The worst Christmas movies

We’re coming out the gate swinging. Most movies on this list are largely, even close to uniformly, considered “bad.” To many, “A Christmas Story” is a classic Christmas film. It airs on TV every year, usually in marathon form. We don’t tune into those airings. “A Christmas Story” is bad. It’s painfully unfunny, slight yet meandering, and visually looks unpleasant. It’s not a slice of Americana, it’s a slice of woeful filmmaking.

Okay, now that we’ve maybe made you mad, let’s ease some tension. “Deck the Halls” is a movie that includes the phrase “critical and commercial failure” in the first paragraph on its Wikipedia page, so the jury is not out on this one. Matthew Broderick and Danny DeVito play neighbors warring over whose house will be the jolliest in terms of décor. Unfortunately, nothing funny happens in the execution of that story, even if it should be a source of easy-to-generate sight gags.

Usually, the criticism of Ron Howard is that his movies are so down-the-middle in terms of tone and look. If you want a pleasant B-minus movie, you hire Howard. If only his version of “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” had been down the middle. Instead, it’s a big swing and an aesthetic nightmare. Jim Carrey can’t even do his usual mugging beneath all the makeup and prosthetics, kind of negating hiring him.

There’s something to the idea of a Christmas thriller. “The Ice Harvest,” while not a commercial success, is a good version of that. “Reindeer Games” is not. During the early days of Ben Affleck being an action star, “Reindeer Games” features Affleck as an ex-con in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, wrangled against his desires into a Christmastime heist. This was, unfortunately, the last film in John Frankenheimer’s life, and it was not a high note to go out on as a director.

Maybe a Christmas comedy would work better for Affleck? Nope! The plot of “Surviving Christmas” is utterly deranged. Affleck plays a wealthy executive who pays the family that lives in his childhood home $250,000 to pretend to be his family during the Christmas season. There’s a legal contract and everything. Hilarity, we assure you, does not ensue.

What if Santa Claus’s brother were a Vince Vaughn character? Like, a first-draft idea of a Vince Vaughn character? Well, that’s Fred Claus, and thus we have the problem with “Fred Claus.” Vaughn is obnoxious. Nick Claus, aka Santa, is an aggrieved Paul Giamatti. Somehow, this comedy cost $100 million to make. Unsurprisingly, given how unfunny it is, the movie did not recoup its budget.

Vaughn, like Affleck, has swung and missed at the Christmas movie thing on multiple occasions. At least this one paired Vaughn with Reese Witherspoon, so we got a movie poster with Witherspoon in heels, standing on four boxes to be the same height as Vaughn. As the title indicates, the two play a couple who go to four Christmas get-togethers but nothing interesting happens.

Thankfully, Michael Keaton’s career has turned around. Once upon a time, he was doing things like “Jack Frost.” Keaton plays a man literally named Jack Frost who dies in a car accident and comes back as his son’s snowman. It’s so weird, and the special effects were not up to the hopes of the production. Also, the movie was envisioned with George Clooney in the lead role, so the snowman was designed to kind of look like him, not like Keaton.

At least “Jingle All the Way” is entertaining in its badness. It swings hard. Oh, it misses, but it swings hard. Part of that is the fact that the movie comes from the era of Arnold Schwarzenegger being cast in films that just treat him like an average American man, not a hulking dude with a thick Austrian accent. Arnie and Sinbad play two fathers who fight to get the last Turbo-Man action figure so they can make their kids happy.

Tyler Perry is immensely prolific. Or, at the very least, he claims to be immensely prolific, though he has churned out so much content that one assumes he’s getting uncredited help. When you generate as much as he does, though, it can’t all be gold. Also? Perry isn’t funny and Madea isn’t a funny character. “A Madea Christmas” is a sterling example of that.

It’s tricky to discuss “Last Christmas.” On the one hand, what makes the movie so bad is the twist. On the other hand, is it fair to spoil that twist to talk about why the movie is so bad? We don’t think you should watch “Last Christmas.” It’s not entertainingly bad, even with that twist. Alright, we’ll just say it. It turns out the man that Emilia Clarke has been talking to throughout the film is a ghost, and specifically the ghost of the man who donated the heart that Clarke got in a heart transplant. Yes, they literalized the Wham song.

Robert Zemeckis got super into motion-capture filmmaking. He could tell stories on a scale that other means of production would make financially untenable. On the other hand, “The Polar Express” looks like trash. The animation is terrible. The human characters are fully in the Uncanny Valley. It’s Christmas-tinged nightmare fuel.

Two bad Santa movies were included in the original run of “Mystery Science Theater 3000.” They are both awful, and both are awful in fun ways. However, one is just called “Santa Claus.” The other is called “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.” Martians are involved. That gives this one a boost.

When you start from the point of Hulk Hogan being your film’s lead, you’re in trouble. And yet, “Santa with Muscles” has a plot that builds poorly upon that idea. Hogan plays a vain, selfish millionaire who gets bonked on the head and, yes, gets amnesia. He was wearing a Santa suit at the time, so, naturally, he came to assume he was actually Santa Claus.

Multiple professional wrestlers have gotten to play variations on Santa. At least when Bill Goldberg did it, he played an evil, musclebound version of Santa. “Santa’s Slay” is a horror-comedy where the comedy does not work as intended, but the movie is stupid in a fun way. There certainly is a market for people who like to watch dumb horror movies, and “Santa’s Slay” is one to throw on during the holiday season.

“The Nutcracker” is a famed Christmas story, but it has yet to be successfully adapted into a film. Maybe that’s because it is a ballet and thus needs to be seen on stage in that format. “The Nutcracker in 3D” has bad 3D, creepy-looking characters, and more allusions to Nazi Germany than most want from a Christmas film.

“Bad Santa” is fine. It’s a serviceable dark comedy, and Christmas could use a few of those. Billy Bob Thornton is good as a misanthropic, alcoholic criminal who gets a gig as a mall Santa to set up a robbery. Had they left well enough alone, things would be fine. Instead, a decade later, they decided to make a cash-in sequel. “Bad Santa 2” can’t ride on the originality of the first film, and feels thoroughly warmed over and inert.

We end with the worst adaptation of the most famous Christmas story. Not only that, but it brings Carrey and Zemeckis both back into the fray. It has the same aesthetic problems as “The Polar Express,” but also lacks ambition. Just stick to the Muppets’ version. You’ll be glad you did.