice role of Chucky. The first major human murder scene.

Almost everything else fails. Take, for example, the fact that a character is slightly hearing-impaired. This is all well and good if it is for representation. It isn't though. It's mentioned once or twice in a way that makes us think it will be very important later in the movie, and then isn't used in any way that feels necessary. Take a scene in which Chucky uses an app to terrorise and kill someone. Except he doesn't. The big set-piece ends with our knife-wielding doll . . . wielding a knife. One death scene has a character jumping up to stand on a desk that has a bloody circular saw on it. The relationship between mother and son never feels real, unlike the original film, there aren't any actual scares (although, to be fair, the film does provide a couple of amusing moments, which prove that it occasionally works as the black comedy it is trying to be), and the third act staggers from one horribly ill-conceived moment to the next.

Bateman is okay as Andy, Plaza is as underused as she so often is in more mainstream fare, and Smith is the best character in the movie. Nobody stinks up the place, not even the other younger cast members who work alongside Bateman in the strand of the film that plays out a scenario building up the whole "the kids will save everyone" vibe, but there's also nobody good enough to help distract from the many shortcomings of the film.

Horror movies can be fun, they can be dumb, they can be sheer entertainment without having to be anything else. But there have to be certain things done right to allow film-makers to get away with that. It can be hard to put a finger on the things that have the opposite effect, sometimes it's just an overwhelming feeling of laziness, sometimes it's a lack of logic that breaks the rules set out within the movie universe, but this film has enough of them to spoil your enjoyment. Well, it has enough to spoil my enjoyment. Others have had fun with it.

4/10

You can buy the movie here.
Americans can buy it here.

Netflix And Chill: An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn (2018)

The director of An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn is Jim Hosking. He is the man who was also responsible for The Greasy Strangler, which is important information for anyone going into this. Because this movie is, if anything, even more bonkers than that movie. It's also even funnier, and has already become my favourite film from the many I have seen so far this year. It's insane, it's very stupid at times, and it's bordering on the absolute genius. Hosking, with the help of a very game cast, made me laugh more than I can remember laughing during any film I can think of from the past few years. And I know that my enjoyment of the movie could just as easily get me funny looks from someone sitting beside me and hating every moment.

The very basic core of the plot revolves around Lulu Danger (Aubrey Plaza), who takes a chance to escape her loveless marriage to Shane (Emile Hirsch) when a petty crime he executes ends up getting him threatened by Colin Keith Treadener (Jemaine Clement). Lulu and Colin head off to hole up in a hotel, the same venue that is about to hold the titular evening of magic with Beverly Linn Luff (Craig Robinson). Lulu and Beverly have a past, or so she believes, although this is news to the person who currently cares for, and loves, him.

Where to begin with this? I really have no idea of how best to convey my enjoyment of this film. If I simply quoted lines from the script, co-written by Hosking and David Wilke, then nothing would seem that funny, out of context. The words ARE great, but it's the strange delivery and mood of the whole film that helps to build every moment into comedy gold. And everything is helped along by the simplistic, and brilliant, soundtrack from Andrew Hung.

Plaza shines in the lead role, the perfect mix of weird and cute and dangerous that she does so well. I know she has bills to pay but I really wish she would take ten roles in films like this (and the enjoyable Ingrid Goes West) over the more mainstream movies that waste her talent. The majority of her scenes are alongside Clement, who threatens to steal every scene he is in with his mix of inanity and earnestness. Robinson is good, although doesn't use too many words, and Matt Berry is very amusing as the man looking after him, and you get wonderful turns from Sam Dissanayake, Zach Cherry, Sky Elobar, and Jacob Wysoki. You actually get wonderful turns from everyone involved, but they are the people I am going to name here. Oh, and Emile Hirsch deserves more words of praise than I can come up with here. Delivering every line he has in a very particular style, his performance was the most surprising. I like Hirsch onscreen but never thought of anyone who would be able to make me laugh as much as he did here. His performance feels like he's channeling Jack Nicholson, Nicolas Cage, and John Cleese, with all three personalities battling for dominance of every sentence he speaks.

Some reviews (many, in fact) feel redundant. I cannot put my finger on what Hosking gets so right here because it feels like a whole bundle of negatives that somehow all add up to a positive, and I don't see this working for at least half the general population (the sane half). But for the people it DOES work for . . . it's going to become as much a treasure to you as it is to me.

9/10

You can buy the disc here (even if you hate it and then send it to me).
Americans can treat themselves here.

Ingrid Goes West (2017)

AKA The Public Instagram Account Of Wanda Mitty.

Aubrey Plaza stars as Ingrid Thorburn, a young woman who can't quite adjust to life in the modern age, to put it mildly. She likes to connect through Instagram, and she also likes to turn any small connection into something much bigger in her own mind. Like or comment on one of her photos and Ingrid will think of you as a potential close friend. And that is how she ends up insinuating herself into the lives of Taylor (Elizabeth Olsen) and Ezra (Wyatt Russell). Taylor is a bit of an Instagram celeb, influencing people with photos of her lifestyle and shopping choices, while Ezra is her partner, an artist reluctantly using social media because he knows he must.

Ingrid Goes West is a decent warning to people about the perils of being consumed by the need to portray a perfect image all over social media. It comments on the divide between what is put on display and what is hidden outwith the edges of the phone or computer screen. And it certainly illustrates the extra care needed to help people with mental health issues in an environment where they can be so easily confused and manipulated. Beyond that, it's also a really good drama about damaged people being further damaged by the modern world.

Written by Matt Spicer and David Branson Smith, with Spicer also directing, this is a film that never feels false, despite the obvious exaggeration used here and there (and even that element of exaggeration is debatable when you think of people who strive to make themselves "internet famous"). The main characters are quite easy to dislike but that doesn't make things any easier to watch as nerves start to fray and tensions develop.

Plaza gives one of her best performances yet in the lead role, showing us a troubled young woman who has mastered the art of putting on her best smile for the selfies that she shares with the world. Olsen and Wyatt are both great, the former all fake niceness and ego while the latter is avoiding reality in a slightly different way. O' Shea Jackson Jr is also very good as Dan, a man who gets involved with Ingrid without realising how many lies she is telling to keep her pretend life as perfect as it can be, and Billy Magnussen is enjoyably nasty as Nicky, the one person who seems to immediately see Ingrid for who she really is.

You can watch Ingrid Goes West and enjoy it without having to think too much about the points it is raising about the potential damage of lives lived for online approval and followers. But it also raises some decent points that I hope might result in some good conversations between parents/friends/partners and anyone trying to measure themselves against snapshots of lifestyles that are just that. Snapshots. Not yardsticks, because nothing you see online should ever be used as a yardstick.

7/10

UK folks can get it on shiny disc here.
Americans can buy it here.

Grumpy Cat's Worst Christmas Ever (2014)

Yes. It begins. It's that most wonderful time of the year. And I thought I'd start off my festive viewings with THIS film.

In case you hadn't heard already, or figured it out from the title, Grumpy Cat's Worst Christmas Ever is the first movie to be developed from an internet meme. Which means we may be able to look forward to a second Willy Wonka movie in which he sarcastically asks to hear your opinion on subjects, there's a whole film to be made from Sad Keanu, and perhaps even a horror movie entitled I Don't Always Know What You Did Last Summer, But Even When I Don't . . . . I Do.

Anyway, the slim plot here sees a little girl (Megan Charpentier) making a Christmas wish that allows her to hear the voices of the pets in the mall pet shop that she frequents. Actually, she asked for some friends but this seems to be a strange way of making that happen. One of the pets in the shop is the famous grumpy cat, and the two girls end up working together when a pair of robbers break in to steal a dog that's worth a million dollars.

The plot, however, is incidental to the main focus of the movie, which happens to be Lifetime movies, how to sell things to consumers, and the ridulousness of its own existence. Co-written by Tim Hill and Jeff Morris, with the former also working as director, the film takes almost every opportunity to poke fun at itself, and also the viewers who have tuned in to watch such a ridiculous idea. Grumpy Cat comments on everything unfolding onscreen with the right amount of sarcasm and disdain, which makes this a whole lot funnier than it otherwise could have been.

Aubrey Plaza provides the voice of the famous cat, and it's hard to think of better casting. Famed for playing characters with eye-rolling, sullen attitude, Plaza delivers a most appropriate vocal performance. And she even gets to appear in person very, very briefly. Charpentier does a decent job, essentially playing second fiddle to the cat, and it's good that the script also makes her consider the ridiculousness of things during the earlier scenes. This isn't a small girl who simply believes that Christmas is a time for magic and miracles. She wonders what the hell is happening and then gets caught up in the midst of a dog heist. Daniel Roebuck is a security guard, and Evan Todd and Isaac Haig have fun as the incompetent robbers.

There are moments that don't work. Scenes featuring the mother of Charpentier's character, and her possible blooming relationship with a young man working as a mall elf, seem to do nothing more than take viewers away from the main entertainment, while a scene in which the young girl feels genuinely at her lowest and worst simply feels out of place, considering the tone of the majority of the movie.

Just as easy to hate as it is to enjoy, the movie tries to use that judgment to wring extra laughs from the material. And it kinda works. I'm not going to say that this is a movie I'll rush to rewatch, but it's certainly one of the better Christmas TV movies that I've seen in recent years. I laughed at a number of the lines, fans of Grumpy will be pleased to see her face featured so much, and the scene involving a fast car and some mall doors is a dopey highlight.

Yes, I'd even watch a sequel.

6/10

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