We’ve done A Christmas Prince. Then Christmas Inheritance, which we thought was surely the worst possible Christmas film to exist.
But no. There’s worse. Far worse. And it’s called (I don’t know what we expected tbh) Merry Kissmas.
MERRY. KISSMAS.
Of course we decided to review it for you, in your favourite format – two of us just talking shit in an article. Yes, we get paid to do this. So here’s me (Mel, Senior Style Editor) and Josie (my boss lady) talking shit for ya.
MEL: So I absolutely have to begin with the fact we’ve moved to San Fran for this movie. Literally every shit Christmas movie starts in New York, I feel like stock footage of NYC is easy to access or something? So I had high hopes.
JOSIE: They really jammed that San Fran thing down our throats with that themed San Fran Christmas song.
MEL: Yes – also can we just acknowledge how all these shit-house Xmas movies have some “new” Christmas tune that sounds suspiciously like a classic Xmas tune? Except it’s cheaper. Because they probably had some washed up 80’s muso write it for $50.
JOSIE: Even then the lyrics sounded like autocorrect lyrics. But moving along – we first meet our protagonist Kayla when she’s rolling her eyes at her diva-like choreographer fiance Carlton, and it’s evident to me and everyone around her that she actively hates this man.
MEL: She absolutely hates him, and there is not one redeeming quality about him. He’s a caricature. “Weird and self-centred artist man”. Like sorry how did you fall in love with this guy? He shows zero signs the entire movie that he has any interest outside of his own star quality.
JOSIE: And there were no signs of her being conflicted about her feelings towards him. She just blatantly hates him and complains about him to anyone who will listen – the friendly Santa on the corner, the wise old doorman at the hotel, her sassy best friend.
I kept screaming at the TV ‘Just fucken leave him already and stop complaining!’ (but if she did that there would be no movie, I get that).
MEL: Do you know what was so great/terrible – how they would make the characters say insanely nonsensical things to explain things to the audience. Nonsensical in that you would literally never speak that way to a human being. Like at the beginning Kayla goes to Carlton “If you want me to be your FIANCEE and your BUSINESS PARTNER” and it’s like why would you be saying that? Find another way to communicate this point, movie. She says “business partner” soooo many times through the whole movie.
JOSIE: YES there was way too much ‘telling, not showing’. Did they not listen in high school english class? I swear in the first six minutes you learned:
– she used to live in San Fran but moved to LA to be with Carlton
– She’s his fiancee and business partner
– She used to be a writer but gave up her career for him
– He is obsessed with Xmas because he had a tyrannical father as a child
MEL: Omg the ‘obsessed with Christmas’ thing – literally NEVER comes back up again. Ever. In the entire movie. Which actually leads to your point you discussed with me before we started this convo, about how the fuck is this a Christmas movie?
JOSIE: This was not a Christmas movie. They just randomly inserted Christmas trees and carol singers at different intervals to set the scene. I have a theory: someone was in the shower and came up with the name ‘Merry Kissmas’ and was like ‘This is a GENIUS pun, I shall write a movie about it’.
MEL: That is absolutely what has happened. Because the plot concept to tie with that is… Dustin, the true love interest for Kayla, has… mistletoe in his lift? Actually lets discuss that entire lift scene because what the fuck.
JOSIE: Okay so we first see Dustin in the lift with Doris Roberts from Everybody Loves Raymond…
MEL: That’s who she was!
JOSIE: Shout out to her for being a thirsty old bat and kissing the fuck out of him, he’s a babe. Anyway, she tells him the lift is somehow magical…
MEL: Yes! And then she’s like OOOH MISTLETOE. I have never understood the American thing with mistletoe and kissing. Like, it’s so sex-pesty to be like “hey we are under mistletoe YOU MUST KISS ME”.
JOSIE: Yes, I found that so incredibly creepy. Also, Doris kissed him twice which seems to be pushing the whole mistletoe thing. But you know, good for her I guess. What I don’t understand, and what wasn’t properly explained, was the ‘magic of the elevator’. Like at one point later in the film Dustin loses the plot and starts talking to the elevator.
MEL: It was not explained at all. And seemed to have no real powers? Like – Doris kissed him twice bc of the mistletoe. And when Kayla ends up in there, kissing Dustin, it’s because she’s running away from that creepy lifestyle store owner and just HAPPENS to run into his building and her solution to avoiding the shop owner is to…. kiss Dustin. Just, kiss a random man she does not know. Even though the elevator doors are closing so she could just leave it at that.
JOSIE: That made zero sense. I think I had a micro-sleep because why was she running from the lifestyle store owner?
MEL: I also can’t remember why she was running from the lifestyle store owner. I remember the owner being weirdly obsessed with Carlton, and I think it had to do with that. Like she had sunglasses on and the owner was running after her yelling “KAYLA? KAYLA?” so I guess she just… didn’t want to talk to her? What an extreme reaction to simply wanting to avoid a chat.
JOSIE: Also that woman’s accent was alarming – was she supposed to be Irish or German? She was friendly yet menacing at the same time.
MEL: The accent – god-awful. Just pick one, lady. Or here’s a thought – don’t do accents if you can’t nail them.
JOSIE: I haven’t seen such a non-accent since Nicole Kidman in Big Little Lies.
MEL: Savage.
JOSIE: Anyway so Kayla runs into the elevator and macks on with Dustin, the hot yet single chef who is…catering an event for Carlton and Kayla?
MEL: WHAT A COINCIDENCE.
JOSIE: Is that what his connection to the story was? Another great bit of ‘telling not showing’ was his cute little assistant going ‘YOU’RE MY COUSIN’ constantly just in case we wondering why they weren’t bumping uglies.
MEL: Oh god, copious amounts of time bonking us on the head with the “Dustin’s hot assistant is his COUSIN guys not his GIRLFRIEND”.
JOSIE: Also all the “THE COUSIN IS INTERESTED IN JOSHUA FROM THE ANIMAL SHELTER” stuff. “THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING GOING ON HERE BETWEEN DUSTIN, OUR ROMANTIC LEAD, AND HIS CUTE ASSISTANT”.
MEL: There was so much of that, that I actually started thinking “wait is there going to be a reveal that he had an incestuous relationship with his cousin?”
JOSIE: Like is this going down a kinky HBO route? Anyway so Kayla and Dustin pash, and then did something ~magical~ happen? Or did she just get really horny because it was forbidden etc.? Still confused about the powers of the elevator.
MEL: Same. I think we were supposed to just accept that the elevator kiss was magical enough to spur on the events of this movie. Which is… that Kayla pretty much immediately splits from Carlton.
JOSIE: Yes.
MEL: And all this final-sounding romantic music plays as she goes to tell Dustin. I was like wait is this movie over at 37 minutes?
JOSIE: I literally checked the time on the movie to see if that was the end. Maybe this is an arty short film, I thought to myself. but it still had forty minutes to go.
MEL: That was where it tanked IMO. I mean it was a shit-house film, but to wrap things up at 40 minutes and then… keep going? JUMPED. THE. SHARK.
JOSIE: I was kind of enjoying it until then, like it was delightfully crap but then it just derailed itself. I couldn’t tell you much about the plot from there on in because there wasn’t much of one. She kind of had a semi-affair with Dustin, kissing all over San Fran with that godforsaken $50 Christmas song playing.
MEL: Yes, that montage of Dustin/Kayla? I was like wait are we just fast forwarding 4 years into the future because then Christmas is gone so… And then it was like PSYCH that was just a week. Fooled you, stupid viewers.
JOSIE: And then it was all over anyway, because Carlton ‘changed his ways’ (he had not) and grovelled to her and left her doubting her life decisions, even though she had spent 80% of the film telling total strangers how much she despised her flamboyant workaholic fiance.
MEL: Also I must absolutely bring up the shitty best friend. She was TERRIBLE. Imagine if you saw your best friend after ages, and she just continually said with a grave face “BUT ARE YOU IN LOVE” to you even though you insist that you are.
In no shot does Kayla hesitate on that, and yet the best mate continues to grill her. Like, fuck off lady. Now I am unsure if I love him, so thanks for that.
JOSIE: Oh her shitty friend was the worst. She seemed like she wasn’t even paying attention to anything Kayla said, and was like a fembot spurting out ‘friend lines’ like “how do you feel about that?” and “I saw him cosying up to another girl”.
MEL: Yes let’s talk about that “cosying up” too, because that’s when the best friend spots Carlton canoodling with his lead dancer while they’re at dinner. Why is this an issue if Carlton and Kayla have split and Kayla’s frolicking all over California with Dustin?
JOSIE: It’s a bit hypocritical of Kayla to have the shits about that when she’s been tonguing Dustin like there’s no tomorrow.
MEL: Totally. And that’s the catalyst for their second and final split. Just running up to Carlton and going WE’RE OVER bc her evil best mate told her she saw Carlton/lead dancer “canoodling”.
JOSIE: Yes, the second split. Very dramatic. She storms out of some party and her Sassy Best Friend and Dustin’s Cousin are like ‘Should we run after her?’ and then run out shouting ‘KAYLA!’ But the shot clearly shows that they are…in arm’s reach of her. Like they could have grabbed her and stopped her without running. But then it cuts to the next scene and she’s alone wheeling her suitcase out of the hotel? Were they too lazy to reach their arms out to stop her? It was very weird. Anyway, she’s leaving the hotel in a huff after the second split and even the wise old doorman is over it by this point.
MEL: THE DOORMAN. I forgot about him.
JOSIE: A secret villain, in my opinion. In the opening three minutes he’s already being shifty, like calling her Mrs. Wells just to throw her off.
MEL: Ok, final thoughts. This was a terrible movie purely because it accidentally wrapped things up 40 minutes in. If they’d kept the push/pull of Kayla-Dustin-Carlton rolling I probably would have it on par with A Christmas Prince. But they fucked it, and then it was just a mess of confusing montages and wasted time. However, there was a dog and the dog was cute so I’ll give it a few points.
JOSIE: Yeah the dog was cute, and had better acting skills than the rest of the cast put together. Bonus points for Noel Kahn from Pretty Little Liars being Dustin, he was at least nice to look at? I also spent 1 hour trying to figure out if the chick was Anna from The OC. She was not.
My other final thoughts are that the Christmas-ness of it needed to be ramped up by 1000%. This movie could have been set at literally any other time of the year. It didn’t fill me with any kind of festive spirit. They also needed at least one more $50 song to play over their montages because it got very old, very fast.
MEL: Just pay that 80’s muso a few more bucks, surely he can write another banger.
