Christmas 2023 Wrap-Up | 2023 Christmas Movies

I know you have been looking forward to my 2023 Wrap-Up post. Well, wait no longer. Here are the details!

In 2023, I watched 92 Christmas movies. While this is still more than the 78 movies I watched in 2021, it is a LOT less than the 127 movies I watched last year.

I did banish the terrible UPtv movies from the lineup but I ended up keeping Great American Family. I still don’t feel great watching the channel. It just feels wrong to not include the Candace Cameron Bure and Danica McKellar movies. And if I have the channel for those two, I might as well watch the other 18 movies they aired, right? Thankfully, the MyPillow and Gilmore Girls commercials were absent this year. I’d like to drop the channel next year but that probably won’t happen. Maybe I can find a way to watch it without actually contributing financially to the channel.

Besides GAF, I also covered movies aired on Hallmark, Hallmark Movies & Mysteries, Lifetime, Netflix, Hulu, Roku, Amazon Prime/Video/Freevee, Disney+, Paramount+, and Peacock. Sadly, I didn’t even check Discovery to see what they offered. I forgot all about it. Maybe their Christmas offerings will still be around in July and I can revisit them.

Plans for 2024? I like the number of movies I covered this year. I will try my best to keep the number of movies around 92. However, I would like to figure out how to get a better list of all of the Christmas movies airing each year. GAF really likes to change their schedule mid-season so that is unavoidable but I didn’t find out about some of the Amazon movies until the middle of December. Having a full schedule would make it easier to get a good handle on my review schedule.

Is there anything you would like me to add or subtract for next year? Is there a channel that you think I should watch? Do you think I should continue watching Great American Family? Leave me a comment and let me know. I need as much help as I can get!

Top 10 Best Christmas Movies of 2023 | 2023 Christmas Movies

At first, I didn’t think there were that many great movies. Then I went back through all of my reviews and I actually had a difficult time ranking 10 best movies. I’m glad that there were more good movies than I originally thought. I was worried that 2023 was going to end up a trash fire movie-wise. So let’s get the list going!

10. A Heidelberg Holiday
9. Friends & Family Christmas
8. Sealed With A List
7. Where Are You, Christmas?
6. The Claus Family 3
5. Round And Round
4. The Santa Summit
3. Christmas On Cherry Lane
2. The Naughty Nine
1. Family Switch

Honorable Mentions: A Cowboy Christmas Romance, Christmas Island, Candy Cane Lane, My Norwegian Holiday, Joyeux Noel, Haul Out The Holly: Lit Up

There actually may be a few movies that I enjoyed that I missed for this list. I think the end of the year movies jaded me a little because there were so many bad ones. They made me forget about movies that I truly enjoyed. But I think I’m pretty satisfied with this list. Let me know in the comments what were your favorite movies this year.

Top 10 Worst Christmas Movies of 2023 | 2023 Christmas Movies

This year, I watched 92 Christmas movies. It was enough that made me think I watching “too many” movies but not so much that I thought I was going insane. It also seemed that the movies I was watching weren’t as awful as they were in the past. Here is my list of the top 10 worst movies I watched this year.

10. Christmas Keepsake
9. A Perfect Christmas Pairing
8. Designing Christmas With You
7. The Holiday Proposal Plan
6. To All A Good Night
5. Our Christmas Wedding
4. Santa, Maybe
3. 12 Games of Christmas
2. Ladies of the 80s: A Divas Christmas
1. Silent Night

Dishonorable mentions: Genie, Navigating Christmas, Reporting For Christmas, Merry Magic Christmas, A Dash Of Christmas

There we go. Silent Night is the only movie that truly upset me this year. Most of the rest had good intentions but did not implement the plan properly. I’m thankful that I didn’t have too many awful movies this year. Check back tomorrow for my 10 best movies!

It's A Wonderful Knife | 2023 Christmas Movies

We’re ending this year with a slasher film. It’s A Wonderful Knife on Shudder. Will I regret this?

One year after a masked slasher kills a bunch of people on Christmas Eve, Winnie Carruthers (Jane Widdop) wishes on the aurora borealis that she was never born. She is immediately transported to another dimension where she was, in fact, never born. In this dimension, Winnie did not kill the slasher so the slasher kept on murdering townspeople. Now it is up to Winnie to right these wrongs.

This was an interesting take on It’s A Wonderful Life. Pretty much everyone in Winnie’s life who survived the original “Angel Attacks” were awful people. The only exceptions were her aunt Gale (Katharine Isabelle), Gale’s girlfriend Karen (Cassandra Naud), and Winnie’s classmate Bernie (Jess McLeod) who everyone called “weirdo.” So it’s a little understandable why Winnie wouldn’t want to be around them any more. However, wishing that SHE didn’t exist was a little much and it seemed a little out of character for Winnie. If they had made her more despondent that she had killed someone, maybe it would make some sense. As it is, it sounded a little more “emo teen” than George Bailey.

There were some good points. Justin Long is good at playing a terrible person, even though his fake teeth were a little distracting. Widdop and McLeod did a decent job at bringing their characters to life. They did a lot of dumb things that teenagers would probably do in that situation. (Instead of other slasher movies where they act like teenagers would make all of the right moves to keep from getting murdered.) In the end, it wasn’t the best slasher movie but it was a pretty good Christmas slasher homage.

Rating: Stay for the end credit song. It’s a banger.

A Christmas Karen | 2023 Christmas Movies

I woke up this morning with a rather large headache but I knew I only had a few movies left to finish out the 2023 reviews. But I didn’t want to watch something that was going to be awful. After starting and stopping a few movies that were completely unwatchable, I decided to cheat a little and watch 2022’s A Christmas Karen instead.

Karen (Michele Simms) is an entitled middle-aged woman that spends her time demanding special treatment from people. After a particularly argumentative day, she is visited by the ghost of a former boss, Jackie (Meghan Moroney). Jackie tells Karen that she will be visited by three ghosts - Gary the ghost of Christmas past (Rolin Alexis), Joy the ghost of Christmas present (Leyla Lawrence), and Damon the ghost of Christmas future (Lee Karlinsky). Will the ghosts get Karen to change her ways?

Yes, this is a remake of A Christmas Carol. And this is a low budget film. However, A Christmas Karen was very well done. The budget was only noticeable in the special effects and some of the sets. The acting was so well done and the story was a perfect homage to the original. I enjoyed the movie so much despite the fact that my head hurt. It was impossible to not chuckle at some of the scenes.

Rating: You won’t ask for the manager

Christmas Casanova | 2023 Christmas Movies

My second Paramount+ movie is Christmas Casanova. I’m not going to get through all of the Paramount+ Christmas movies before the end of the year. If anyone is interested, maybe I’ll see about doing a Christmas in July or something and revisit the movies I missed. Let me know if you want that!

Elisa (Kalinka Petrie) is a lifestyle story podcaster looking for a story for a Christmas show. Daniyal (Fuad Ahmed) wants to make his childhood friend, Tanya (Samantha Brown), fall in love with him. In exchange for content for her podcast, Elisa agrees to help Daniyal win Tanya from her boyfriend, Cliff (Brendan Morgan).

This is two movies in a row with a lead character wanting to steal someone from their boyfriend. And it’s another childhood friend! These people need to stop being terrible. Be happy that your friend has found someone they enjoy being with and stop trying to be the main character in their life. The movie is fine. Boring but fine. There’s something else I want to talk about: the production company.

Christmas Casanova is produced by Reel One Entertainment. They are not new to the Christmas genre. Just this year they put out Mom’s Christmas Boyfriend, How To Fall In Love By Christmas, Coupled Up For Christmas, Christmas At The Chalet, Merry Magic Christmas, Mistletoe Match, and so many more. While I don’t hate their movies like I do MarVista’s awful films, Reel One’s end up so boring. Either they don’t put nearly enough action into the movie, resulting in the audience wondering why we are watching people do mundane things, or they put too much action into the movies, resulting in the audience losing the point of the plot. Writing a movie isn’t easy. Writing a lot of movies in a rather short period of times is even harder. But it would be nice if production companies would be more thoughtful about what they are putting out. Make it enjoyable. Make us want to watch it again and again.

Rating: The podcast that even the host doesn’t want to be in

Coupled Up For Christmas | 2023 Christmas Movies

I got tired of watching the movies on Freevee. So I popped over to Paramount+ to see if they had anything. The first movie I chose was Coupled Up For Christmas, which seems like it might be on some other streaming services too? I’ve found out that I have no idea how streaming services outside of Netflix and Hulu work.

Tiffany (Sara Canning) has decided she is in love with her childhood friend, Brett (Joe Perry). But Brett is currently dating Matilda (Jocelyn Chugg). Meanwhile, Peter (Marcus Rosner) wants to get back with his ex-girlfriend, Lorraine (Skye MacDonald), but she is currently dating Samuel (Everett Dool). Tiffany and Peter agree to pretend-date in order to make their crushes jealous.

This must be the theme for this year because this is not the first movie I have watched with this exact plot. And I don’t understand why any of them think it would work. Ignoring the fact that this is an annoyingly dumb plot, the movie isn’t terrible. Canning and Rosner are decent enough actors to pull off some awful lines. I think the only thing I really didn’t like about the movie is that Tiffany’s sister, Camille (Megan Tracz), gets left out in the cold. She ends up as a fifth wheel to the other two couples, though there is a sort of hint that she is going to end up with the bartender Brie (Colette Nwachi), who keeps stepping in to pair up with Camille in events. But we don’t get an ending to that. Poor Camille is left high and dry.

Rating: Draw me like your Santa man.

The Claus Family 3 | 2023 Christmas Movies

For the past two years, I have been watching The Claus Family movies. I loved the first one and the second was OK but not as good. Will the third one be a letdown?

The Claus family is going on vacation to a ski resort. However, grandfather Noël (Jan Decleir) and Jules (Mo Bakker) still need to secretly deliver presents. But shortly after arriving at the resort, Jules’ little sister Noor (Amber Metdepenningen) finds the snowglobe and discovers that they are Santa. She wants to join them but Jules is worried that someone so young won’t be able to keep their secret.

Last year, I asked for a movie that involved the family more. And I got it! The big sub-plot for the movie is Suzanne (Bracha van Doesburgh), the kids’ mother, wants to propose to her boyfriend, Jef (Kürt Rogiers). Usually her plots are terrible but this one is decent. I even enjoyed Jet’s (Sien Eggers) bumbling help to make the proposal happen. It is a little uncomfortable but in all of the right ways.

There is a sort of secondary sub-plot where Noël gets captured in Mexico when delivering presents with the kids so he ends up in a Mexican prison. Then the elves and the kids have to figure out how to get him back. But, at the same time, the main plot involves Noor and a bully named Felix (Celest Henri Cornelis). I did like the way Noor’s story was handled though I’m not sure we needed to stick Santa in prison to achieve it.

Rating: More Claus Family please!!!

Christmas Time | 2023 Christmas Movies

Christmas Time is another 2023 movie that I only caught because I was scrolling through FreeVee looking for movies. This means I don’t have a lot of information about the movie, of course.

Kevin Snowdon (Neil James) is a physics teacher that does not enjoy Christmas. Every year, he takes his family on a skiing vacation to escape the holiday. This year, however, there was a mix-up with the reservations and the family ended up in Lapland, a Christmas tourist destination.

The first part of the movie is quite dull. And it’s not because Kevin doesn’t like Christmas. It’s because he’s just bland about it all. Except for a few scenes where he seems angry that people are dressed in Christmas attire, he’s mostly walking around without any real personality. It isn’t until the family gets to Lapland that he starts to show who he is a bit more. And it really isn’t until The Santa Trip that he starts to come to life. To be honest, Santa’s workshop/house/village is the best part of the whole movie. I wish the writers devoted a little more time to the scenes there.

Sadly, that means that this isn’t a movie that I can recommend to everyone. This is for someone who is looking for a Christmas movie that has zero romance in it (except for a teenage crush) and wants to see a grumpy man find the Christmas spirit. Though there are better movies that this that accomplish that. It upsets me because Christmas Time could have been much better if they put a little more effort into it.

Rating: Can I be an elf?

Genie | 2023 Christmas Movies

Now we’re moving over to Peacock for Genie starring Melissa McCarthy. My first wish is that this movie will be good.

Bernard (Papa Essiedu) is a workaholic at an auction house. When he misses his daughter’s 8th birthday, his wife Julie (Denée Benton) leaves him. As he wanders around his empty apartment, he dusts off an old jewelry box, releasing a genie named Flora (McCarthy). Can Flora help Bernard get his family back?

So…there is nothing new in this movie. This is basically Disney’s Aladdin but boring. Aladdin had the amazing Robin Williams to keep the comedy flowing. McCarthy is just not that funny. All of the jokes not only land flat, they create crators where they are dropped. In the worst move of all, they cast Alan Cumming, who is so good at comedic acting, as Bernard’s boss. He should be the big bad guy. But we only see him twice. (I poked into this film’s Wikipedia page. It turns out this is a remake of a 1991 BBC film where Cumming played Bernard. What should have been an homage was a terrible use of a talented actor.)

There are a million things you could do with a movie about a genie. Instead, we keep getting the same old story over and over again. This is, honestly, sadder than any of the Hallmark Christmas movies.

Rating: I wish I didn’t watch it