THE CHRISTMAS SPIRIT
Charlotte's spirit tries to change a developer's mind and stop development in her hometown.
Nicollette Sheridan co-wrote and co-produced a movie featuring Nicollette Sheridan as a woman whose only flaw is that she cares too much. After a devastating vehicular incident, she awakens as a coma ghost with magic powers who wanders around her hometown with the ghost of a cynical real estate developer, using her miraculous abilities to bake cookies, write newspaper articles, and just generally being the worst haunter in the history of haunts. Then she awakens from her coma, makes out with the real estate developer (who has also woken up and is no longer such an asshole), and Christmas is saved for the happy little town of I Don't Know Where This Is, U.S.A.
That's the plot of The Christmas Spirit, and it's a pile of shit, and it really galls me to learn that this is a passion project of sorts for Nicollette Sheridan, an over-the-hill sexpot who could never hope to rise above mediocrity throughout her acting career, because the character of Nicollette Sheridan in this movie comes out looking pretty damn good. All she wants to do is help people, and being a comatose ghost lady just gives her the ability to do even more to help the stupid, cash-strapped folks of Sinkhole, (Insert State Here). This town is filled with smiling faces, but nobody has any money, because everybody is spending their days running quaint their Main Street businesses into the ground.
This town is so cash poor that they haven't been able to replace the only malfunctioning traffic light they have, and as such the only intersection in town is a fucking death trap.
Enter Mr. Real Estate, a dickwad from the big city who wants to pay all of the brain-dead small business owners three times what their businesses are worth, so that his company can develop the land, transforming their sleepy little town into a trendy, modern hang-out spot that will attract consumers from all over the place. Of course this is a bad thing to every single person in the movie who isn't Mr. Real Estate, and they all decide to band together to keep their hometown pure, even if that means they have to watch it all go down the drain because they're all too stupid to see the writing on the wall.
Fuck these people, and fuck their charming little sinkhole of a town. Why is change such a bad thing? This guy wasn't really trying to rip anybody off. He was just being a fucking businessman, and these yokels don't know a damned thing about business, so they'd rather just keep their heads in the sand and pretend everything's just peachy fucking keen. But Nicollette Sheridan's coma ghost is here to save the day and prevent her fellow citizens from cashing out and living the good life in some far off, magical place with working traffic signals. In the end, Mr. Real Estate torpedoes his own career by sandbagging his own development deal, because he's seen the light and it's between Nicollette Sheridan's saintly legs.
This movie is like a turd laid down on the sidewalk, just taking up place and stinking up the joint. The only time the story threatens to come alive is when it introduces Olympia Dukakis as a skittish old lady who keeps to herself in her small house across the street from Casa De Sheridan. It turns out that Dukakis is like that creepy little kid in The Sixth Sense: she sees dead people, and has all her life. And this gift has made her life something of a living hell, because as she puts it, "once the dead know you can see them, they never leave you alone". Her miraculous ability has made her a half-mad shut-in, because being constantly hounded by restless spirits throughout her life has kind of fucked her up.
Then she just tells Nicollette Sheridan that she needs to do good ghost deeds in order to wake up from her coma, and that's pretty much her entire contribution to the film, because she doesn't pop up again until the obligatory happy ending, telling Nicollette Sheridan that her time on the other side has apparently made her the new messiah, and she must use her newfound magical powers for good in this strange new world. That last part is true, by the way, because Nicollette Sheridan co-wrote and co-produced this movie.
It's just a shame that the movie does nothing else with Olympia Dukakis, because she's 1) the single best actor in this movie, and 2) her hinted-at backstory is 500,000 times more interesting than anything else this movie has to offer. This should have been called Olympia Dukakis: Ghost Wrangler, and it should have followed Olympia Dukakis as she hunts down the coma ghost of Nicollette Sheridan and banishes her to the bowels of hell where she belongs. Instead we're left with a heap of rotting garbage some folks kindly call "a movie", and it fucking stinks to high heaven.
Today is my birthday, and I spent a sizeable chunk of my valuable time watching The Christmas Spirit, and I am filled with regret.
VERDICT: FUCK YOU, NICOLLETTE SHERIDAN
Nicollette Sheridan co-wrote and co-produced a movie featuring Nicollette Sheridan as a woman whose only flaw is that she cares too much. After a devastating vehicular incident, she awakens as a coma ghost with magic powers who wanders around her hometown with the ghost of a cynical real estate developer, using her miraculous abilities to bake cookies, write newspaper articles, and just generally being the worst haunter in the history of haunts. Then she awakens from her coma, makes out with the real estate developer (who has also woken up and is no longer such an asshole), and Christmas is saved for the happy little town of I Don't Know Where This Is, U.S.A.
That's the plot of The Christmas Spirit, and it's a pile of shit, and it really galls me to learn that this is a passion project of sorts for Nicollette Sheridan, an over-the-hill sexpot who could never hope to rise above mediocrity throughout her acting career, because the character of Nicollette Sheridan in this movie comes out looking pretty damn good. All she wants to do is help people, and being a comatose ghost lady just gives her the ability to do even more to help the stupid, cash-strapped folks of Sinkhole, (Insert State Here). This town is filled with smiling faces, but nobody has any money, because everybody is spending their days running quaint their Main Street businesses into the ground.
This town is so cash poor that they haven't been able to replace the only malfunctioning traffic light they have, and as such the only intersection in town is a fucking death trap.
Enter Mr. Real Estate, a dickwad from the big city who wants to pay all of the brain-dead small business owners three times what their businesses are worth, so that his company can develop the land, transforming their sleepy little town into a trendy, modern hang-out spot that will attract consumers from all over the place. Of course this is a bad thing to every single person in the movie who isn't Mr. Real Estate, and they all decide to band together to keep their hometown pure, even if that means they have to watch it all go down the drain because they're all too stupid to see the writing on the wall.
Fuck these people, and fuck their charming little sinkhole of a town. Why is change such a bad thing? This guy wasn't really trying to rip anybody off. He was just being a fucking businessman, and these yokels don't know a damned thing about business, so they'd rather just keep their heads in the sand and pretend everything's just peachy fucking keen. But Nicollette Sheridan's coma ghost is here to save the day and prevent her fellow citizens from cashing out and living the good life in some far off, magical place with working traffic signals. In the end, Mr. Real Estate torpedoes his own career by sandbagging his own development deal, because he's seen the light and it's between Nicollette Sheridan's saintly legs.
This movie is like a turd laid down on the sidewalk, just taking up place and stinking up the joint. The only time the story threatens to come alive is when it introduces Olympia Dukakis as a skittish old lady who keeps to herself in her small house across the street from Casa De Sheridan. It turns out that Dukakis is like that creepy little kid in The Sixth Sense: she sees dead people, and has all her life. And this gift has made her life something of a living hell, because as she puts it, "once the dead know you can see them, they never leave you alone". Her miraculous ability has made her a half-mad shut-in, because being constantly hounded by restless spirits throughout her life has kind of fucked her up.
Then she just tells Nicollette Sheridan that she needs to do good ghost deeds in order to wake up from her coma, and that's pretty much her entire contribution to the film, because she doesn't pop up again until the obligatory happy ending, telling Nicollette Sheridan that her time on the other side has apparently made her the new messiah, and she must use her newfound magical powers for good in this strange new world. That last part is true, by the way, because Nicollette Sheridan co-wrote and co-produced this movie.
It's just a shame that the movie does nothing else with Olympia Dukakis, because she's 1) the single best actor in this movie, and 2) her hinted-at backstory is 500,000 times more interesting than anything else this movie has to offer. This should have been called Olympia Dukakis: Ghost Wrangler, and it should have followed Olympia Dukakis as she hunts down the coma ghost of Nicollette Sheridan and banishes her to the bowels of hell where she belongs. Instead we're left with a heap of rotting garbage some folks kindly call "a movie", and it fucking stinks to high heaven.
Today is my birthday, and I spent a sizeable chunk of my valuable time watching The Christmas Spirit, and I am filled with regret.
VERDICT: FUCK YOU, NICOLLETTE SHERIDAN
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