‘Tis the season to be jolly, eat lots, have parties, attend church functions, enjoy family, give gifts, and remember the blessed event that gives reason to the season. One of the things my family and I also like to do is watch Christmas movies. For many, the Christmas movie has become an integral part of Christmas, with many seasonal movies actually part of their family traditions with movies like A Christmas Carol, A Christmas Story, and It’s a Wonderful Life topping the list in many a home.

Although my family and I like to watch certain movies at this time of year we also like to watch new movies and since we don’t have cable or satellite this means anything we haven’t seen on DVD. One such movie is Christmas Do-Over starring Jay Mohr. I picked this movie up a couple of weeks back for $3 (to buy) at the local DVD rental store and, although I love a good bargain, didn’t know if this would be such a bargain… but for $3 I was willing to give it a go.

To be fair, the movie wasn’t all that bad – I was half expecting Christmas Do-Over to be a complete waste of time and money (even at $3), but it was actually quite engaging and humorous. Jay Mohr plays Kevin, a childish man who writes jingles for a living. On Christmas Day he goes to his ex’s house to drop off his sons present and ends up getting stuck in Christmas Day until he can get it right.

Right away the story sounds like a Groundhog Day rip-off and being a TV movie this may be so, but it does have a few new things in store for people who are willing to give Christmas Do-Over a go. There are some laugh out loud moments, a sweet storyline, and Kevin even gets into a fight with Jesus, Mary, and Joseph (this may upset some religious folk, but don’t worry it’s not the real Holy family ). On the negative, there was a couple of innuendos, which should hopefully fly over young one’s heads (as in Shrek), a fight (mentioned above), and a few acts of spite, none of which were over played thankfully. However, the movie was, for the most part, family friendly, although the PG rating should be taken seriously.

As you would expect there’s not a lot of the true Christmas message in this movie. Honesty is an underlying theme throughout as is family love. The movie looked as good as anything made for TV within the last few years. The story wasn’t classic material and it wasn’t as as tight as it could have been, but I must say that everyone involved did their best with the material they had to work with and played their parts well. I did enjoy Christmas Do-Over and although it’s not an instant classic and going to make the Christmas playlist every year, I will probably revisit this movie in a couple of years.

Chris

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