After a blow to the head, a cynical TV executive wakes up in a seemingly perfect town, married to her former sweetheart and raising two children.
(I apologize in advance for the hyperbolic nature of the following review. I may have gone too far in a few places.)
Then failed pop star Christina Milian pops up as an annoying Salvation Army anonymous charitable organization bell ringer who just bugs the shit out of Alicia with her mere presence, never mind the fact that she simply shouldn't be panhandling inside of a closed studio set.
She acts annoyingly wise and thoughtful, so automatically we know she's not just ringing a bell for charity, and she compares life to a snow globe, because sometimes "you just gotta shake it up to see the snow." Is this more insipid than Forrest Gump's "life is like a box of chocolates" message? It feels about a million times worse.
Then she dares Alicia Witt, who is at this point trying to murder this obscene caricature of a woman with her eyes, to break the snow globe she's cradling like Blofeld cradles his cat, and she immediately throws the surely made in China ball of water and glitter on the ground... and it bounces back up, smashing into her face and knocking her out cold. This is hilarious.
She then comes to on the sidewalk, with Donald Faison staring lovingly at her confused face. She wakes up, wandering around this picture-perfect town (which looks alarmingly like the inside of her unbreakable snow globe), married to that guy from Scrubs because they used to date in high school, and she's raising her two half-Scrubs children in a lovely little house and living the delightful life she could have lived if only she made a different choice once upon a time and-
Look, it's The Family Man. It's The fucking Family Man, and everybody knows it. Christina Milian even keeps popping up dressed as various characters around town like Don Cheadle in that other movie. It's so goddamned shameless it has to be an Asylum production, and of course it fucking is!
I pick another movie from Lifetime because I want a break from TV-G pablum, and it's a fucking Asylum production?! On Christmas Eve?! Why the fuck is The Asylum making a mockbuster version of The Family Man for Lifetime over a decade later?! What the fuck have I done to deserve this?! What has the world done to fucking deserve this?! No! NO!!! NOOOOO!!!!!
This is Hell. I'm in Hell and this is how Satan has chosen to punish me. I'm going to be watching this shit-streaked nightmare of a movie from now until the end of time. A Snow Globe Christmas was made purely to torment me, and my agony will never end.
Oh good lord there are show tunes in this movie! Donald Faison wants his wife to call him "Show Tunes Ted"! He handles a rusty axe and dances in the snow like a crazy person! Art LaFleur plays a kindly old goober called "Old Man Barnes", and he speaks for threes like some bargain basement Lorax! Why is this happening to me?!
Nobody in this movie does anything to validate their existence. They all forgot how to act before the cackling gargoyle of a director called "action" and nothing in this world makes any sense. The movie is filled with baffling editing choices and baffling digital zooms that just wash out all detail and make me wonder if anybody involved in this production has ever heard the term "coverage" before. A poorly executed digital zoom into the exact same fucking shot is not a different angle, you fucking psychopaths!
I don't want to care about any of this. Alicia Witt keeps spouting this mad phrase: Christmas is not for the elves. And that's all I'm hearing in my own head. These six disgusting words keep echoing inside of my skull, and I can't keep them out. The words are stomping on my brain, destroying my memories of cherished family gatherings and the joy of a simple smile has become a foreign concept to me.
A pink Christmas tree?! She's openly flirting with the mayor, a douchebag who looks like Armie Hammer but isn't Armie Hammer, right in front of Scrubs and the junior Scrubses! And nobody cares! He keeps trying to get her to remember a life she never lived, and she seems to hate him! She just wants to crush his happiness and break his heart!
What's that guy who played Patrick Lockhart on Days Of Our Lives doing wearing a Santa hat and making children cry? And the show tunes! They don't stop! There's a big Christmas pageant and it's tearing the town apart! Is that the sound of true love blossoming I hear? Or is it the sweet sound of lamentation? My world is a flaming bag of shit.
Alicia Witt's awful personality corrupts the entire town, even convincing Old Man Barnes that all hope is lost God is dead, so he sells the forest and property upon which her family's house rests (which he owns?!) to Mayor Hitler, and they get evicted! Actually, he gives up on life because she didn't cast him as Santa in the annual Christmas pageant, which is just lovely.
This soulless harpy sucks all joy and happiness out of the world around her, leaving nothing but an empty husk of meaninglessness around her, which she wraps around herself like a warm blanket.
There's a moment in The Family Man when the angel tells Nicolas Cage that his time in this wonderful, unremarkable life he's come to adore has come to an end. In this moment, Cage realizes what he's being forced to give up and it tears him apart. He begs the angel to let him stay with his wife and his children, because he doesn't want to live without them.
This scene breaks my heart because I've become so invested in this character over the course of the story. I care about him and I want him to get his happy ending. That's why it hurts so much when he's denied this, and why the film's ending is bittersweet, knowing that he still may have a chance to reconcile with his old flame and build a new life with her, even if that glimpse of what might have been may never come to pass.
A Snow Globe Christmas obviously has a similar climax, only it doesn't matter. It means absolutely nothing. None of these characters matter. They're all worthless, and their fates are inconsequential. I don't care about where these grotesque things end up in life. This movie has no heart. It's a cynical rip-off of a much better movie, and just knowing it exists makes me want to vomit.
I hate this movie. It has absolutely no redeeming value. It's an abomination and it deserves to be destroyed. Why can't I ever escape from The Asylum? When will I ever be free from your torment?
VERDICT: GOD IS DEAD
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