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Glenn Weldon (2:50)

Joining us today is our co host, Aisha Harris. Season's greetings, Aisha.

Aisha Harris (2:54)

Simply having a wonder.

Waylon Wong (2:56)

Oh, God, no.

Glenn Weldon (2:57)

Sorry.

Aisha Harris (2:58)

I thought we were doing worse holiday songs. Sorry, sorry. Hi, Glenn.

Glenn Weldon (3:04)

Gotta read the brief. Also with us is Waylon Wong. She's the co host of NPR's Daily Economics podcast, the Indicator from Planet Money. Happy Christmas, Waylon. Ho ho, ho, ho, ho, ho. Okay, before we get to our picks, parents, if you're listening with small children, be warned, we are gonna be talking about Santa. So take that into consideration. But let's get right to it. We've each picked a film that we're nominating as the worst Christmas movie all time. Steven, kick us off.

Stephen Thompson (3:31)

Well, I considered a few different possibilities here. I thought, like, what would be the least appropriate Christmas movie to watch with your family? That would be Baby Girl. I thought about what is the Christmas movie to get a 0% on Rotten Tomatoes? That would be the 2010 Nutcracker, but it is not streaming anywhere. So I just went with a movie I hate, okay? And that movie is called Shingle Aziver.

Glenn Weldon (3:58)

Here we go.

Aisha Harris (3:59)

This is a candidate for me too.

Stephen Thompson (4:02)

So when you break down like, what can make a Christmas movie bad? I don't think you can come up with a better metric than purports to satirize or comment upon commercialism while being 100% steeped in it and refusing really to undermine it in any way. The plot of this film can be summed up literally like five words. Man wants toy for sons. This film has enough material for a skit, maybe a 22 minute episode of a sitcom, but it is stretched out to 90 minutes full of digressions. Arnold Schwarzenegger is your star. Sinbad is his kind of sort of rival.

Aisha Harris (4:45)

Poor Sinbad.

Stephen Thompson (4:46)

Sinbad Era brutal. Poor Sinbad. Sinbad is the person to whom Arnold Schwarzenegger says in all the trailers for this movie, oh, poor baby.

Glenn Weldon (4:54)

Oh, poor baby.

Stephen Thompson (4:56)

Which is a nice going into this film, that this guy's a jerk. The only thing this film is missing as far as the tropes of 90s comedies, that it is falling back on over and over again. The only thing it is missing is he does not hurl a cell phone into a body of water at the end of this film because that is all it is missing. This is part of the colossally large genre of 90s family comedies about terrible fathers.

Glenn Weldon (5:24)

But does he learn the true meaning of Christmas? Is that the arc here. I've never seen this film. I never will. Does he change?

Stephen Thompson (5:29)

Honestly, very little lesson learning at the end of this film. The only person in this film who winds up having any kind of perspective on any of this is the little kid played by Jake Lloyd, who would go on to play Anakin Skywalker and then leave acting. This is such a bad movie. What's wild about it is it does what I think some kind of darker Christmas movies are trying to do, which is it makes Christmas look like a total bummer. None of this looks fun for anybody. It also totally wastes Phil Hartman. Phil Hartman has a ton of scenes, none of which are funny.

Glenn Weldon (6:04)

Lots of crime.

Waylon Wong (6:05)

His character is so weird and creepy in this movie.

Stephen Thompson (6:08)

Yes.

Aisha Harris (6:09)

This is one of those movies that I blame for all the movies that came after it, which were usually about adults just getting too competitive about Christmas. And it's like, ooh, who has the best Christmas lights? Who does Christmas the best? And there are a string of movies that came after that, and I feel like this is kind of ground zero for that. And I have not seen this since I was a child, but even as a child, I hated it so much. I'm glad you chose this, Steven. Yeah.

Glenn Weldon (6:34)

Did this film walk so that Christmas with the Cranks could run? Is that what you're saying, Aisha?

Aisha Harris (6:39)

Yes, exactly. Christmas with the Kranks with Jamie Lee Curtis and Tim Allen and Dan Aykroyd. It's like, ugh, God. No, no, no.

Stephen Thompson (6:46)

Also, did you all know that Jingle all the Way has a sequel? Oh, boy. From 2014? Does it have any of the same actors? It does not. It has Larry the Cable Guy.

Waylon Wong (6:58)

Oh, Lord.

Glenn Weldon (6:59)

Oh, see?

Glenn Weldon (7:01)

From the Sidbad era to the Larry the Cable Guy era.

Aisha Harris (7:05)

Yeah. Yeah.

Glenn Weldon (7:06)

Well, I mean, you did make a good case for this terrible movie, so I appreciate that.

Glenn Weldon (7:13)

Aisha, what's your pick? Can you top that?

Aisha Harris (7:16)

Okay, so like I said, jingle all the Way was definitely a candidate for this exercise, but then I realized that I would have to actually rewatch that movie because it's been so long, and I was like, I don't want to. Since then, I chose something that I've seen more recently that is more stuck in my mind. I have talked about before on this show how I have a pretty high tolerance for, like, bad Christmas romantic comedies. Like, that is my genre. I can enjoy them no matter what. Almost no matter what. This is an exception, and this is something I have also talked about on the show. But I'm going to talk about this a little bit More deeply here. And that movie is the 2022 straight to Netflix rom com. I believe in Santa now.

Glenn Weldon (7:57)

I hate the title. The title I hate already.

Aisha Harris (7:59)

Oh, Glenn, Glenn, you wouldn't even make it through the first 10 minutes of this movie.

Aisha Harris (8:06)

Somehow I made it through the whole thing. This is like, what if elf or Miracle on 31st street were like creepy AF. Because that is what the premise of this movie is. Basically you have these two people. Lisa, she is a writer for a local newspaper.

Waylon Wong (8:23)

Sorry, it's called Mile High Easing. I like how he's framed on it.

Aisha Harris (8:28)

Yes, yes. And so she is a writer for a local newspaper. The only assignment she seems to get are holiday related. She loves fourth of July. That is her holiday. That is her jam. It opens with her writing a article about how fourth of July is like the best holiday. Then she meets Tom. Tom is a lawyer who loves Christmas and they have a fun, fun little courtship. She's a single mom. At the end of that like courtship, we hit Christmas season and she discovers that Tom is obsessed. He has a photo wall where you can pose in front of it in elaborate Christmas setting with props in his house. Every day has at least one Christmas related activity. He's a lawyer. I don't know when he's actually doing work. I don't know how he has time for this, but he does. Is there a montage where the two around town and show off a bunch of tacky Christmas sweaters hanging on an outdoor display rack? My parents never really had fun ever.

Glenn Weldon (9:26)

Maybe it's because none of them was wearing this.

Aisha Harris (9:29)

And is that montage set to a festive instrumental version of the 2013 Trashtastic EDM hit Feel this Moment by Pitbull featuring Christina Aguilera? Yes. And yes. Is there a performance by a knockoff pentatonix AKA multi ethnic mixed gender acapella group? Yes.

Aisha Harris (9:54)

But here's the kicker is that she eventually finds out that he's been hiding a secret. That he actually believes Santa is real.

Glenn Weldon (10:02)

It's right there in the title. How much of a secret is it?

Stephen Thompson (10:05)

She didn't see the title card.

Glenn Weldon (10:06)

Yeah, she didn't see Santa.

Aisha Harris (10:08)

So basically this movie sets up this whole thing where it's like it's a crisis of faith, of faith in Santa Claus. And he gives all of these reasons why, like, oh, you know, most of the world celebrates Christmas. She asks all the logical questions you would ask. Like there's a lot of people who don't. He's like, but most people do. And also like, it brings Everyone together. He uses the universal we a lot to describe this. He also has a gay Muslim best friend, and he uses that friend as, like, a way to explain why it's okay that he believes in Santa. And I just want to take a listen to this friend, Ahsan, who's played by Sachin Bhatt. And here he giving his rationalization for why they are friends and why it works. The only difference between religion and Santa is that as we get older, religious grownups tell us that our faith was right all along. But they don't have proof either. They just tell us that the stories we believe are true. But with Santa, the grownups are there to tell you that the stories are not true. And Tom just chose not to believe the grownups. Wow. Now, if you've had enough eggnog, that might actually start to make sense. But then the more you think about it, you're like, is this movie trying to say that Tom is a persecuted minority because he believes in Santa Claus? My goodness.

Glenn Weldon (11:21)

Protected class.

Aisha Harris (11:22)

It's a protected class. So this movie is just ridiculous enough, but on top of that, the rom com of it all is just not at all believable. These two have no chemistry. They look like they would be the villains in a horror movie. Their eyes are very, very bright. It is a Netflix movie. I get that we're not expecting Shakespeare here. And when I learned after watching this the first time that Lisa and Tom are actually a real life couple in.

Waylon Wong (11:46)

Real life, Aisha, I had the same reaction. Cause I turned to my husband and I said, this couple has no chemistry. And then he went on Wikipedia and he goes, oh, my God. He said they're married in real life.

Aisha Harris (11:57)

And I was like, oh, yes. Christina Moore and John Doocy play Lisa and Tom. I'm sure they're very lovely people. And I do have to give this movie points for at least trying to be a little bit progressive. You know, gay Muslim best friend. Lisa has a black best friend. Like, you know, standard stuff. The reason I say that this movie is probably one of the worst movies I've ever seen is just this idea of, like, tolerance being applied to something as silly as this, but also giving, I think, unintentional cover to all the other things that we should not really be tolerating. Like, it's one thing to try and be friends with someone and maybe disagree with them, but if you're actually trying to date someone and introduce them to your child and all these other things, I need Lisa to have higher standards than this. Just accept that. That's not gonna work. But of course, at the end it does, and they accept each other. Oh, my God, y'. All. It's just really bad.

Glenn Weldon (12:49)

Yeah. But I'm sorry, we have to go into spoiler territory here. Do we ever actually meet Santa? In the world of this film, does Santa actually exist, or is it left to us to decide?

Stephen Thompson (12:59)

That's a good question. Does this film believe in Santa?

Glenn Weldon (13:02)

Yeah.

Aisha Harris (13:02)

The only inkling that Santa actually exists is one of the very last shots of the film where they leave cookies and milk out for Santa and. But you don't actually see a hand come out like a hand glove. You just see a very light rustling in the fireplace, and that's it.

Stephen Thompson (13:19)

It leaves it open ended.

Glenn Weldon (13:20)

It's the top at the end of Inception. Yes. Okay.

Waylon Wong (13:23)

The kind of bonkers thing is there actually is proof for whether Santa exists. And it is. Do presents show up under the tree that your parents didn't get you? So there actually is a pretty straightforward way to prove whether Santa is real or not. But they pitch it like this cosmic mystery that you can never get to the bottom of. And then the whole thing like the child who, by the way, is played by the kid from M3 Gan.

Glenn Weldon (13:46)

Okay.

Aisha Harris (13:46)

Oh, right. I was wondering why she looked familiar. Yes.

Waylon Wong (13:50)

Violet McGraw is the kid from M3GAN, and she's been asking for an iPhone this whole movie. And her mom is like, absolutely not. You're not getting an iPhone. And then at the end of the movie, she unwraps an iPhone. And I think the movie is supposed to be like, santa brought her this iPhone.

Aisha Harris (14:05)

I forgot about that.

Waylon Wong (14:06)

It's honestly very bonkers. And I think that the only way to even stomach this film is to think of it as taking place in the M3GAN universe, where Tom and Lisa then die in a tragic accident, and Violet McGraw's character has to go live with her aunt, played by Allison Williams, and then has, like, a misadventure with technology.

Aisha Harris (14:24)

Yeah.

Stephen Thompson (14:25)

I just want to back up even further to the very, very, very beginning of when Aisha started talking about this. She's into July 4th.

Glenn Weldon (14:33)

Yeah.

Stephen Thompson (14:33)

And that contradicts being into Christmas.

Waylon Wong (14:37)

So weird.

Aisha Harris (14:38)

Yeah. And she also gets upset with her boss for assigning her to write about Christmas. She's like, you know, I hate Christmas. And he's like, but that's a challenge. Like, I wanted you to, like, stretch your. And I'm like, oh, my God, this is reminding me.

Stephen Thompson (14:50)

Also, you have literally nothing else to write about. Exactly.

Waylon Wong (14:53)

I would say that if you love made for TV holiday rom coms. And you want to watch a pretty good July 4th one, I would recommend When Sparks Fly, starring Meghan Markle, which is at my public library. You might be able to get it from your public library. It's pretty good.

Aisha Harris (15:09)

Oh, my goodness. Thank you. You're welcome.

Glenn Weldon (15:12)

I'm not gonna lie. I haven't seen either films and this one sounds worse than Jingle all the Way Steven, so. I don't know.

Stephen Thompson (15:18)

I don't know.

Aisha Harris (15:19)

I promise you, it just might be so. Yes, that is I believe in Santa.

Glenn Weldon (15:24)

On Netflix now, Waylon, I have seen this movie.

Waylon Wong (15:27)

I know most people have. My pick is Love, actually the much beloved holiday rom com from 2003, written and directed by Richard Curtis. It has this absolutely stacked cast of like every British actor and some award winning, winning American actors as well. You've got Hugh Grant, Alan Rickman, Emma Thompson, Keira Knightley, Laura Linney, Colin Firth. It's amazing how many people, amazingly talented people are in this. I have resented for so long this movie getting canonized as the ultimate holiday rom com, or even a rom com, because to me, it fails as a rom com. First of all, it opens with a monologue by Hugh Grant's character. He's playing the prime minister, where he mentions 9 11. No, thank you. Why are we talking about 911 and the opening minutes of a rom com? The script is also weirdly fatphobic. It's so fat phobic, which I realized on a rewatch. I was like, who wrote this? It's terrible. There's too many storylines and only a few of them are even a little bit romantic. Most of them are super sad or just kind of nothing burgers to me. And I will say the one thing that I really, really don't like about this movie that grinds my gears and is this storyline with Keira Knightley where she's married to Chiwetel Ajafor. And then this is a rough one. Yeah. And then his best friend is played by Andrew Lincoln and he loves her. He has been secretly yearning for her. And then he shows up, you know, at the end of their storyline with these big cue cards that she's supposed to read, you know, oh, hi. Who is it is carol singers. And it says, like, to me, you are perfect and it's Christmas, so I just have to tell you I love you or whatever. And I hate this. Yes. I just think that it's been sold to us as the ultimate grand romantic gesture when to me, it is the height of narcissism. It's so selfish.

Stephen Thompson (17:32)

Keep it to yourself.

Waylon Wong (17:33)

Keep it to yourself. Exactly. And then she runs after him and kisses him on the lips, which I also think is really inappropriate. And I guess she meant it as like, well, it's Christmas and you've just made this huge confession, so I'll give you this much. But I'm like, in real life, you owe him nothing. He would take this as being like, oh, she reciprocates. And then he would be obsessed with you and he would probably stalk you in a creepy way. And I can't accept this packaged and sold to me as romance. I hate it.

Aisha Harris (18:04)

I can hear them, some of our listeners, furiously typing right now.

Stephen Thompson (18:07)

I hear fingers on keyboards right now.

Waylon Wong (18:09)

I know, I know you're gonna come for me. I don't care.

Aisha Harris (18:11)

This mov is now 20 plus years old at this point. Right? So I feel like it's gone through its ups and downs where it was beloved and then at some point people turned on it. Like there are multiple articles about how like love actually is. Actually is bad. Actually, like, it's bad actually. It's probably come pendulum has swung back. We have a direction where it's like, just let people enjoy things. But this movie, for every reason you just said, Waylon, it is just one of those movies that I think doesn't get the holiday spirit and it doesn't get the rom com right. It just does it all wrong.

Waylon Wong (18:44)

Yeah.

Glenn Weldon (18:44)

It fundamentally misunderstands Christmas because on one of those cue cards you mentioned, Waylon, it's written, it's Christmas, and on Christmas you tell the truth, which is not a thing.

Aisha Harris (18:54)

It's Santa.

Glenn Weldon (18:55)

In fact, if you spent any time with your family over Christmas, you know, you're all just pretending until you can leave.

Stephen Thompson (19:04)

Christmas is about gentle lies.

Glenn Weldon (19:06)

It's about lies. It's always been about lies. If you have any affection for the actor Emma Thompson, you hate this movie.

Waylon Wong (19:12)

It's such a bummer. It's such a bummer. What happens to her.

Stephen Thompson (19:15)

Emma Thompson, Alan Rickman storyline is super rough and comes with a nice dollop of slut shaming on top of it.

Sponsor Announcer (19:20)

Indeed.

Stephen Thompson (19:21)

The to me you are perfect is so the number of times I shout, what are you doing?

Aisha Harris (19:27)

It's Ed Sheeran before Ed Sheeran existed.

Aisha Harris (19:31)

It's like, this is an Ed Sheeran video.

Stephen Thompson (19:34)

This is this film's obsession with this one woman's weight.

Waylon Wong (19:39)

Oh, my gosh.

Stephen Thompson (19:40)

It's so weird. It is inexplicable on every level. Why do you care? What is wrong with you people?

Aisha Harris (19:48)

Well, it's not weird in the context of. This was also the era of Bridget Jones diary. This was the era of obsessing over how skinny Britney Spears and Paris Hilton were. If you think about when it came out, this was the norm, I guess.

Stephen Thompson (20:00)

It was explicable but unnecessary.

Waylon Wong (20:02)

And everyone should have known better. You know, 2003, we knew better. We knew better.

Glenn Weldon (20:07)

All right, that's another great pick. And it is, it is a very hateful movie. I don't know if it's. I mean, hate, actually. All right, we're gonna go from a film that everyone's seen to a film that I guarantee none of my fellow panelists have seen. This is the 2012 film Scrooge and Marley, a gay take on a Christmas Carol set in modern day Chicago. It's streaming on tubi as we tape this, if you want to check it out yourselves. When y' all hear that there's a gay version of A Christmas Carol, certain questions, you know, leap inevitably to mind. So let's knock em down. Number one, is it narrated by Judith Light? We'll put that to bed right away. Yes, yes, it is narrated by Judith Light, who plays Fezziwig. Is it Bruce Valanche again? Yes, yes, Bruce Valanche does play Fezziwig because Bruce Valanche is what happens when you can't meet Harvey Fierstein's quote.

Glenn Weldon (20:59)

Speaking of not meeting quotes like, this film was done on the cheap and it looks it. It is filmed in cramped under lit Chicago apartments. There's one gay bathhouse, Man's country, which is since closed. In the credits, the producers thank two and only two organizations for their product placement. And they are exactly the ones you imagined. Number one, Absolut Vodka and number two, Grindr. Because of course. Now look, we're gonna end on an up note here because I don't legitimately believe this to be the worst holiday movie of all time. It's not this bloated Hollywood vehicle for Arnold. It's not some horrible, wrong headed ensemble piece. It doesn't even have that kind of corporate Netflix patina. Right? It is a tiny, scrappy little movie that features a lot of very hardworking Chicago actors and also features entirely randomly, Tim Kazarinsky. A vanishingly small percentage of you will remember from SNL, the Dick Ebersole era in the 80s. He plays the ghost of Marley in pancake makeup so bad and so thick that your high school theater teacher would take one look at it and go, yeah, take another pass at that. That's too much less so in this clip, Marley is visiting Scrooge, who's played by David Pevsner. He's reminding him of all the awful things they did together in life. We did business.

Aisha Harris (22:20)

Doing business is not doing living. I want you to see that you.

Stephen Thompson (22:25)

Still have time to save yourself from this.

Glenn Weldon (22:28)

I'm not concerned with.

Aisha Harris (22:30)

With any savings that don't accrue interest. Now.

Glenn Weldon (22:35)

Be gone. You have no power here.

Stephen Thompson (22:38)

Why do they both sound like they're voiced by Tom Kenny?

Glenn Weldon (22:41)

Okay, couple things. Doing business is not doing living is not a good line. The acting, I mean, we're gonna talk, like, one notch above dinner theater. That's what to expect here. And at the end there, he says, you have no power here, which is a Wizard of Oz reference, because gay. So Ben Scrooge owns a gay piano bar. Or I should just say piano bar. Save us all some time. He hates Christmas. Goes around to take him on a tour of Chicago in the past, present and future. You might remember that in the Dickens novel, Scrooge gets to fly with a ghost of Christmas past by holding onto the hem of his robe. The gay version of that is, I don't need to tell you, by sniffing poppers.

Aisha Harris (23:23)

Oh, my God. I thought we were gonna be holding onto a jock strap. So that's a little.

Glenn Weldon (23:28)

You meet young Scrooge's cartoonishly homophobic dad, the boyfriend he abandons. We meet his lesbian niece, Frieda, Bob Cratchit and his husband and little Tiny Tim. And there's no swapping here. This is little Tiny Tim and his little tiny oxygen tank. We do meet a ghost of Christmas Future, who's played by the drag queen JoJo Baby. She is giving Club kid by way of Victorian undertaker. It's actually a pretty interesting look. And it's all interspersed by, wait for it. Cabaret numbers. Some of them achingly sincere and some of them with bawdy parody lyrics like sleep in heavenly peace. With the heavenly peace. So you see what they're doing there.

Glenn Weldon (24:16)

And look, I'm not gonna lie, it's not good. But what it exudes is exactly what you expect it to exude, which is raw sincerity and sentimentality. And those. Those are two things I'm allergic to personally. But it's doing its job, right? It's endemic to the story of a Christmas Carol. A Christmas Carol always ends nipple deep in schmaltz, right? Even when Bill Murray or Mr. Magoo doing the take on it, it's always sentimental slop. It's just doing it in this, you know, expressly by and For a very niche audience, we've been pretty critical up to now. I'm going to end on an up note, and I think it's entirely possible that someone who does not have a desiccated husk where a heart should be could even enjoy this film. I don't think it's likely, but I think it's entirely possible.

Stephen Thompson (25:01)

Well, then, Glenn, it sounds like you have failed at this assignment.

Glenn Weldon (25:04)

I think I did. You know, I kind of saw that it existed and I checked it out and it's nothing. I would watch voluntarily, but I would never watch any version of A Christmas Carol voluntarily because that.

Waylon Wong (25:14)

Not even the Muppets one?

Glenn Weldon (25:16)

Not even the Muppets one. I'm sorry, folks. I'm sorry, folks.

Waylon Wong (25:19)

Oh, no, no.

Glenn Weldon (25:20)

Can't do it. Can't do it.

NPR Sponsor Announcer (25:21)

No.

Waylon Wong (25:21)

Jesus, Flores. Mis.

Glenn Weldon (25:23)

I gotta be me.

Waylon Wong (25:24)

Gotta be me.

Stephen Thompson (25:25)

I do think that of these four, Jingle all the Way is the one Glen would hate the most.

Glenn Weldon (25:31)

I don't know. Aisha made a pretty good case.

Aisha Harris (25:34)

I believe in Santa, I think is competing there. But maybe you won, Steven. Maybe you won for actual worse.

Sponsor Announcer (25:39)

Worse.

Waylon Wong (25:40)

Worse you might have.

Glenn Weldon (25:41)

I don't think we're gonna be able to determine it here. I think we're gonna have to send it to the listeners to determine which of these four do they think is the worst holiday movie? And then. And then also we want to know what you think is the worst holiday movie of all time. Your own picks, find us@facebook.com PCHH that brings us to the end of our show. Stephen Thompson, Aisha Harris, Waylon Wong, thank you so much for being here. Thank you.

Aisha Harris (26:03)

Thank you, thank you.

Glenn Weldon (26:04)

This episode was produced by Liz Metzger, Carly Rubin and Mike Katsuff and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy. And hello. Come in provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from npr. I'm Glenn Weldon and we'll see you all next time.

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