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Christmas Do-Over (2006)
Ending is nonsense
This movie has some cute bits throughout and made me laugh and smile in places. The premise is familiar: a guy who is selfish and cares nothing about how his words or actions affect others gets stuck in a timeloop until he learns to be a better person.
In this case, the main character is Kevin, a divorced father stuck spending Christmas Day with his ex-wife's family so that he can spend Christmas with his son. Because he's a jerk, the family doesn't like him. To top off the day, it's the first time he's learning that his ex, Jill, is dating a great guy, even though they've been together for a year. He learns this when the boyfriend, Todd, joins them for Christmas. The kicker to the day is when Todd proposes and Jill accepts.
Like with other do-over movies, Kevin starts out taking advantage of the reset by indulging in behaviors that would normally have negative consequences, but won't this time since the day will reset. He then moves to manipulating events to try to make himself look like the good guy while making Todd (the boyfriend) look bad-the goal is to "win" his ex back. The problem is that Todd is actually a good guy and the things that make him look bad are relatively minor. Nonetheless, they work and each day that he pulls these stunts, the family ends by thinking Kevin is great and Todd is being a jerk. Despite a long history of knowing both of them.
For the final day, we see Kevin spend many days learning to breakdance so he can save the day and help his ex father-in-law win at the Christmas fair, and spend many more days learning how to rewire the Easy-Bake-Oven he'd purchased for his son so that the 6-year-old boy wouldn't be stuck with a "girl present" (because little boys hate baking, of course), and turns into a monster maker.
On the final day, it all comes together. He saves the day at the fair. The whole family loves the present he gives his son. And he thwarts Todd's proposal by hiring musicians and singing a Christmas song he wrote, timed for just when Todd had set his proposal. Keep in mind, we're supposed to believe he's become a better person, so these aren't manipulations and he hasn't made Todd look like a jerk this time.
So, because he's been a good person for one day, Jill decides that Todd, whom she's been dating for a year, whom her whole family likes, who likes and listens to her son, who is a genuinely good guy, whose proposal she has accepted all these other repeating Christmas days (suggesting she loves him), doesn't matter. She kisses Kevin at midnight and tells him that she wants to be with him. (I wonder if she keeps the new Lexus he gave her for Christmas?)
This could have been a much better ending if they'd actually had Kevin grow and accept that Jill was happy with Todd. Let him becoming a good dad be what breaks the do-over curse, rather than a romantic declaration that's unsupported by the rest of the story.
Anyway, there are moments that are enjoyable, but it's not great.
Triassic Attack (2010)
The good type of bad
I'll be straight with you. This is not a great movie. It is full of well-known tropes, stereotypes, and impossibilities. But it is the type of bad movie that is so bad it's actually good. It's fun. It's the type of bad movie that you watch with a group of friends and sit around and make fun of it while you watch it. Which is why I give it six stars. You can certainly enjoy your evening, or your afternoon, or whenever, watching this with a group of like-minded friends who enjoy bad movies. However, if you're looking for an actual good science fiction flick, one that is believable and has real science in it, this is not the movie for you. If you're just looking for fun, ridiculous, goofy evening, then this movie is perfect.
The App That Stole Christmas (2020)
I wanted to like this, but just couldn't
I wanted to like this movie. I really did. Come on, a black feel-good movie with a good message! A black Santa Claus! I thought it would be awesome. Boy was I wrong. This movie feels as though it's a high school production. Except that I would expect high schoolers to have written a better script, because if they didn't they'd probably fail. The acting wasn't great. The settings were okay. The costumes were okay, but not fantastic. The sets and the costumes not being fantastic would have been okay if the rest of the movie was better. Instead, the lackluster of everything just came together to make a terrible waste of time. If you want to waste an hour, as another reviewer said, just count to 3600 rather than wasting your time with this film.