On the eighth day of Christmas my rancid ex gave to me The Christmas Calendar.

Hey everyone, it’s Slick Dungeon here and I am still reviewing terrible Christmas movies. There are 12 days of Christmas so I am going to get through those before I review the ten absolute worst films of the last decade.

Today I have a movie for you that is so saccharine sweet that you’ll feel like you just stuffed six sugar cookies in your mouth. Yet somehow it manages to have no heart and is utterly predictable.

The Christmas Calendar is about Emily, a baker, who has returned to the small town she grew up in so that she can take over the bakery that her grandmother left for her. We also find out pretty quickly that the bakery is in danger of foreclosure and Emily will need to do something about that by the end of the month. Next a French baker, Gerard, comes in to town and it’s obvious that Emily has the hots for him. But it will be a problem because he could put her out of business. This all takes less than five minutes to set up. Then Emily receives an advent calendar that looks old and homemade. Everyone assumes it’s from a secret admirer and we spend the rest of the movie watching Emily and Gerard snip at each other, the town guessing who the secret admirer is, and basically knowing that everything will turn out fine in the end. Yay!

I have some questions.

• I mean it was a nice calendar but would that really make the news? I feel like this should have been titled Advent Calendar, the Movie.
• We all knew it was from her grandmother. How could people not see that coming?
• Seriously the news reporter from the fictional TV station just said she was here from “the news”. Were they too lazy to think of three or four letters? Or maybe a number?
• There’s a part where a health inspector flashes a badge. Pretty sure they don’t do that.
• There was this whole build up about a Christmas baking competition and they don’t even show it. What were they thinking?
• This is about two rival bakers and there’s not a single food fight. Boo.
• Okay so if this calendar was from a secret admirer, why would they make something so big and obvious. Isn’t the key word secret?
• Gerard bowls a perfect game his first try. I didn’t buy it at all.
• The misunderstandings between Emily and Gerard could have been cleared up if they had talked to each other for another five minutes but they never do that.
• We all knew that the bakery would be saved, Emily and Gerard would get together, and that they would end up as bakers together so why did we make this movie again? Oh yeah we needed a love letter film to advent calendars.

At first I had a hard time figuring out what the antidote to this film is. It kept reminding me of You’ve Got Mail, which is not a Christmas movie. Then I remembered why that made perfect sense. You’ve Got Mail is based on an old Jimmy Stewart more called The Shop Around the Corner which is a Christmas movie. It’s got the same sort of premise where there’s a business in danger and a couple that snip at each other until they fall in love. It’s got way more heart and won’t leave you with a sugary aftertaste.

Merrily Yours,

Slick Dungeon