Casandra Reviews Christmas Movies With Very Strong Opinions

It’s currently the holiday season, and you know what that means! An excessive amount of Christmas movies, my goodness. Now, I’ll be honest here, not all of them are good (some of them are horrendous). Then again, some of them are actually pretty good. I’m here to review some of them and give my two cents that no one asked for. Now keep in mind, everyone has their own opinion, and this is my opinion. If I offend you somehow, I’m very sorry.

Also, I’ll be reviewing Home Alone 1 and Home Alone 2: Lost In New York and nothing after that in the Home Alone series. I don’t want to see Home Alone 3, 4, or Home Sweet Home Alone for fear of the first two movies being completely ruined for me. Now, onto the reviews.

Home Alone (the original): 8/10 “A swanky Christmas classic”

This movie was, for a while, one of my favorite Christmas movies, probably because I enjoy child maniacs. I mean, Kevin’s a flipping genius! He made an entire floor plan of his house to plan out all of his traps in less than five minutes, and still managed to color code it with markers. Amazing. Also, the entire movie score is so festive, yet fits the atmosphere really well. Nowadays, I’ve noticed more things that make me like the movie a little less, mainly just because of continuity errors. I mean, at the beginning of the movie, you actually SEE Kevin’s dad throw away Kevin’s plane ticket. It wouldn’t matter anyway, seeing as the people at the airport don’t bother checking everyone’s tickets. Either way, it’s still pretty good and I don’t mind watching it now and then in the holiday season.

Home Alone 2: Lost In New York: 7/10 “Not as good as the original”

I’ll be honest, this movie is what I expected from a sequel that came two years after the original. Speaking of those two years, Kevin was eight years old in the first movie and ten years old in the second, even though Home Alone 2 took place one year after Home Alone 1. How is this child two years older a year later? I get it that Macaulay Culkin would’ve been ten at the making of this movie, but come on! Now, I know sequels are usually not better than the original (that only happened with Shrek, okay?), but this is still a pretty good movie, regardless of the many continuity errors.

Elf: 6/10 “I don’t like it as much as I used to”

This movie was a lot better when I was a kid. I guess it was because I related to how childish Buddy the Elf was and generally found this pretty funny. But now that I’ve lost most of my childish humor (sadly), I don’t find this as funny anymore. Also, after you watch it for the first time, it’s not as interesting after that. Really, the only saving graces in this movie for me are the puffin and the narwhal at the start of the movie and the snowball fight scene. Those are still quality parts in the movie, but the rest of the movie doesn’t exactly jump out at me that much.

Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer: 6.5/10 “It’s fine, okay?”

This’ll be a really quick one. The movie is fine in itself, but (spoiler alert) I think the way they killed off and then revived Yukon Cornelius was pretty weak. If you want more details about it, watch TheOdd1sOut’s Christmas Contemplations video. It is possible to kill off a character, revive them, and get away with it, but this one just didn’t cut it for me. Other than that, it’s an okay movie. I mean, that one elf wants to be a dentist. You do you, man.

A Christmas Story: 9.5/10 “This one is better than the rest of ‘em”

This one is the all-time Christmas classic, in my opinion. No wonder why they play it all day on Christmas. This movie is incredibly funny, and I really like the ’40’s setting (the ’40s had some really good stuff going on then). The soundtrack and score of the movie are also really good, from the perspective of that one kid who listens to TV, movie, and video game soundtracks. I do think that the younger brother, Randy, is pretty spineless. The dad is very funny, no matter how much he swears. I also think that Ralphie’s friends are real jerks; Ralphie needs to stop hanging out with that kind of crowd. Either way, this is a quality Christmas movie, and you can definitely watch it at literally any time on Christmas Day.

So I’m really sorry if I offended you in some way. We can all have our own opinions. Anyway, I hope you have a great holiday season and that you spend your time doing all that good holiday stuff. Oh, and yes, Die Hard is a Christmas movie.