Advent calendars are pretty cool, huh? It’s like a present every day for three-and-a-half weeks. I remember being totally jealous as a kid when a sib got to open up a door. Oh, man, he got the picture of mittens! Modern Advent calendars -for the most part- are no longer stupid; there are toy calendars and puzzle calendars and chocolate calendars and booze calendars and more. Some are ill-considered, but at least it beats a damn picture of a mitten, huh? Childhood is wasted on children, to be sure.
Here’s a movie with a wonderful premise and zero follow-through. It’s embarrassing how little this film had to offer given the opening. Abby Sutton (Kat Graham) is an underemployed photographer. Her work is good, but blah blah blah. Her childhood pal Josh (Quincy Brown) is an underemployed boyfriend. He’s obviously the one Abby should be dating, but blah blah blah.
At the end of November, Abby receives a fancy, wooden, house-like Advent calendar as a gift from her grandfather (Ron Cephas Jones). Gramps is annoyingly quiet about what makes the Advent calendar special, why grandma cherished it so, and especially why the gifting skipped a generation, which I’d still like to know. Abby immediately tries to open the doors and is thwarted. Gee, how hard were you trying?
On December 1st, a door to the calendar open by itself revealing a pair of boots. And, get this, later that day, Josh shows up with a present … boots! Not only did the calendar know Josh got boots for Abby in Italy; it also knew that sociopath was going to give them to her twenty-four days early. Go figure.
The next day, Abby finds a mini pine tree in the calendar and wouldn’t you know it? A mini pine tree also gives her a pair of boots. Seriously, she meets a single dad (Ethan Peck) who didn’t secure his holiday tree properly to his car and we almost get a Final Destination movie, which might have been kinda fun in context.
So … add it up: we got a would-be boyfriend of old, a would-be boyfriend (new), and a sooth-saying Advent
calendar – which is kind of a neat trick. Wouldn’t it be great if it were an evil sooth-saying Advent calendar, where the lesson might be not to pay attention to it, a la Greek tragedy?
No such luck. The film did absolutely nothing with its mystical coup. Abby spends at least thirty minutes of screentime trying to convince people her calendar is magic, which is a tremendously feeble plot … and then the film forgets the calendar altogether before having our heroine inadvertently give it to charity. I’m sorry; was the magic not good enough for you that you saw fit to ignore it? I don’t understand you.
And I don’t understand this film. You gave a great plot device and then ended up with the same damn weak romance as every other Christmas film. Except it looks even weaker because the magical device wasn’t the key that brought the correct couple together … so what was the point of that? Sometimes I really want to give negative stars. But since it’s Christmas, I’ll be generous.
There once was a woman named Abby
Of whom the holidays would treat so shabby
But a magic prognosticator
Yielded a solid indicator:
At the end of this film, I will be crabby
Rated TV-PG, 95 Minutes
Director: Bradley Walsh
Writer: Amyn Kaderali
Genre: Wasted premise
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Suckers for Christmas
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Movie fans
