Hi Christmas buddies! It’s that time of year! It’s time to start counting down the days until the biggest holiday of the year. Unfortunately though, it’s still 2020 so it’s probably gonna suck. Why not double down on it and watch some really, really bad Christmas movies? Because that’s not what sane people do? Oh. Well, that’s what I’m doing. I have since Thanksgiving. And, well, I’m about halfway done. So far everything is going great. I kind of only want to gouge my eyes out a little. No big deal. Today’s movie was especially rotten too. But, let’s not preamble on forever. Let’s get to it.
I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus is a tv movie based on the popular Christmas song. As you can probably piece together, it is about a boy who creeps downstairs one night to see his mother kissing his father dressed as Santa. He misunderstands the whole situation and thinks his mom is cheating with Saint Nick. This, of course, leads to all sorts of hijinks, as the kid tries to save his parent’s marriage. Unexpectedly, this means he’s going to be as bad as possible to try to keep Santa away. Oh, and he starts a serious vendetta against Santa. We’re talking abusing mall Santas and hanging the neighbors’ decorations up by a noose level vendettas. Turns out this kid really, really likes his parents being together. And, out of material from the song, it eventually devolves into just straight up stealing from other popular Christmas movies of the time. Jingle All the Way kinda sorta almost worked. Let’s have the kid obsessed with a superhero, want his toy, then run into a costumed version of the character for absolutely no reason. Home Alone is big. Let’s have him set all kinds of Kevin McCallistar type traps for Santa. No! Stay in your lane, I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus. I know your whole plot is in your title, but don’t encroach on other movies’ territory.
But, here’s the thing. The plot really isn’t all that bad. Nah. What makes this movie a complete disaster is in the basic moviemaking. This is just a good, old fashioned poorly made movie. It’s not a crazy one. First of all, the acting is actoricous. Our lead is played by both Sprouse twins, Dylan and Cole. Now, I’ve seen quite a bit of acting from these two. I grew up watching Friends and Big Daddy, which were both before this. My sister (and by extension I) watched a lot of Suite Life, which came only a few years later. I don’t know quite what but something went wrong here. Maybe they weren’t given enough practice. Maybe they’re used to kind of just reacting to better actors. Maybe it was just a rough shoot for both of them. I wouldn’t know. However, this is some of the worst child acting I’ve ever seen. They were not believable for a second. Every line felt like it was being read straight off of the script. But, putting the blame squarely on their shoulders isn’t quite fair. First of all, they’re children. Second, everyone is this bad. Across the board every single actor put in a bad performance. That’s a rare site. Even the worst movies usually have at least one decent performance. I couldn’t find one here though. And, trust me, I was looking. I’m just going to blame the director to be honest. There’s no way everyone separately was that awful.
And, it’s pretty obvious that the director isn’t all that good either. Or, at least, the moviemaking team in general. Because, holy crap, did this movie need to be re-edited. This is a fairly short movie, but it felt like one of the longer movies I’ve seen this month. That’s mostly because the pacing was so. Incredibly. Slow. And there were so many awkward pauses. Like, a scene would wrap and we’d still just be hanging out with the characters for no apparent reason. At first, I thought it was on purpose since we were sitting around the table during an uncomfortable family moment. But it just kept happening. Even when there was no need. And, there’s no fancy camera work like pans or zooming in or anything either. Or none that I could remember. Everything just felt very static and very stale. It felt very much like a rehearsal. Like they filmed the first time everyone got off book and just rolled that out as a final product. Very little editing. Minimal music added. Bad performances and all. Who cares? It’s a tv movie!
As you can tell, I did not enjoy my viewing of I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus. In fact, I haven’t had this much trouble getting through one of these movies since Santa’s Christmas Elf (Named Calvin). And, as we know, that movie didn’t move. It was static. However, this one felt almost as long and boring. Bad general moviemaking will do that to you. So, yeah, I don’t really recommend this one in any sort of fashion. Heck, they never even played the song…
Dyl's Movie Stuff 