I know that British comedy is different from the rest of the world. But just because you put John Cleese in the cast, that doesn’t mean it’s automatically a comedy.
Father Christmas Is Back is about the Christmas family coming together for the holiday. Caroline (Nathalie Cox), her husband Peter (Kris Marshall), and their two children (Amelie Prescott and Oliver Smith) are hosting this year. Coming to visit are Caroline’s three sisters: Joanna (Elizabeth Hurley), Paulina (Naomi Frederick), and Vicky (Talulah Riley) plus Joanna’s new boyfriend: Felix (Ray Fearon). Then there’s the women’s mother: Elizabeth (Caroline Quentin), their uncle: John (John Cleese), their absent father: James (Kelsey Grammer), and James’s girlfriend: Jackie (April Bowlby). They are all staying at the ancestral castle of Peter’s family. Comedy ensues?
Somehow, I think the writers were planning on this to be some sort of black comedy. Because there definitely isn’t any sort of actual comedy here. Everything seems so serious all of the time. Maybe we were supposed to laugh at the fact that Paulina has been working on a thesis for the past 10 years on the reason the Beatles broke up? Maybe we were supposed to laugh at Vicky’s promiscuity? Or maybe we were supposed to laugh at how terrible Joanna was to everyone around her? Seriously. Tell me where the funny parts were. I think the only reason this got classified as a comedy is because the tone isn’t serious enough to make it a drama.
Overall, the acting wasn’t terrible. Granted, I’m not a huge fan of Kelsey Grammer so I would have liked it better if they had cast someone else in his role. And I would have liked them to use John Cleese’s comedy skills more. He’s a comedy legend and they barely gave him any lines beyond making fun of James abandoning his family.
Oh right - the main plot point - the REASON THIS MOVIE IS NAMED WHAT IT IS - is because James abandoned his family when the girls were fairly young. And now their father - JAMES CHRISTMAS - is back. I can’t groan any louder.
But that plot point isn’t played up for laughs or anything. It just is a fact of the movie. Well, I guess there is one slightly funny part where James and his older brother, John, attempt a fist fight but the never actually touch each other. Yeah, don’t slide past that fact - Kelsey Grammer and John Cleese play brothers. I still can’t groan any louder.
Unless you are a super fan of one of the actors in this movie, skip it altogether. There is no other reason to watch it. I wish there was because the acting is quite good. It’s the rest of it that sucks.