On the fifth day of Christmas my rancid ex gave to me Ghosting: The Spirit of Christmas.

Here is a movie that could have worked and been a cute romantic comedy if the premise wasn’t so absurdly stupid. This is about a young woman who is a bit stuck in life, getting small time jobs and getting fired from them. She’s also been dating a bit but hasn’t found her true love yet. She has a roommate who is supportive of her through thick and thin. Jess, the woman, finally goes on a successful date and is promptly killed in a car accident because she was texting and driving with the guy she just had the date with. The next day she wakes up as a literal ghost. She turns to her roommate to get help and they find out that she needs, “big love” to ascend to heaven. She goes on dates with the dude but in the end she still doesn’t ascend. Finally they figure out that her big love needed is more or less to apologise to her roommate for not being there for her. Then she goes to heaven and in less than a year the dude ends up dead too and goes to heaven. Apparently heaven is the bar where they had their first date and played trivia night.

Honestly the romance kind of works and so does the friendship with the roommate but the whole literal ghost thing? Not so much.

I had a few questions.

• Why is she sometimes intangible and sometimes not? That makes no sense.
• They keep talking about It’s a Wonderful Life, why didn’t they end the movie that way?
• It was really obvious that the actress kept almost touching stuff but then realized oh wait I am a ghost and can’t touch that. Couldn’t they have increased the special effects budget slightly to make that more believable.
• At one point she has to ask her friend to open the door for her. Can’t she just walk through the wall since she is a ghost?

The obvious antidote to this movie is It’s a Wonderful Life. Just rewatch that.

Merrily Yours,

Slick Dungeon

On the fourth day of Christmas my rancid ex gave to me Four Christmases. This movie takes one Christmas and somehow makes it into four terrible Christmases which adds up to one terrible movie.

This stars Reese Witherspoon and Vince Vaughn as a couple who have dated for about three years and avoided having Christmas with their families by lying about doing charity work. That last part tells you what horrible people these are if they are willing to lie about something like that. Had there been any character growth by the end of the movie I might have gotten over that but in the end they do the same type of lying but about their first child being born. What was the point of this whole movie if that happens? I got the job impression the whole time that these were self centered jerk wads and were never going to change and the end confirms that.

Let me explain. No there is no time. Let me sum up.

The couple get caught on camera trying to leave for a vacation on Christmas Eve after they have told their parents they were doing charity work. They are caught red handed and now have to spend Christmas day visiting with each of their divorced parents. Needless to say things get out of hand and comedy ensues. In the end this couple is supposedly brought closer together and learn that Christmas and families are not so bad.

Normally in my reviews at this point I would give you a list of questions I had while watching it. But this time my only real questions were; how long was this day because no way they fit all those visits into less than twenty four hours and why did anyone think this film was a good idea? So instead I am going to give you the one and only reason to watch this at all.

• John Favreau in a mohawk acting like a UFC fighter aggressively eating chicken.

That’s the best part of this. Other than that skip it.

The best antidote to this one is Love Actually because in that movie you get the impression that nice people are in love, actually.

Merrily Yours,

Slick Dungeon