BEFORE: Well, it's time for Christmas movies, but I think I might have screwed this chain up a bit. I've got three yuletide-themed movies on the docket, but if I'd paid a bit more attention to the cast lists, I could have had FOUR. I had my eyes on the end-game, but there was actually a better path to get there, and I missed it. Maybe there's a life lesson there, something about endings because every year ends, every life ends and there's only so much we can control about it, except for what we do on the way there.
Anyway, there's another film called "Christmas in Paradise", and it's got about 5 or 6 of the same actors in it as today's film does, including Kelsey Grammer and Elizabeth Hurley. But I didn't see a way to get from THERE to my planned last film, so I tabled it. But there WAS a way, through a different Kelsey Grammer film, which only recently came on to my list. Mea culpa. But now I don't have enough slots left, and I can't go over my self-imposed limit of 300 films in a year. I can't go back and un-do a review either, that's against the rules too. So I have to proceed as planned and not go back on my word, my only excuse is that I've been so distracted by the stress of my job(s) and the threat of losing one that I haven't had the time or motivation to double-check my chains. So my apologies to Mr. Grammer and Ms. Hurley and anyone else who won't make the annual wrap-up this time around.
But who knows, maybe this is the chain's way of telling me that "Christmas in Paradise" is a terrible film. Maybe it's telling me I need to save it for next year, that it could play a vital role in connecting two films in December 2024. There's just no way to know. But also maybe four Christmas films could have made me feel more festive than three, and I really could have used that. I didn't make a Christmas mix playlist this year, for the first time in like 30 years, I just wasn't feeling up to it.
Kris Marshall carries over from "The Four Feathers".
THE PLOT: Four sisters re-unite for the Christmas holiday in a Yorkshire mansion, and misunderstandings uncover the long-buried secret that tore their family apart many years ago.
AFTER: I'm listening to my last two Christmas mixes - from 2021 and 2022 - trying to get inspired. It's not working well, I don't feel inspired to listen to more holiday music and try to get a new mix together. Clearly it's time for a break - maybe I just pass on the holidays this year, for the most part. We'll make lasagna and maybe go shopping at the outlet stores, but I can't see shopping BEFORE the holiday, it's just too stressful. During the pandemic we went and did shopping AFTER Christmas, like a few days later, and that was fine, the stores were close to empty. Of course, during COVID we had such a great excuse to just stay home and be shut-ins, close out the dangerous world, but we did that because it felt comforting to do so - cue up another episode of "Christmas Cookie Showdown" on the Food Network, please.
Of course, we WANT to celebrate, but that just adds to the stress, to put a party or a big family meal together, then there's the traveling, and that's a whole other nightmare because everybody else is traveling somewhere at the same time. Nah, I think we played it right at Thanksgiving this year, we didn't fly or drive anywhere, except to a restaurant about 45 minutes away on Long Island, where we had an excellent buffet meal. So I can justify picking a nice restaurant to have dinner a few days after Christmas, maybe getting together with a couple select friends in the week between the two holidays, since my nights will all be available for the first time in months. And if my wife and I exchange one or two good presents with each other, and mail-order some gifts for my sister's family and my parents, that should probably do it.
So tonight's film kind of proves my point, because it's one of those films where a family tries to gather and celebrate Christmas, but just about everything that can go wrong goes wrong, much like this year's Thanksgiving films "Pieces of April" and "The Myth of Fingerprints", to the point where you may wonder WHY the family continues to get together every year, when it's so stressful and some of them hate each other so damn much. I have no constructive answers there, except that this family's last name is "Christmas", so perhaps they feel obligated - just look at "Hubie Halloween", it's the same concept I suppose, that dude's going to REALLY be into his namesake holiday. NITPICK POINT, though, is there anyone in the U.K. that really has the last name "Christmas"? Hmm, apparently there are a few - a Canadian saxophonist named Art Christmas, an English footballer named Cecil Christmas, and a cyclist and runner named Dani Christmas - plus those famous people had family members, no doubt. So it's possible.
So the title "Father Christmas Is Back" has a double meaning here, because in the U.K. they call Santa Claus "Father Christmas", so it could stand for the story of Santa coming around each year, or it also means here that the family patriarch, James Christmas, has come back to his family after being absent for nearly three decades. Of course, three of his four daughters have no idea he's coming, and really, that's a party foul that the fourth daughter set up. Caroline, the host of the party, probably deserved a little notice! More surprises come about when sister Joanna, brings her new boyfriend, Felix, instead of the expected one, Hamish. Vicky, the one who backpacked across America and found their father in Florida, also takes up with the local bartender while she's visiting, and good old reliable sister Paulina just goes back to work on her thesis about the Beatles and comes out to her family, but apparently she does this every year.
(NITPICK POINT: Who works on their master's thesis while visiting the family at Christmas? Does her sister's house contain some kind of Beatles archive, or is that just where she stores her research? Also, who uses a manual typewriter instead of a laptop in 2021, for God's sake? Also also, wouldn't you think that everything that COULD be written about the Beatles would have been already written, at this point?)
So the family patriarch arrives unannounced, to the shock of his wife and 75% of his daughters, and so the holidays become a time for forced reconciliation and awkward celebrations. Boy, we've got a lot of loose ends here, this film seems to delight in starting up plot threads and then taking its sweet time in getting back to them. Vicky steals Joanna's boyfriend's Rolls Royce and half of her wardrobe (though we never really find out WHY these two sisters hate each other, do we?) and we don't learn where she took these items for a very long time. Also, it's clear from the beginning of the film that Peter took the WRONG bag of presents to the senior center - because if he didn't, then why even introduce the possibility? - and this joke doesn't pay off until the final few minutes of the film. Well, since the film covers four days leading up to December 25, I suppose this makes some kind of sense.
Speaking of long set-ups and delayed punchlines, we see near the beginning that James's ex-wife is carrying on an affair with his brother, John Christmas. Though I suppose it's not really an "affair" if she's no longer married to James, and they're doing very little to keep their trysts secret. Yes, old British people get horny, too, or is it "randy" over there? More power to them, but why not let the rest of the family know about it? I guess then it wouldn't be fun any more, right?
The family eventually does work out many of their problems, so they can all go to the pub together and sing a holiday song, and eventually they also learn why Dad left in the first place - and perhaps this sort of thing was inevitable, who's to say? Anyway, the important thing to know about the Brits here is that just like some Americans, they stress out over hosting the PERFECT Christmas party, they have quaint church Christmas fairs with swap meets, pie-tasting contests and raffles, just like us! And they bicker and disagree with each other while they sit in their large English mansions and eat giant holiday meals, and they tolerate the visiting Americans who don't eat meat or gluten or refined sugar or large amounts of caffeine. God, Americans are so annoying, right? First they demand their independence and then they hit you with their dietary restrictions.
Last year at Christmas-time I watched "The Hundred-Foot Journey" and "Last Christmas", both were sort of about the immigrant experience in the U.K., one had Indian immigrants running a restaurant and the other had a Serbo-Croatian family at its center. Those were both rather charming little drama/romances, both being sort of multi-culti as a bonus. But tonight's film seems like a mess by comparison, sorry to say, since it rapidly turns into a bedroom farce surrounded by holiday disasters. Maybe that's Christmas to some people in the U.K., I don't know, but it's not really my experience with Christmases.
NITPICK POINT #2: Elizabeth Hurley looks great for her age, sure, but that means the actor playing her father is only 10 years older than her in real life, and the actress playing her mother is only 4 years older. Something doesn't quite add up there.
Also starring Elizabeth Hurley (last seen in "The Weight of Water"), John Cleese (last seen in "An Accidental Studio"), Kelsey Grammer (last seen in "Like Father"), Nathalie Cox (last seen in "Kingdom of Heaven"), Talulah Riley (last seen in "Bloodshot"), Caroline Quentin, April Bowlby (last seen in "The Slammin' Salmon"), Ray Fearon (last seen in "The Protégé"), Naomi Frederick (last seen in "The Aftermath"), Katy Brand (last seen in "Nanny McPhee Returns"), Amelie Prescott, Oliver Smith, Janie Booth (last seen in "The Brothers Grimsby"), Bryan Samson, Ania Marson (last seen in "See How They Run"), Jamie Roche, Lauren Dickenson, James Kay, NIcholas Cooper, Lucas Livesey, Laura Bowes, Nikita Lund, Mick Liversidge.
RATING: 4 out of 10 toilet-paper roll ornaments
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