Saturday, January 05, 2008

Update: "Christmas in Wonderland"


Readers of this blog may remember that during this past summer I was enjoying observing movie development in action - the filming of "Christmas in Wonderland" at West Edmonton Mall.

With actors in it like Patrick Swayze, Tim Curry, Carmen Electra, and Chris Kattan I thought it would be a bit of a local hit come Christmas but it didn't appear on the radar at all and I missed it (apparently it had a very low distribution). My daughter and I finally went to see it on Thursday. Our verdict?

Worst. Movie. Ever.

Worse than Tears of the Sun or Bats. Worse than Red Dawn!

It is supposed to be a "caper" comedy - although the premise (the Dad gets laid off right before Christmas, which threatens to ruin Christmas for the family) isn't really funny, people in the movie theatre were laughing alright - at the complete corniness of the movie, not because of plot or dialogue! There are a couple of terrible CGI images in the film, one where West Edmonton Mall looks like a huge shiny blue and pink castle and one that shows elves in the north pole that is truly painful. I'm struck with the thought that my dog might actually have been able to do better than this. How is it possible to spend so much time, effort and money and have it turn out so badly? Who could possibly watch this movie and okay it for release to the viewing public?

Roger Moore, reviewing the movie for the Orlando Sentinel said "Christmas in Wonderland kills Christmas and Chris Kattan's career in one fell Santa swoop." Read the rest of the review here.

I'm glad we went to see it because it did hold some special meaning for us - but the cold, hard truth is that it's an hour and 38 minutes of our lives we will never get back.

3 comments:

michele said...

Worse than Bats???? OMG!

I still can't believe I gave up sleep to watch that movie, even if it was a free screening!

Allie Wojtaszek said...

Hahaha - you're the only person I expected to reply to the BATS thing. You know what I remmeber most from that movie is how, at the end when it looked like they were setting it up for a sequel with the two surviving bats, everyone cheered when they were run over. So there wouldn't be another bats.

Actually, you know what else I remember from that day? That was the day that we saw the northern lights in the daytime. Do you remember?

michele said...

That's right! I'd forgotten about the northern lights that day!

Yeah, knowing there would be no sequel was DEFINITELY the highlight of the movie!