Q. What happens when you’re very sick with a cold and you’re smart enough to stay in bed for a couple of days?
A. You make a not-so-smart move with very bad movie viewing decisions in your bedridden, weakened state.
Being sick and watching streaming Netflix on the laptop in bed, I subjected myself to the major suckfest called All American Christmas Carol. This is NOT to be confused with 1979’s An American Christmas Carol.
Because I had yet to see this 2013 movie and it was free on my Netflix, this seemed like as good a time as any to give it a viewing. This is a major waste of time even though, yes, I watched the whole thing.
I don’t feel it even worth enough to spend too many words on so this will be as short as it needs to be.
This is a non-traditional attempt. In a nut-shell, it’s a stereotypical, white trailer-trash people A Christmas Carol. It has a competent cast (a couple more so) that in no way can save this train wreck of a story adaptation.
Taryn Manning is Cindy, this story’s Scrooge character. Cindy is a selfish woman that refuses to work or properly care for her three children (all have different fathers). They live in a trailer with their life-style centering around a dollar store that provides all of life’s necessities – except for the kids’ Christmas presents which come only from a claw machine game, and only if Cindy wins. Her laziness, the advantage she takes of others as a free loader, and the way she neglects her children, all bring on her ghostly visitations on Christmas. The Past being a dead, teenage nerd-girl from high school; the Present being a biker rock star she idolized; and the future being her own deceased hair dresser, trailer-trash mother. There’s more thrown in: a love triangle with her and two men and tension with her brother and sister-in-law.
Actually, the way the main character neglects her children and talks to them is very difficult viewing. It was just all I could do the get through it knowing that the main character would change since it’s based on A Christmas Carol.
It’s very disconcerting to see the fantastic Beverly D’Angelo as-well-as Meat Loaf turn up in this mess. Both are way above this. D’Angelo is the main character’s mother and Ghost of the Future while Meat Loaf plays the step-father in one of the past flashbacks. Eric Roberts appears as the present ghost. Who cares? His “talent” is the most fitting for this 5th rate version.
I don’t own this. If I ever do, which I insanely would in order to add to the collection, it’s going to be out of a $5 bin (or less). Owning it or not, it’s most likely going to be only after a few seasons that I view this thing again. Like some of the other bad adaptions, it would only be an occasional, obligatory viewing.
25 Days of A Christmas Carol 