So long 2011!

It’s just a few short hours until the year comes to an end, so — along with pretty much everybody else in the world of blogging — I thought I’d take a look back on the past year of entertainment and my blog. I’m picking my favorites and least favorites, but I’m not getting too fancy with any awards ceremonies or anything like that. You want that, check out Fogs’ Movie Reviews’ Major Awards. The man has put himself through some inhuman suffering to be able to review not just the best but also the worst of the year, and if someone sits through both Jack and Jill and Big Mommas, he deserves some reward for his pain.

Me, I’m just keeping it simple with this one post. A little talk about the blog, a little talk about movies and TV.

A Christmas Too Many

One of the trends in Christmas comedies, particularly in recent years, is a tendency to try and subvert the standards of holiday movies by juxtaposing the sentiments of the season with dysfunction, and low-brow humor. We’re supposed to laugh and be thankful that no matter how stressful it may be to arrange our Christmas, at least we’re not those guys. But it’s a difficult trick, where one must carefully balance the need to show the negative traits of the characters while still maintaining a degree of audience sympathy, or at least interest. A few films succeed at this high-wire act. Most wind up decorating the circus floor.

2007′s A Christmas Too Many certainly tries to be an entertaining subversive comedy about a dysfunctional family Christmas. Unfortunately, writer and director Stephen Wallis wrote and directed a film that is almost unbearably bad. And it seems like every actor in the movie knew it, because even the talented ones are clearly phoning it in.