December 6, 2022 – I could not help but visit the theater for this cockeyed Christmas movie, which features what ought to be a fun, irreverent concept, like “Bad Santa” (2003). Unfortunately, the mix of comedy, sentimentality and violence doesn't work very well this time around.

The film opens with Santa (David Harbour of “Black Widow”) getting drunk at a bar on Christmas Eve, complaining to everyone about how spoiled and corrupted by consumerism kids are these days. He says that this just might be his last Christmas. He is fed up with it.

One of his stops is at a huge mansion owned by Gertrude Lightstone (Beverly D'Angelo of “The Good House”). Santa is there to give a present to one of the few good kids on his list, Trudy Lightstone (Leah Brady of “Erin's Guide to Kissing Girls”) who is Gertrude's granddaughter.

When gunfire scares off the reindeer, Santa finds himself trapped in the mansion with a bunch of crooks who are there to steal millions of dollars from Gertrude's high-tech safe in the basement. At first, Santa just wants to get away, but Trudy convinces him to stay and help.

The bad guys are led by a guy who calls himself Scrooge (John Leguizamo of “The Lincoln Lawyer”). He really hates Christmas due to a childhood Christmas experience that was as bad as it gets. He is in charge of a whole army of bad guys. He has what seems to be a very well conceived plan to rob the safe, but things start going wrong with both Santa and Trudy on the loose, Die Hard style.

Trudy comes up with a bunch of traps, inspired by the “Home Alone” movie. Santa has trouble dealing with the bad guys until he is able, with Trudy's help, to channel his inner Viking Warrior from his own past. The hostages in the house, other than Trudy, are rich, spoiled, corrupt, back-biting fools, for the most part. Worse, they aren't interesting, either.

John Leguizamo, a fine actor, creates a character that is interesting, to go along with the other two good characters, Santa and Trudy. This movie switches back and forth from sentimentality to some pretty gory scenes, a beheading, an impalement, gross mutilations, shootings, beatings, stabbings — lots of death.

The violent mix doesn't work very well. It seems to me that the movie should have gone easier on the violence, or easier on the sentimentality, instead of putting the pedal to the metal on both elements. It's not a bad movie, really, it is just a weird movie of mediocre quality.

There are some good performances by Leguizamo, Harbour and Leah Brady, and they carry the film well enough when they are on screen, but the rest of it doesn't really hold up. This movie rates a C.

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