Harley Jane Kozak had a great career in the late 1980's and early 1990's after success on the daytime soaps "Texas", "Guiding Light" and especially "Santa Barbara", but being crushed to death by the Capwell Hotel "C" was a metaphor for this tepid Christmas movie that followed audience favorites like "Parenthood" and "Arachnophobia" with an unbelievable and generally unlikable family comedy where she is one of the few decent things in it. Make it her and the legendary Lauren Bacall, and maybe a nice New York City atmosphere that captures some of the magic of the city where a White Christmas wasn't always guaranteed. It's too bad that there isn't a better script or likable characters, with Jamey Sheridan bland as her ex-husband, Kevin Nealon obnoxious as her new boyfriend, and Ethan Embry and Thora Birsch as the children utilizing rather absurd methods to try and get their parents back together.
The film has a colorful, festive look, but you can't just have a look. You have to have a story that won't make the audience cringe, which apparently they did in 1991 along with the critics. Bacall is gracious, funny with her subtle asides about how much she can't stand Nealon's phoniness and pretty much motivates the kids to reconcile their parents. She looks great and plays a very understanding character, even garnering audience affection for still loving her former son-law. Poor Andrea Martin is completely wasted as the pregnant Russian employee, but she serves absolutely no purpose.
Then there's Renee Taylor in a cameo as a wedding planner who is oblivious to the white mice whom the kids have let loose in an attempt to freak the mice phobic Nealon out, a truly idiotic scene. The kids do other sorts of seemingly illegal things to get rid of him, and they just aren't funny. Another plotline involves Embry's crush on a classmate which ultimately has her spending Christmas Eve in a local diner with him and Birsch, creating concern for Kozak and Sheridan over a sleepless night that is seemingly manipulated to reconcile them.
Embry's character gets several moments that do not ring true for a teenage boy, being sentimental as he looks at a badly made video of past family Christmas's. Birsch's character is completely cloying from beginning to end, grating in her pretentious Christmas suit as she walks down the street all determined to break up her mother and her boyfriend. Leslie Nielsen is cast as Santa Claus in a basically pointless subplot. Any sense of sentiment is additionally destroyed by a sappy theme song that has to be one of the worst movie songs of the 1990's. A sad holiday fiasco that now on TV is an instant channel changer.
The film has a colorful, festive look, but you can't just have a look. You have to have a story that won't make the audience cringe, which apparently they did in 1991 along with the critics. Bacall is gracious, funny with her subtle asides about how much she can't stand Nealon's phoniness and pretty much motivates the kids to reconcile their parents. She looks great and plays a very understanding character, even garnering audience affection for still loving her former son-law. Poor Andrea Martin is completely wasted as the pregnant Russian employee, but she serves absolutely no purpose.
Then there's Renee Taylor in a cameo as a wedding planner who is oblivious to the white mice whom the kids have let loose in an attempt to freak the mice phobic Nealon out, a truly idiotic scene. The kids do other sorts of seemingly illegal things to get rid of him, and they just aren't funny. Another plotline involves Embry's crush on a classmate which ultimately has her spending Christmas Eve in a local diner with him and Birsch, creating concern for Kozak and Sheridan over a sleepless night that is seemingly manipulated to reconcile them.
Embry's character gets several moments that do not ring true for a teenage boy, being sentimental as he looks at a badly made video of past family Christmas's. Birsch's character is completely cloying from beginning to end, grating in her pretentious Christmas suit as she walks down the street all determined to break up her mother and her boyfriend. Leslie Nielsen is cast as Santa Claus in a basically pointless subplot. Any sense of sentiment is additionally destroyed by a sappy theme song that has to be one of the worst movie songs of the 1990's. A sad holiday fiasco that now on TV is an instant channel changer.