The movie starts out with the most annoying title sequence of all time. A jazzy Christmas song plays while the camera pans over a map of America. A little animated white ball wearing a Santa hat flies all over screen and supplies “o”s to everyone’s name and makes boingy sounds. Also, when a trumpet solo comes up, it takes off its hat and plays it like a trumpet. So irritating. It also does one of those things where someone’s name was put up wrong, so it fixes it. It’s the editor’s name too, so I think that’s a diss on him. We’ll see if it’s deserved. It then uses the hat as a parachute for a while until it gets run over by producer Tracey Trench’s name. That was satisfying. By the way, it stops its mischievous activities just in time for director Arlene Sanford’s name. I guess Arlene thought it was okay to distract from everyone else’s name with that stupid white ball, but when it came time for her name, she demanded that the ball respect her. The floating map comes to rest on Los Angeles and then turns into a college campus. White letters inform us that this is the “Palisades College.” Then we see kids at lockers. Right now I’m trying to figure out what kind of college has lockers. Oh, and there’s Jonathan Taylor Thomas (JTT from now on, because that’s so much cooler) himself, walking down the hall and saying “hi” to everyone. He must be cool and popular. His friend Ian is stuck in his own locker. Does that even happen in real life? My lockers in high school were so small I could barely fit my jacket in them, and I don’t have lockers at my college so I wouldn’t know. Anyway, JTT frees him, but only after Ian slides copies of upcoming tests and backstage passes to a Dave Matthews Band show out through the little slats. Oooh, so JTT is a bad boy here! What a risky character choice for the teen idol! Don’t worry, ladies, he plays it the exact same way he played Randy on Home Improvement. Anyway, it turns out that Ian got thrown into the locker because some guy named Eddie and his friends were angry about fake IDs JTT and Ian sold them. Fake IDs! Cheating on math tests! Will this reign of terror never end? Oh, JTT, you are such a lovable scamp! JTT thrusts tickets back home to New York into Ian’s hands and tells him to change them to tickets to “Cabo San Lucas.” I have never heard of such a place, because I’m not as cool or smooth as JTT.
And now JTT is walking down yet another hall, past a bunch of ladies with white patches over their noses. I smell a Clueless-style nose-job joke, but actually they are wearing those sticky things that supposedly remove blackheads. They don’t work, by the way. Not that I have blackheads. Because I don’t. Really. Really! Dammit, this movie is making me insecure already. JTT knocks on a door, and some ugly girl wearing a basketball uniform opens it. Now I’m really confused, because this “college” has a bunch of young-looking students and lockers, but also dorms. Is it a boarding school, perhaps? Then why is it called a college? JTT is said to be 18, which means he could be in high school or college. I don’t know which it is, and it won’t ever be explained in the movie either, so let’s all stop worrying about it. Because it won’t be the first thing in this movie that goes completely unexplained, and we’ll have to ignore all of those things too, so just get used to it. The ugly basketball girl won’t let JTT into the room until he gives her chocolate bars. He does so, because he is so smooth that he always carries them around to bribe chocolate-loving females. By the way, JTT is so short that this girl towers over him. And he’s wearing a really ugly shirt. Anyway, he walks over to Jessica Biel, whose character’s name is Allie, and is JTT’s girlfriend, and shall henceforth be known as Mary, in honor of her 7th Heaven character’s name. She’s sleeping in bed. JTT lies down to her. Scandalous! Then she wakes up and freaks out because she fell asleep studying for a French final that's in three hours. Before she can kick him out, JTT gives her tickets to that Cabo San Lucas place so they can spend Christmas there together. Mary gets all huffy and leaves.
And now JTT is walking down yet another hall, past a bunch of ladies with white patches over their noses. I smell a Clueless-style nose-job joke, but actually they are wearing those sticky things that supposedly remove blackheads. They don’t work, by the way. Not that I have blackheads. Because I don’t. Really. Really! Dammit, this movie is making me insecure already. JTT knocks on a door, and some ugly girl wearing a basketball uniform opens it. Now I’m really confused, because this “college” has a bunch of young-looking students and lockers, but also dorms. Is it a boarding school, perhaps? Then why is it called a college? JTT is said to be 18, which means he could be in high school or college. I don’t know which it is, and it won’t ever be explained in the movie either, so let’s all stop worrying about it. Because it won’t be the first thing in this movie that goes completely unexplained, and we’ll have to ignore all of those things too, so just get used to it. The ugly basketball girl won’t let JTT into the room until he gives her chocolate bars. He does so, because he is so smooth that he always carries them around to bribe chocolate-loving females. By the way, JTT is so short that this girl towers over him. And he’s wearing a really ugly shirt. Anyway, he walks over to Jessica Biel, whose character’s name is Allie, and is JTT’s girlfriend, and shall henceforth be known as Mary, in honor of her 7th Heaven character’s name. She’s sleeping in bed. JTT lies down to her. Scandalous! Then she wakes up and freaks out because she fell asleep studying for a French final that's in three hours. Before she can kick him out, JTT gives her tickets to that Cabo San Lucas place so they can spend Christmas there together. Mary gets all huffy and leaves.
Now they’re walking outside, and Mary is still angry that JTT would be so daring as to hook her up with tickets to a tropical paradise where they will stay in a three-bedroom condo overlooking the ocean. Mary wants to spend Christmas with her family in New York. She rants about how upset her parents would be if she didn’t come home for Christmas and blah blah blah. I stop paying attention because she looks cross-eyed when she says all this and that’s funny. Oh, and we find out that JTT doesn’t want to go home because his dad has a new wife.
And now a big ol’ SUV drives up containing Eddie, who is played by Adam La Vorgna, who I will call Robbie in honor of his 7th Heaven character. I read that the set of this movie is where Biel and La Vorgna met and started dating, but I don’t see how that's possible since they gave Robbie a really awful hairstyle. It’s all long and almost mullet-y, and it’s greasy. It makes his ears look really small too. Anyway, Robbie comes on to Mary totally in front of JTT until he gets his just desserts and backs into a BMW accidentally. By the way, I have never heard of a boarding school that lets its students bring their own cars to campus.
Now JTT is talking to three guys who each look about thirty-five years old. But apparently they're supposed to be younger than that, because they’re angry at JTT about the bad fake IDs. JTT tells them he can get them As on their history final for free to make it up to them. Hey, do you think that maybe JTT is a smooth and smart-alecky con artist? I don’t know how that idea popped into my head, but it might have something to do with the three anvils that just fell on it that read, “JTT is a smooth and smart-alecky con artist who will need to change his ways if he wants to get home in time for Christmas.”
And we’re in JTT’s dorm room. Ian is packing for him. What’s the deal with Ian here? Is he an indentured servant? Or perhaps his low self-esteem is what's making him so servile to JTT. I would like to explore this potentially interesting dynamic of Ian and JTT’s relationship, but of course that won’t happen. JTT’s dad calls him. JTT’s dad is played by Gary Cole, who basically acts the same way he did in the Brady Bunch movies, except it’s not funny here. And how much better would this movie be if he were actually Gary Coleman, which was who I thought played JTT’s dad. I was mistaken, and now must be punished by watching Gary Cole. JTT and Dad argue about JTT not coming home for Christmas while JTT’s sister laughs, and I hate her already. We find out that JTT’s mom died, and he hasn’t been home for the holidays since. Dad bribes JTT with a Porsche to come home by six o’clock on Christmas Eve. He agrees.
JTT meets Mary on her way out of the French final and tell her that he got tickets to New York and they’re going back together. My boyfriend from college (and that would be real college, not whatever’s going on in this movie) lives in Georgia and I live in Connecticut, so when vacations come up, we don’t see each other for weeks or months. But JTT and Mary live in the same freaking town. How nice. Mary does her best to impersonate the worst actor in my fifth-grade play, thus making the make-up scene completely unconvincing despite the clarinet of resolved conflict that blares in the background.
The three thirty-five-year-olds take their stupid final and cheat by using beepers. Ian types the answer into his computer and then sends it to them. I’m not sure exactly how it all works, because I don’t know anything about technology. We can tell that they are taking a history test, because the answers are things like “Frederick Douglass” and “abolitionism.” I wonder what they do when they get to the essay questions. Whoops! Robbie just barged into Ian’s room and stopped the answer-giving. The thirty-five-year-olds are angry, and show this by looking at each other and throwing the beepers down loudly. We don’t see the part where the teacher totally figures out what they were doing because they were so obvious about it.
Oooh, Christmas party time! JTT is drinking eggnog. You know, if he were a real bad boy, it would be spiked. But this is Disney. Cheating is fine, but drinking is bad. JTT gets surrounded by Robbie and the thirty-five-year-olds. They’re pissed. We get a shot of Ian locked in his locker in a dark hallway. Wow, he could die in there. And he may well have, since we don’t see him ever again in this movie. JTT gets carried off by the four, and then it’s the morning and Mary is waiting for him to pick her up to go to the airport.
But he can’t, because he’s lying in the middle of a desert glued into a Santa suit. He wakes up and realizes his situation. He rubs his head. Um, how did Robbie and his friends do this? Did they knock him out? Drug him? They also must have taken his clothes off and put him into the Santa suit, beard and all, while he was unconscious. If four guys did that to me I would be really upset, to say the least. And they left him lying in the middle of a desert! He could have died! That’s two people Robbie almost killed. But JTT takes it all in stride. He’s going to have to find a way to get that beard off, because I can’t see that teen idol face of his and am quickly losing interest in the movie.
Back at school, Robbie offers to give Mary a ride home in his SUV, which I thought he crashed like the day before. Maybe it’s a self-repairing model. Also, it turns out that Robbie lives in the same town as JTT and Mary, which is silly. Well, I don’t know -- maybe that town doesn’t have a high school/college and thus has to send all of its children to Palisades College because of a town law. Anyway, Mary threatens to “slug” Robbie if he does anything slimy. A threat indeed, since I’m sure he’s really scared of getting hit by a female. Although I don’t feel quite right calling Mary that, seeing as she lurches around and speaks so mannishly.
JTT makes it to a gas station without dying of thirst or heat exhaustion. But wouldn’t this have been a better movie if he had? Think about it. Then Gary Coleman could have spent the rest of the movie seeking revenge on Robbie. JTT calls his dad and asks him to wire him some money to get home, but Dad doesn’t believe that he’s in the desert in a Santa suit. And doesn’t give him any money. And hangs up on him. Not to worry -- some old lady heard the conversation. JTT appeals to her elderlyness to get a free ride from her and her friends, who are all on their way to a Tom Jones concert in Vegas. Dude, they’re like eighty years old. They were forty when Tom Jones started his career. People my mother’s age are fans of his, not people of an age right between my grandmother and great-grandmother. What an insult to Tom Jones, who did nothing to deserve this. Well, except for the video for “If I Only Knew.” Anyway, the shot is of the Old Lady Mobile, which is of course a boat car from the fifties. I would point out how stereotypical and wrong it is to have the old ladies drive such a vehicle, but the fact is that my own grandmother drives a car so huge that Chevrolet isn’t allowed to sell it to the general public anymore, so I’m on shaky ground here. JTT has to sit bitch in the car, surrounded by old ladies who enjoy the music of Tom Jones. Oh, a fate worse than death. Then one of them falls asleep, and her dentures fall out into his crotch. All gummy-jawed, she follows them. He responds, “Hey, get out of there!” which I thought he delivered pretty well. I did not find the fact that an elderly person’s dentures fell out funny at all, however. Then a lady in the front seat spins around with a huge open jar of pickles and offers them to the folks in the back seat. Apparently I was asleep when the stereotype that old people like to swing open jars of pickles around emerged. Of course she spills the pickle juice on JTT’s lap, except that this lady is not very good at staged spills and so she basically just launches it at him. Then JTT throws up twice, and the old ladies throw him out of the car and rip off his beard. See, I told you that beard wouldn’t last. ["Was that the director's subtle way of telling us that the rumors about JTT's sexuality are true? Heh. Just kidding, JTT's legal team!" -- Sars]
Meanwhile, Mary and Robbie are buying food at some roadside stand. Oh, coincidence of all coincidences! Turns out that the roadside stand is right across the highway from where JTT got kicked out of the old ladies’ car! Robbie and JTT spot each other, and Robbie beats a hasty retreat before Mary can see JTT. Robbie almost gets in about five accidents on they way out, but I guess he doesn’t have to worry about that since his car is self-repairing.
JTT is hitchhiking in the middle of what looks like Nevada with a sign that says, “North Pole or bust.” Now, how did he get the marker and the cardboard for such a thing? We will never know, so I’ll just say that it came with the Santa suit. He tries again with another sign that says, “Reindeer on strike,” but still has no luck. I wouldn’t pick him up either because his signs are so lame. Now it’s the late evening and it’s snowing. Um, in the desert. Okay.
Robbie and Mary park at a motel. Robbie tries to sleep in her room, but gets shoved out comically. Except not really comically at all.
JTT ends up sleeping in a sleigh in some Santa display in the middle of a town. He talks to a Santa mannequin and makes jokes that aren’t funny, which just makes him look insane since it’s a mannequin and not a real person. Also, I thought he was in the desert and not in a town.
The morning, Robbie and Mary set out for the day, and Robbie jokes about how bad Mary looks in the morning. JTT gets kicked out of his sleigh-bed and then walks back to the desert to hitchhike. And now we see a guy driving in his van while trying to eat a nasty-looking hamburger. A tomato falls out of the burger, so the guy searches for it on the floor instead of driving. He swerves all over the highway and then runs over JTT. No, really, he does. I thought maybe JTT had jumped out of the way in the nick of time, but he actually got hit by the car and then flew over the guardrail and down a hill. By the way, the van driver is played by the guy from Caroline in the City who always wore the rollerblades. My whole family watched the show together once and assumed that he was mentally challenged because his character acted and talked that way. And he plays the exact same character in this movie. Right now he’s upset because he thinks he killed Santa. But he didn’t. JTT survived the accident with no injuries, despite being knocked unconscious. Fantastic.
Back in The SUV Of 7th Heaven Characters, Robbie and Mary discuss why Mary is attracted to JTT and not to him. Mary has some stupid reason I don’t care about. She delivers it crappily as well.
JTT is now riding in the van with the guy who ran him over. I would say that getting run over by the guy is a sign that you might not want to be in a car he’s driving, but apparently JTT and Disney disagree. An SUV passes them, and JTT instantly knows that it’s Robbie’s car, because no one else drives an SUV. Except for every housewife in America. It is Robbie’s SUV, by the way. I have no idea how Robbie could be behind JTT, considering that JTT has spent most of his time walking to New York and Robbie’s been driving. JTT asks the guy from Caroline in the City to catch up to them because his girlfriend is in the car, prompting an unfunny exchange about Mrs. Claus cheating on Santa. There is no exchange about how the Caroline guy is able to dress himself in the morning when he’s so stupid. Also, he calls Mary a “ho,” which, though accurate, is pretty risqué for a Disney movie. They speed up, which catches the eye of a cop, who immediately turns on his lights to pull them over. This, despite the fact that: 1. his car is facing the other direction, 2. he doesn’t have his speed radar thing out and so has no way to know how fast the van is going, and 3. his car is parked on top of a mountain for some reason, thus making it pretty difficult for him to get down to the highway. Instead of pulling over, the Caroline guy says that he would rather “go out in a blaze of glory” than get arrested, because apparently he has something in the back of his car that is stolen. I don’t know when it was even established that he had anything in the van besides the hamburger, but JTT knows all about it. When they transferred this film to video, did they miss a reel marked “important plot information”? Because a lot of things are happening that I don’t understand. Anyway, JTT convinces the Caroline guy to pull over. JTT gets in the driver’s seat and lies to the cop that he’s in a hurry to give presents to a children’s hospital. The cop not only lets him go, but also decides to follow him there. How awkward! Also, it is mentioned that the van was going 79 miles per hour. I am so angry right now, because I once got pulled over for going 81 on a highway and I got a ticket for $280 and then my car insurance company cancelled my family’s policy. And this guy doesn’t even get a warning. Unbelievable. I hate this movie.
So now JTT and the Caroline guy are stuck giving presents away to sick kids. And this is hee-larious, because the presents are all the stolen stuff in the back of the van, which are kitchen appliances. Why kitchen appliances? Well, I can assume that the Caroline guy wanted to break into a jewelry store at a mall, but failed, and decided to at least rob the nearby Lechter's so he wouldn’t go home empty-handed. The three meet a kid who only wants to go home for Christmas, and the Caroline guy, the cop, and JTT get all upset and call their loved ones. JTT gets stuck talking to Dad’s crappy new wife, though, because Dad and sister aren’t home. Everyone hangs up at the same time. The Caroline guy decides to go back home to his girlfriend in California, so JTT has no ride.
That’s okay, because the cop has a wife in Nebraska who he wants JTT to help him reconcile with. JTT agrees, because not only will he get to go to Nebraska, but the cop will buy him a bus ticket to New York if his wife will get back with him.
A scene with Dad and Sis polishing the Porsche. Sis pretends there’s a scratch on the car and then rudely tells her father to “get a life” when he becomes upset. Damn you, Disney, and your insistence upon making movies with a younger sibling who is precocious and therefore rude!
JTT and the cop arrive at the restaurant where the cop's wife is working. There’s a fat joke slid in there because the cop thinks his wife is beautiful, but since she’s fat, she can’t be! JTT manages to get the cop reunited with his wife, and also resolves some of his own personal issues with his Dad’s new wife. Fantastic. There are shots of cows while the cop sings a Christmas song -- with JTT-written lyrics -- to his wife. What are cows doing in the restaurant? Can you imagine eating beef while looking at cows? Restaurants in Nebraska are so weird!
JTT boards the bus with the ticket the cop promised him; meanwhile, the cop and his wife do some make-up making out on the hood of his car because they have no shame.
In the SUV, Mary wonders about why Earth has intelligent life while other planets don’t. Then she makes a joke about how Robbie is not intelligent life. She doesn’t mention that she is also not intelligent life, so I guess it’s smart these days to pose almost naked for a men’s magazine while underage. Mary gets all excited because she sees a sign advertising a fake Bavarian village hotel and demands that they stay there, because she has no class.
JTT enters a bathroom. It’s not a bathroom on the bus, so I’m not exactly sure where he is or what’s going on.
Apparently, this Bavarian village hotel has a mall inside it, because that’s where Robbie and Mary appear to be. Mary pegs Robbie with a snowball made from fake Bavarian snow, and he chases after her with his own snowball.
JTT is spinning a postcard rack around in some store, which is also not on a bus, when a television set above the cashier’s counter comes on with a news report about Christmas preparations in the Bavarian mall. Oops! There’s Robbie and Mary, and the reporter caught them underneath a mistletoe. They mack, and JTT is angry.
Now we’re actually on the bus, and JTT is trying to get the driver to stop at the fake Bavarian village hotel-mall. The bus driver is hilariously insanely uptight about the rules, and refuses to stop, and gets all agitated about it too. By the way, it’s more “stupid” and “done before” than “hilarious.” So JTT steals some crayons from a child and a cooler from some redneck-y looking guy. What is he up to?
Robbie and Mary are forced to share the last room left in the Bavarian village hotel-mall, which is the honeymoon suite. Of course.
We see JTT’s brilliant bus-stopping plan, which was to write on the cooler, in crayon, “HUMAN LIVER Organ Donation.” Everyone on the bus believes that the Red Cross delivers livers to dying transplant-needing people by bus, in a Coleman cooler with crayon writing on the top, and JTT's fellow passengers demand that the driver stop the bus. Even though the bus driver is insane, he finally agrees. But wouldn’t this have been better if, instead of a Coleman cooler, JTT just put the liver in bus passenger Gary Coleman’s hands? Because I just know that Gary Coleman is in this movie somewhere.
There’s Mary lying in bed with Robbie, who she has forced to put on many layers of clothes. I don’t think having gloves on would stop him from trying anything while she was asleep, but maybe she figures he would be too hot with all that on to move.
It seems that the Bavarian village hotel-mall is also a bus station, because the bus stops right in front of it and lets JTT out. He runs into the hotel, since he knows that Mary and Robbie are staying there somehow. The lady at the desk won’t tell him what room they’re in, so he grabs her necklaces and pulls her towards him to tell her off. Um, wow -- that’s a really scary thing to do to a woman, especially since he had to reach into her cleavage to get the necklace in the first place. He gets thrown out by two fake Bavarian security guards instead of arrested. He sneaks back into the hotel, finds out where Mary and Robbie are staying by looking at a fake Bavarian room-cleaning checklist, and goes to the room. Mary opens the door, and JTT rushes into the room all ready to kill Robbie. JTT explains what Robbie did to him, and then Robbie comes into the room, wearing only a towel because he just got out of the shower. He isn’t wet at all, so I guess his body is a self-drying model. Anyway, JTT rips the towel off of him. Luckily for Disney, Robbie’s standing in front of a pitcher of orange juice, so we don’t see anything. Upon closer inspection with the pause button, there is still nothing to be seen except for Robbie’s incredible six-pack and beautiful, beautiful pecs. ["Okay, who let RevCam write this part of the recap?" -- Sars] Mary looks down, embarrassed, which is more decent than what I would have done. Robbie lectures JTT on playing fair, covers himself up with a napkin, and leaves. Mary forgives JTT for abandoning her back in California. JTT lets it slip that the only reason he’s even going home is to get the car. Robbie comes out and looks all smirky that Mary is mad at JTT again. I think they slanted the floor of the set so that Robbie would look like he’s the same height as JTT, even though Robbie’s got a good six inches on him. At least. Mary runs outside with JTT following her, and the whole bus, which is still there, realizes that the liver thing was a lie. Mary takes JTT’s place on the bus, since that’s apparently legal, leaving JTT ride-less. Also, Mary calls JTT a “butthole.” I can’t believe the language in this movie.
Now Robbie and JTT are together in the SUV, singing along to a song. Robbie says he’s helping JTT out because JTT got dumped so harshly. JTT talks about how nice it is that Robbie is helping him get the Porsche, and then Robbie pulls over and kicks him out. JTT then looks up at the sky, spreading out his arms, and asks Father Christmas what he wants from him. That wasn’t at all way too melodramatic.
A bunch of Santas suddenly run by, because the town JTT’s in is having a 5K Santa run for a grand prize of $1,000. And all the competitors are fat and old. JTT enters the race, and then looks around at his competition. There’s one guy who once won a marathon, but then got lung cancer and had a lung removed. The guy coughs and hacks. Oh, that’s hilarious. I hope I get lung cancer too, just so I can entertain my friends. Then a black guy runs by. JTT asks a bystander if he’s Kenyan. Well, he’s black, so of course he is. And of course he’s good at running. So that would be two extremely offensive jokes in a row. At this rate, I think Disney’s going to beat its previously established offensive-stereotype joke record set by Pocahontas.
Robbie’s trying to leave town, but his path is blocked by a sawhorse and two men in very elaborate Christmas-tree costumes. Robbie calls them “jingle balls” because he’s so angry. They turn around, and we see that they are wearing police hats from late nineteenth-century London. Um, what? Anyway, it looks like Robbie’s going to get arrested because he violated Law 135, section 2, paragraph C, “No calling police officers from Victorian London ‘jingle balls.’”
Back at the race, the Santas run by a church with nuns standing outside, cheering and holding up a sign that says, “Jesus Loves Santa.” I’m confused, because didn’t SNL’s Church Lady say that Santa was bad for the Christmas holiday? And also that the letters in “Santa” also spell “Satan”? Wouldn’t the nuns agree with this? By the way, that SNL sketch was so much funnier than this movie. All the fat Santas stop at a nearby cookie stand instead of running. This movie is so wrong. Then we see a dog with a Santa uniform on, running, and I’m not sure why. Behind him is a bunch of Santas who all fall over unfunnily. Then there’s a shot of a lady cheering on the sidelines until her chair falls over. Was that supposed to be funny? Because she probably really hurt herself, and I’m concerned. JTT, some guy, and the Kenyan are all tied for first place. Oh wait, the Kenyan pulls ahead. Ah yes, those Kenyans and their inherent running skills. Did you know that everyone in Kenya is really good at running? Babies actually run out of the womb at birth. It’s true. The Kenyan guy turns around to point and make fun of JTT and the other guy’s slowness, and runs into a big Santa sign. That would be funny, except that they then show him on the ground, really hurt and unable to complete the race. I guess it serves him right for being from Kenya and probably not being lucky enough to get visited by missionaries and thus being a follower of some pagan religion and not knowing the true meaning of Christmas. JTT and the other white Christian man race for the finish. JTT wins.
JTT is walking out of the town with his prize money when he sees Robbie being arrested and his car being towed. Robbie sees him and begs for his help in bailing him out of jail. This is the part where I think that JTT will realize the true meaning of Christmas and help Robbie out even after all Robbie did to him, but no. Instead, JTT flags down a taxi to go to the airport. The taxi driver tells him about how the guy he beat in the race is the mayor of the town, and always uses the money to buy turkeys for poor people. JTT does The Right Thing and gives the money to the mayor. But what about Robbie? Well, you’ll never see him again, so I can only guess that Robbie’s family is going to spend their Christmas crying because their son is in jail instead of with them.
There’s a shot of Mary on the bus. Her face is without expression.
JTT calls up his family. Unfortunately for me, his crappy sister answers and is all precocious and smart-ass. JTT says he can’t get home in time, so his sister decides to send him the money for a plane ticket. Well, when I was ten, I didn’t have enough money for a plane ticket, but fine. JTT goes to the airport, but can’t pick up the ticket because he has no ID. So he sneaks into a dog carrier headed for New York. No explanation is provided on how he is able to do this. Anyway, the dog farts a lot and the trip is unpleasant. As is the watching of it.
Back at JTT’s house, Dad’s upset because it’s 5:06 and JTT isn’t home yet.
JTT tries to sneak onto a train going to his hometown, but gets caught for not having a ticket. He gets thrown off the train instead of arrested.
Dad pokes a stick at the fire and is still upset.
JTT gets a ride to his home by climbing on top of white station wagon and lying there while holding the ski rack. No mention is made of how dangerous this is. Once, my brother drove a car with a girl riding on top of it, and then he stopped the car and she went flying off, split her head open, and got our family’s car insurance policy cancelled. Again. The car turns, and JTT is upset, I guess because it’s not going towards his house anymore. He bangs on the roof of the car, but for some reason the lady driving doesn’t hear him. Are you kidding me? You can be sure I would have heard that. I probably would have freaked out too, and driven the car into a guardrail and gotten the family insurance policy cancelled. Again. JTT decides to jump off the car and lands on his head, which does not split open. JTT stands up and sees that he is in the middle of a holiday parade. I see some dreidls there as well, which will be the first and last mention of Hannukah in this film. By the way, did you know that JTT’s name is actually Jonathan Weiss? Yep. He changed it to JTT so it would sound less Jewish. And now he’s starring in a Christmas movie, so I guess it worked. JTT spots a one-horse open sleigh and steals it. Another guy in a Santa suit runs out of a port-a-potty and wonders where his sleigh went. Toilets are pretty damn funny, but portable toilets and people who use them and then get their stuff stolen? A comedy gold mine. I fell off my chair in irritation. I mean, "in laughter."
JTT drives his sleigh into a bunch of well-meaning carolers. He stops in front of Mary’s house, where he sees her in the window, putting an ornament on the family tree. JTT, come on -- get going home to your Porsche. A Porsche is so much better than your bitchy girlfriend who is taller then you so it looks awkward anyway. But no, JTT has found the true meaning of Christmas, so he apologizes to her and they make up. They kiss, and Mary has to bend over since she’s a foot taller than JTT. They then proceed to JTT’s house, running over carolers on the way. By the way, the carolers are all dressed in clothes from A Christmas Carol. Does anyone actually do that? Why does this movie have so many references to Victorian England?
JTT drives up to his house and waits until 6:01 to go inside. This makes Mary happy, I guess. I wouldn’t be. I would want my boyfriend to get the Porsche. Mary smiles, and her teeth look crooked. JTT wishes his family Merry Christmas, and they’re all happy to see him. Dad offers JTT the Porsche, but JTT refuses it because he knows what Christmas is really about, which is "not getting Porsches." Dad’s all, “Whatchoo talkin' 'bout JTT?” Well, he would have said that if he were played by Gary Coleman. JTT asks the new wife what her sweater size is so he can buy her one, and she says that it’s an eight. Don’t women’s sweaters have sizes like “small,” “medium,” and “large?” I checked my closet, and all my sweaters have sizes like that and not numbers. But that’s not as important as how creepy it is that JTT is asking his stepmother about her sweater size in the first place.
Oh, and the town holiday parade is coming by the house. They see the sleigh parked in front and get mad at JTT. But he is forgiven, and then he drives his whole family and stupid Mary around in the sleigh, followed by the parade. Good thing he somehow knows the parade route. I hope this crappy sleigh ride was worth never ever riding in a Porsche, Mary, you stupid selfish bitch. A crane shot of the whole procession pans up, and the words “the end” come onto the screen. And then that stupid goddamn white ball pops up and ruins any warm feelings I might have had about this movie, which is fine because I didn’t actually have any.
Oh, and the ending credits are just as bad as the opening ones. It’s just like the opening with the map, but this time it stays over New York and also has flashing colored lights on the following towns: Middletown, Larchmont, Poughkeepsie, and Hampstead NY; Newark, NJ; and Norwalk and Hartford, CT. I would be happy about seeing my home state on the screen like that, except that I hate Connecticut, and also, an *NSYNC Christmas song is playing. Also, the music credits list two versions of “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” and one of “I Won’t Be Home for Christmas.” That’s just ridiculous. I only watched the credits because I thought that maybe we would see Robbie or Ian at the end of them. That did not happen, so I felt it necessary to provide you and me with some closure. Here we go: Ian dies in his locker, and Robbie dies in jail. Also, JTT and his family have an unfortunate freak sleigh accident and they all die as well, except for Dad. However, his face is so badly damaged that he requires massive plastic surgery, which makes him look like Gary Coleman. Don’t we all feel better now?