Schlock-Mas: Day Fifteen

Today's Feature: A Wish For Christmas

Sara asks Santa Claus for the courage to stand up for herself after a colleague steals her idea.

Lacey Chabert plays a doormat named Sara in A Wish For Christmas, the film that had the dubious honor of being Hallmark Channel's first premiere original movie of their 2016 Countdown to Christmas, first airing on October 29th, which I'm sure we all can agree is way too early for anybody to be watching Christmas movies. That's just obscene, man. Who's sitting around watching this crap two days before Halloween? Deranged motherfuckers, that's who. People you wouldn't trust to pick up your mail when you're out of town on business. Real sick puppies.

But now that it's mid-December, you can watch as many Christmas movies as you want and nobody will judge you. You could even watch twenty-five movies in as many days, then bang out a series of middling-at-best reviews for each one and people wouldn't even give you a sideways glance, because that's to be expected around this time of year. Everybody's wasting away on the internet, reviewing made-for-television holiday-themed family movies this month. At least I think they are. I haven't done any research, so I honestly have no idea how many people are doing this.

I'm going to go ahead and guess that more than several people are doing what I'm doing, but that doesn't matter, because my reviews are so much more not-good than all of those others, so you don't need to go out and check on any of them. Just sit back and let me drone on and on for several paragraphs about this stupid movie I just got finished watching, then get on with your life, okay?

Now when I said Lacey Chabert was playing a doormat named Lisa in this movie, I obviously didn't mean to imply that she was playing a literal doormat named Sara, because that would be very strange, indeed. Although that may make for an interesting movie, I suppose. A Christmas movie about a sentient doormat with an inner monologue voiced by Lacey Chabert. That raises so many questions. Was she always a doormat? Was she transformed into a doormat through some sort of Christmas-related curse? Or maybe she's a doormat that becomes human through the magic of the season and falls in love with the kind-hearted doorman who kept her company on all those long, cold and lonely nights outside some fancy apartment building in Manhattan. I think I may have something, here.

Be that as it may, Lacey Chabert does not play a sentient doormat in A Wish For Christmas, which, now that I think about it, is rather disappointing. Instead she plays a very human woman named Sara who lets all of her co-workers walk all over her, because she, much like everyone's favorite cowardly lion, lacks courage. It's really sad to watch everybody just treat Sara like garbage and it's even sadder to see her just accept all of the abuse because she's too timid to stick up for herself. Even her so-called best friend Molly is constantly taking advantage of Sara, telling her to fetch coffee for everybody in the office each day and stuff like that. Sara has a shit work life, and her biggest source of misery is her douchebag boss and head of marketing, Dirk, the poster child for contraception.

Just a few days before Christmas, Sara decides it's time to grab the bull by the horns and finally make a big pitch to supreme tool Dirk, some sort of social media-related initiative she calls "Christmas 365" that aims to keep that magical holiday spirit alive in folks all year-long. I'll be honest, I don't really know what the hell "Christmas 365" is, nor do I know what the company that employs Lacey even does. I don't even know what it's called, and I'm really wracking my brain trying to remember these details. It's maddening, but I don't know if the movie ever actually clarified any of this. I know that Sara works as a web designer, but the movie never explains what she's meant to be designing on the web. Shit. Did the movie just forget to fill in any of these gaps?

Regardless, Dirk pisses all over Sara's juvenile idea and tells her to tread carefully lest she find herself unemployed in the new year, and Sara just accepts this abuse because misery is all she knows. That evening, her company holds its annual Christmas party, and the company president Peter (Paul Greene) calls Dirk up in front of everybody to congratulate him on his latest home-run, a new social media-related initiative called "Holiday 365" that Dirk will help pitch to wealthy investor Wilson Taylor the next day. Sara is completely devastated to see this existential nightmare unfolding before her eyes, and the situation is made even worse by Dirk, who just locks eyes with Sara while the crowd applauds "his" big idea and soils his face with the most smug, shit-eating little smirk I may have ever seen in my life.

This one.

Fleeing the scene, Sara is cornered near the exit by Santa Claus (yes, the Santa Claus), who hand delivers her Christmas present, a magic invitation for her to make one wish that will be granted for 48 hours only. Not believing her grand luck, Sara wishes for courage, that's right, courage, and she is granted courage in abundance. The first thing Sara does with her new-found courage is march right back into the office Christmas party to tell Dirk exactly what she thinks about this clown in front of all of their co-workers, and it goes better than you might expect, considering boss Peter overhears Sara as she vents her grievances and fires Dirk's worthless rear end that same night, asking his new head of marketing Sara to accompany him to Washington state to pitch her idea to Wilson Taylor.

Then some stuff happens, and the movie ends. That's pretty much it, you guys. Then again, that's basically every movie, isn't it? Some stuff happens, then it ends. Sara finally learned to stand up for herself and stop being such a (sadly metaphorical) doormat, and her employer Peter realized how valuable an asset she's truly been all this time, and yadda, yadda, yadda, roll credits. There might be some kissing somewhere in there, I guess, but that's no big surprise. Maybe a little family strife, too. Some snow? Sure, probably. That's a pretty safe guess.

But do I really have to talk about all of that, because it's the same shit in all of these movies? I could just copy-paste plot details from any of my previous reviews at random, changing only names and locations, and would you really know the difference? Because holy shit, you can't help but notice just how eerily identical all of these movies seem to be when you stumble across a boring one. Your mind dwells on all of the obvious seams in the fabric that makes up one of these products, the shoddy patchwork that holds these endeavors together, and it's just so draining.

I wish Sara was a real fucking doormat, because at least that would have been a novel twist. Tell me you wouldn't watch that version of A Wish For Christmas, if only out of morbid curiosity to see how a concept like that completely falls apart due to its sheer ridiculousness. Of course you would watch that. You couldn't not watch that. It's just so stupid you'd have to tune in. But watching yet another middling family-friendly, holiday-themed romance featuring a cast of C-list actors in a market that is already over-saturated with slightly better versions of the same story is just fucking crazy.

I could just slam my fucking hands on this keyboard for a few minutes, pounding out a random series of letters and numbers, and it would be all the plot synopsis you would ever need for A Wish For Christmas. Who fucking cares? This nice lady Sara loves Christmas and her family and maybe Jesus, too, but her daddy died a few years ago and it made her real sad, and now Santa Claus made her fondest wish to stop being such a pussy come true, and now she's gonna grab life by the balls and thrill her boss so completely that he won't be able to keep himself from kissing her on the lips and telling her how pretty and brave she is in front of all her friends. I'm so happy for you, Sara, but all the courage in the world isn't going to bring your dead daddy back.

And what about Peter? He hates his daddy because his daddy was a big-shot lawyer and wanted his son to follow in his crooked footsteps, but Peter told his dad to sit and spin because he had big plans to go out and create his own company that does whatever the fuck his company does, which is a bit of a mystery because nobody really knows for sure what that is. Now he's gotta land a big investor to fund his lady friend's hip new idea that's supposed to keep the spirit of Christmas alive in our hearts all year, but who has the energy for that shit? I don't want anything to do with Christmas come December 26th, and I know I'm not alone on that.

But no, let's just stick with this "Christmas 365" crap because that sounds like a grand idea. What exactly is "Christmas 365"? Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe it's a daily newsletter that reminds you of the beauty of Christmastime with a series of tastefully nude photographs of your late grandparents posing provocatively in front of a bloated reindeer corpse. You can't tell me that's not what it is, because you don't fucking know. It could be a petrified dog turd shipped to your door in a festively wrapped parcel once a month, every month, from now until the end of days for all we know.

But who even cares about any of that, because Peter and his daddy don't talk anymore and it's really sad, but then daddy just changes his mind and starts talking to his son again because he doesn't want to die with a heart filled with regret or whatever, and boo-fucking-hoo. I don't give a damn about any of this nonsense. I think I'm done. I'm just done with all of this garbage. This was a terrible idea and I'm pulling the plug on the whole thing right now.

Christmas is canceled, everybody! Bah humbug!

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