Though I've struggled to accept why many of these holiday films are so detested, I can definitely see why people were unkind to 2015’s Christmas Eve. As mentioned, Love, Actually really has a lot to answer for, spawning numerous copycat ‘loosely linked multiple narrative’ imitators. The problem with that formula is if you’re going to go for it, you have to make damn sure you get it right. Unlike its namesake, Christmas Eve just isn’t that interesting, exciting or enjoyable.
Director Mitch Davis aims for the profound but there’s too much silliness and forced dialogue in there for anyone to take this seriously. Strangely, this New York set film documenting how a power cut transforms the lives of six groups of people was filmed almost entirely in Bulgaria and was produced by legendary American TV and radio host Larry King whose seventh (!) wife Shawn King features as a nurse. On Christmas Eve, a random but spectacular vehicular accident causes the power outage that leaves people stranded in elevators all round the city.
There’s Patrick Stewart’s grumpy Scrooge-like billionaire. There’s John Heder’s nerdy I.T. guy, coincidentally trapped with the douchebag that just fired him. There’s Gary Cole’s agnostic surgeon, confined with King’s Christian nurse and a sedated patient who doesn’t have long to live. You’ve also got an irritating photographer, stuck with a shy girl who just needs some gentle romantic encouragement to be her ‘best self’, as well as Cheryl Hines as a brassy trumpet player, enclosed with her bickering gang of musicians, calming themselves by playing Christmas classics. Rounding things off are an odd grouping of two ditzy girls, a tattooed muscle man in a Santa outfit, a high-I.Q. smartass and a dry, germophobe art expert. Phew.
There is a lot going on and not much of it really works. It all seems to hint at some sort of ‘grand design’, with seemingly random events being manipulated by a higher power, judging by the heavy emphasis on prayer in the Gary Cole doctor segment. Even less subtle is the slogan “Deus Ex Machina” on the side of the crashed delivery truck that sets things off.
There aren’t many startling revelations here, other than the usual ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ stuff you tend to get with these ‘let’s stick loads of mismatched folk together and see what happens’ tales. Some of the film is a little unsettling, with James Roday’s photographer character coming across as a lot more sex-pesty than was probably intended. Still, this one teaches us that often it takes nothing more than locking cantankerous Patrick Stewart alone in a lift for a few hours to make him completely change his ways. No ghosts required.
Also, apparently it’s all fine and good fun to fire a gun in the air in a crowded elevator if you’re a white lady. I also learn that Napoleon Dynamite’s Jon Heder is actually a very talented and affable actor, even if Hollywood won’t give him many good roles anymore. None of the acting in Christmas Eve is terrible, it’s just that the actors are poorly served by the script, with none of this building to anything particularly revelatory. Sure enough, the ending is a damp squib and doesn’t provide a Breakfast Club style payoff where everyone leaves feeling irreversibly altered by this experience. They were all probably just happy for a paid visit to Bulgaria. It is lovely there.
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