Steaming Pile of Crap

Rating: 1/10 (23 December 2014)

I watched this movie with mouth agape. As it went on I kept waiting for some as-yet-to-be-revealed character to wake up from the ridiculous dream he/she is having and for something even remotely resembling plausibility to present itself. It's like a junior high school girl and a college freshman girl collaborated with a middle aged woman with borderline personality disorder and committed it to film and then had someone throw in a manipulative soundtrack. Let's start with the phone call between Emma Thompson's character, a self-important stay-at-home mother, who takes a tearful phone call from her grieving brother (Liam Neeson) ... whose wife has just died. His wife has died recently enough that the funeral hasn't even taken place yet. But Emma Thompson, in a dismissive tone, tells her brother that she has a much more pressing priority demanding her attention at the moment and says she'll get back to him when she can. Hanging up, she turns her attention to the highly important matter of her grade school child announcing to her that she has just won the role of the second lobster in her school Christmas pageant. I don't blame her husband for almost being stolen from her by his predatory secretary. And I don't feel one bit sorry for her. But then let's not forget that her OTHER brother is the new Prime Minister of Britain, Hugh Grant. Which also makes him the brother of the recently widowed Liam Neeson. But while the new Prime Minister doesn't find time to go to his deceased sister-in-law's funeral he feverishly trots after and tracks down the office step-n-fetch-it hottie at her little brother's Christmas pageant (where, of COURSE he runs into the woe-is-me Emma Thompson). They make the Prime Minister come across as akin to the Mayor of Mayberry. This is dross. A feel good movie doesn't have to be a feel sick movie. This is a treacly mess.