When Groundhog Day first came out, the idea of a man living the
same day over and over again was novel. Since then, the concept has been
run into the ground, particularly when it comes to Christmas. Huey,
Dewey and Louie relived the same disastrous Christmas day until they got
it right. Elmo wished for perpetual Christmas with calamitous
consequences. Christmas every day sounds good in theory, but in practice
it's a little different.
In Christmas Do-Over, there are no established characters reliving the most wonderful day of the year ad nauseam.
The hapless protagonist is Kevin (Jay Mohr), a self-absorbed jingle
writer who couldn't be less interested in spending Christmas with his
son, Ben (Logan Grove); his former in-laws, Trudi (Adrienne Barbeau) and
Arthur (Tim Thomerson); his ex-wife, Jill (Daphne Zuniga); and her new
boyfriend, Todd (David Millbern). But he does his duty, ever so
begrudgingly, knowing it's just for the day. Little does he know just
how long that day will last...
Christmas Do-Over first aired on ABC Family. As a made-for-TV movie, it doesn't need to try very hard. It's an obvious rip-off of Groundhog Day
every step of the way, and watching it just made me aware of how
skillfully that Bill Murray film was done. But as silly as this movie
is, it's still fun to watch, and in general it works pretty well.
Kevin starts out completely obnoxious, doing his best to make a
nuisance of himself so he can rub in everyone's faces how disgruntled he
is at being a part of this celebration. He remains irritating
throughout most of the movie, but of course he finally starts to wise up
and turn into someone a little more tolerable. He gets some help from
the adorable Ben, who is one of only two people who is genuinely glad to
see him initially. The other is Granny Conlon (Ruta Lee), Jill's feisty
grandma who has a tendency to hit on her ex-grandson-in-law. Mostly,
though, he has to muddle through on his own, navigating this perplexing
scenario in which, no matter what he is doing when Christmas Day ends,
he always finds himself back on his in-laws' porch, ringing the doorbell
and dodging a football thrown by a couple of snickering neighbor boys.
Because the bulk of the day's activities occur within the home, there's
a lot less opportunity for Kevin to interact with the community at
large, so there's a lot less breathing room in Christmas Do-Over than in Groundhog Day.
Mostly, he does exactly the same things over and over again. He doesn't
spend one huge chunk of time learning a foreign language, another
learning a musical instrument, another learning an art form, yet another
studying the goings-on of all the townsfolk so he can be in the right
place at the right time to turn into everyone's hero. Kevin does get
involved in the community to some extent via a town fair, but there's
still not a whole lot that changes from day to day. As repetitious as Groundhog Day is, this movie is much more like a broken record.
The acting is pretty corny, especially from Millbern, as Todd ends up
looking like a complete goon by the time the movie is over. My brother
and I agreed that the most entertaining character in the bunch is a
wacky-looking elderly neighbor (Jack Axelrod) who pops by to warn
everyone that the road is out. Sadly, he only shows up a couple of
times.
At first, I thought this was a Hallmark movie, but when
I realized it was at least as crude as it was warm and fuzzy, I figured
that couldn't be right. The humor is PG-rated but awfully immature, and
there's an unnecessary smattering of bad language. But some of the
laughs are genuine, and I won't deny there's a feel-good element to it,
though one person's pleasure probably equals another's pain in this
case, and I'm not entirely sure how I feel about that. Not badly enough
that I regret renting it. It was reasonably cute the first time around.
But I won't be watching Christmas Do-Over over and over.
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