5 hours Ago By Extra Reporter
Everyone has their own Christmas traditions. For some, it’s attending midnight mass or decorating their houses like Santa’s grotto while drinking their bodyweight in eggnog. For others, like me, it’s spending hours on the sofa watching unashamedly festive movies.
During December I can’t get enough of them and I’m not the only one. This month, former model Caprice Bourret revealed surviving a brain tumour had given her the courage to finance and produce a film of her own. And what did she choose? ‘A cheesy, wonderful Christmas romance.
’ Here for fellow fans, or those tempted to join the cult, are the best (and worst) festive films on offer this year. So pour a sherry and surrender to an endless parade of dashing European princes falling for homely American girls, and people deciding to swap lives for no reason whatsoever Move over Aled Jones because in Netflix’s newest movie, the snowman may not be able to fly, but he does have a six pack, chiselled jaw and buttocks of steel. Kathy, a widow, is still grieving.
What she needs is for a sexy snowman near her home, played by Dustin Milligan, to come to life, take her mind off her dead husband and do a few odd jobs around the house while he’s at it. Her wish is Frosty’s command. A MOVIE based on the lyrics of the Wham! hit Last Christmas.
Heart transplant patient Kate (Emilia Clarke) is an aspiring singer working as a Christmas elf in a tacky, themed shop. She keeps bumping into a handsome stranger not realising he is the man who donated his heart to her. Throw in a concert for the homeless and a bit of Brexit and immigration and you’ve got yourself the maddest Christmas movie in recent years.
Imagine Dragons’ Den on skis and you’ll get the gist of this. Lindsay Lohan plays Sierra, a spoilt heiress who ends up with amnesia following a ski accident. She’s rescued by Jake, a handsome but lonely widower whose ski lodge business is failing because Sierra’s mean dad refused to bail him out.
Reader, he gets the girl and the investment. ‘Magic is always possible when you believe in Christmas and love,’ says leading man Hunter in this movie starring model Caprice. Would it be too cruel to say life reflects art as Caprice plays Ivy – a film producer who is trying to recover from the embarrassment of her most recent festive flop? Feeling flat, Ivy plans to persuade Hunter, the star of her one and only hit, to appear in her next project.
Trouble is, Hunter has retired to Serbia – as so many Hollywood stars do. Can Ivy lure him back to the silver screen? ‘Fasten your facelifts ladies, it’s going to be a bumpy ride,’ is one of the lines from this movie. A bunch of real-life soap actresses (including Linda Gray who played Sue Ellen in Dallas) star as a group of divas who reunite to record a final festive episode of the show that made them all famous, The Great Lakes.
Needless to say, they all loathe each other and things culminate in a ridiculously over the top food fight. It’s hard to imagine Dame Joan Collins, famed for Dallas, lowering herself to these levels. Best-selling American author Sophie, played by Brooke Shields, decides to escape to Scotland after her latest book bombs.
While there, she visits a castle where her grandfather once worked as a groundsman. She also bumps into the grumpy bachelor Duke of Dunbar, who can’t afford the upkeep on his crumbling ancestral home. No problem! Sophie buys it and slowly melts the heart of the destitute Duke in the process.
For reasons that make no sense, American opera singer Jessica gets stranded in a Yorkshire Dales village. The only room she can find is at a B&B run by a handsome widower. Just as Jessica starts to fall for him, she is offered the gig of her life – performing at New York’s Carnegie Hall.
Will she choose her dream or the man? Jess and Bill Walker have grown distant from their two sulky teenagers. They long for the family to be close again. What they could do with is a rare cosmic event that causes them all to switch bodies.
Only then can they understand more about each other and have the best Christmas ever. To win back the approval of his mother, Queen Portia, Prince Edward buys her a Corgi puppy for Christmas that they name Mistletoe. But the gift backfires when Mistletoe turns out to be very mischievous.
For some reason or other Mistletoe has to attend a royal ball and, in desperation, Prince Edward sends for Cecily, a world-renowned American dog trainer, who gets Mistletoe to behave...
and the Prince to fall in love. Magic Mike meets The Full Monty in this heartwarming Christmas tale. Broadway dancer Ashley returns to Sycamore Creek after 12 years to discover that her local bar is in danger of closing.
To raise funds she puts on an allmale strip show, recruiting locals to take part including reluctant handyman Luke, who just so happens to be hiding the body of a Greek god beneath that plaid shirt and utility belt. Floppy-haired English posho James has fallen in love with Hayley, a no-nonsense working-class woman from the north of England. At the train station they say their goodbyes as they head off to be with their families but, at the last minute, James decides to leap on to Hayley’s train to be with her.
But, disaster! Hayley had the same idea and jumped on James’s train. It ends with Hayley having to spend the holidays with the toffs at James’ country pile while James rocks up at the semi owned by Hayley’s salt-of-the-earth family. Why they can’t just get in a car and be together is never quite explained.
The hilarity continues with a sequel. Prince Richard of Aldovia, who looks suspiciously like a young Prince William, is about to take the throne, so he holds an international press conference, as all royals do. American journalist Amber attends and somehow ends up working as a tutor to one of the Princesses (don’t ask).
Prince Richard saves her from a wolf (seriously, don’t ask) and they fall in love. The two sequels focus on Amber’s new life as a royal. No, not those Middletons.
Middleton is a fictional American town, where a high school principal lives with her popular cheerleader daughter, Samantha. Together they must organise a fundraising concert to save their school. They call on the help of the handsome, gruff caretaker and his cute but shy son.
Will the concert go ahead? Will the school be saved? Will all generations find love? Well, it wouldn’t be much of a feel-good movie if they didn’t. A canine version of Home Alone essentially, with possibly one of the most brain-frying plots of all time. An animal scientist has invented a dog collar that translates doggy thoughts into words.
Another scientist wants to steal his idea, so he lures the inventor and his family away on a ski holiday and pays thieves to break in and nab the collar. But the neighbourhood dogs all rally to foil the burglary. Barking mad.
Most festive films feature actors you’ve never heard of, however, this big budget horror is proof that A-listers don’t always make things better. Mel Gibson, Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg star as the group of dads, stepdads and grandparents who take the family to a luxury resort at Christmas. Brainless slapstick and shenanigans ensue.
Suffice to say this sequel makes the pretty awful Daddy’s Home 1 look like Citizen Kane. Lindsay Lohan is back. This time she plays Avery, who is spending her first Christmas with her new boyfriend’s family.
But, what’s this? Her boyfriend’s sister is there too and she’s dating Logan, her ex that she never quite got over. Avery and Logan decide admitting their past will be too awkward so, instead, they play a ridiculous game of cat and mouse to throw the family off the scent. Throw a talking statue of the Virgin Mary into the mix and you’ve got yourself a fabulously awful festive romance.
High-flying New York executive Ella is sent to a ranch in Canada to pitch a business plan to a CEO who is there on holiday. While there, the silly city girl meets a rough and tough rancher who makes her realise that there’s more to life than designer clothes and nice restaurants. Yee-ha.
Brooke is a disillusioned, broken-hearted high school teacher in Ohio who tells her friends that no knight in shining armour is ever going to come to her rescue. Enter Sir Cole Fredrick Lyons of Norwich, a 14th century knight who, thanks to an obliging crone, time travels to America’s Midwest to brighten up Brooke’s life. Often named the worst Christmas film of all time, Hulk Hogan stars as Blake, a ruthless and crooked billionaire who sells bodybuilding supplements.
When he falls and hits his head, he wakes up believing that he is really Santa Claus. Bad Blake turns over a new leaf and thwarts an evil scientist trying to destroy an orphanage in order to access the magic crystals buried underneath it. Hazel is a successful architect who returns home to find the family’s bakery in financial trouble.
To save the business she decides to enter a gingerbread house baking contest where the prize is $100,000. She can’t do it alone though, she needs help – and who better than James, the handsome handyman (hot handymen are something of a theme in Christmas movies) who is renovating the troubled bakery? Meg and Jennifer are sisters and best friends who miss each other terribly as they live thousands of miles apart. Instead of deciding to just spend Christmas together they, instead, swap lives.
Meg travels to Salt Lake City to run Jennifer’s award-winning restaurant and Jennifer goes to Missouri to run the family bakery (Christmas movies can’t get enough of bakeries on the brink). Successful writer Jake returns to his hometown following the death of his estranged mother. Rachel is also in town trying to trace her birth mother, Noel, who used to be Jake’s nanny.
Talk about coincidence. Together they head into the mountains to track down the dad who abandoned Jake and demand more information. But they get snowed in and have to spend the night at a remote log cabin.
.. how will they keep warm?.
