PLOT: When a woman learns of her high school reunion a week before Christmas, she’s ecstatic to finally have her chance to win back the one “that got away”.
Guys, we’ve found it! A Christmas movie that is worst than I thought it would be.
Christmas Crush attempts to mix every part of mid to late 2000s culture and fails to make it interesting in just about every attempt. The events of the movie take place during a high school reunion during the holiday, which is why the alternate title, Holiday High School Reunion, is much more descriptive. Honestly, I’ve never heard of a reunion held during the holidays, but I’m sure they do. Despite that, I believe the writers decided to smash two types of movies together in the hopes of having a two is better than one situation. Unfortunately, it fails miserably.
Anything more than a simple plot synopsis would be giving this movie too much credit. It’s equal parts grown-up Mean Girls (including the love interest) and Glee, as well as every teen drama that aired in the last 20 years. Rachel Boston (American Dreams, Witches of East End), who recently had a run as the queen of these low-budget films, plays Georgia, the most popular girl in high school. Even though she dated the star football player, she was different than the other girls because she also was friends with”art geek” Ben, played by Jonathan Bennett (Mean Girls).
Fast forward 10 years and Georgia decides to go to her high school reunion to win back the star football player. Insert every cliché from any high school movie you’ve seen, and you pretty much know the rest of this movie. There’s really no surprises and none of the supporting actor really standout, so I found myself waiting for scenes between Boston and Bennett because they were far and away the best moments of the movie.
The only sign of a god while watching this “film” is when Boston sings “O Holy Night” as the final number, which wasn’t awful.
Reason For the Season Score: 1 out of 5
Have you seen a teen drama with a love triangle? Unlike those, these actors are the same age as their characters. It’s average at best.
Love Story Score: 3 out of 5
If the gym was not decorated for Christmas and the glee club did not sing Christmas-ish songs, this movie — for all intents and purposes — could have taken place in the spring.
Christmas-ness Score: 2 out of 5
OVERALL
It is a really bad sign when the plot and outcome of your movie can be discerned in the first 20 minutes. Christmas Crush has the feel of a script written by someone who had just watched Mean Girls and 10 Years the night before, and then, they were told to make it a holiday movie. There are some redeemable scenes and most of them involve Boston — whose performance is good — and Bennett. Their chemistry was great but nowhere near enough to save this move. It definitely tells you something when I was rooting for friend-zoned Ben to walk away at the end because the writers didn’t do a good enough job to make me think Georgia deserved to be happy.
The Main Damie 