thekarmicnomad

This starts off really well with some really likeable characters who have great chemistry.

There is a clear target - to get a ticket for the concert so the two hotties can hook up, whilst the "other guy" simmers in the background.

The problem is this just gets too silly.

The impossible-to-get tickets pop up all over the show, offered out by ridiculous characters in exchange for some moronic fetch-quest that never quite get completed.

Then its on to the next one...

This film is only about 100 minutes long but feel much, much longer.

Everybody knows how this film is going to end: predictability is perfectly fine in a rom-com.

But the length this was drawn out left me feeling quite numb by the end.

Not an awful film but there is so much better out there.

If you have a full tum and want something to drift off to then this is a contender.

An estranged couple are reunited at their new partners' Christmas family get together.

There is lots of fun here with farce and misunderstandings and barely veiled snark.

The characters are thin, but work as designed.

This only problem I have is that this has nothing to do with Christmas.

This could easily have been set at a Summer Vacation, a wedding a funeral or a retirement party.

Anything like getting the tree is purely cosmetic and most events run counter to what you would expect.

Normally Christmas is about being forced to be with family but here they spend most of their time at balls or bars or offices.

It doesn't feel like Christmas at all - your not even supposed to eat the food.

Production and acting is all good and I did enjoy this but it probably won't stay on my Christmas rotation because of the above. I won't want to watch it in the summer because of its Christmas attire.

A Disappointment Room apparently is where in the olden-days you stick sick kids so the family didn't have to endure the stigma.

This has the usual ghost story setup with a family escaping a trauma by renovating a spooky old manor.

Several things are set up quite ham-fistedly.

The dad never calls his wife by her name and (even though he is the stay-at-home-dad) she does the cooking and cleaning, the dad tears around the house with the kid whilst mum sits quietly with him.

The mum is forever running down spiral staircases or trapped in places or confronted with her reflection.

It feels like someone went through their film-school book and pulled something out of every chapter.

The actual story is just pointless.

People and ghosts appear and disappear but nothing really matters because there is no consequence to anything.

To be honest I didn't care if anything did happen to the family anyway.

The dad is a complete bell end and the mum is just a bundle of neurosis.

The whole point of the story seems to be that losing a child can make you very sad and (like a deformed child in the cellar) you have to accept it.