Plot Summary
The McDonald family is full of screaming kids, and now they have taken on a trouble making relative for the holidays whose family doesn’t care about her. As the kids perform all of their silly escapades, the shunned relative tries to fit into the neighborhood and meets a random boy next door whom she automatically likes, of course. Then Mrs. McDonald, at the end of her rope, decides to institute a contest to see who can do the most deeds so they can put straw in their nativity manger. It’s just another holiday tale.
Production Quality (2 points)
For the most part, Rob Diamond and his team know how to put together a respectable production. Video quality and audio quality are what they should be, even though the soundtrack is fairly generic. There are some random moments of shaky cam, however. Yet sets, locations, and props are fine, albeit somewhat limited. There are also some minor editing concerns, but there are really no glaring errors. On the whole, this is an above average effort.
Plot and Storyline Quality (0 points)
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the plot. Besides being an extremely limited idea full of silly asides and manufactured drama, it is mostly eccentric. The characters tend to be overdone yet not well developed, even though they spend a lot of time sitting around and talking. With no clear purpose or direction, sometimes it seems like this story is a joke. The ‘struggles’ of the characters are impossible to appreciate. There is also a cheesy forced romance. Overall, this is really not a complete enough idea to make a full-length film; the priorities of this film needed to be reevaluated.
Acting Quality (1.5 points)
Besides being very awkward at times, the cast members have a tendency to be overly happy and loud in most scenes. Emotions are very plastic and laughably fake. There is far too much shouting and yelling throughout, especially from the child cast members. However, there are plenty of good moments, as well as improvement throughout, which saves this section from being zero.
Conclusion
In summary, it’s very hard to justify the making of this film. It is based on a very thin idea, and it seems like it was rushed into being made without stopping to think about where this plot was even going. Stories like this need to be seriously slowed down and evaluated for necessity and quality. Until this happens on a consistent basis, we will keep having films like this put out.
Final Rating: 3.5 out of 10 points
Box Office Revolution 