Welcome to the first film review of the Hot Bloods Writing Club Christmas holiday bonanza! Each week we’ll be reviewing a Christmas film. What exactly constitutes a ‘Christmas film’ is up for us to decide and no correspondence will be entered into. Spoilers may abound, read ahead accordingly.
This week, we watched El Camino Christmas (2017), dir. David E. Talbert.
Lauren’s verdict:
El Camino Christmas tells the story of stoic young Eric (Luke Grimes) who rolls into the sleepy desert town of El Camino. Eric is in search of the father he’s never met, spurred on by the sentimentality of Christmas Eve, he tracks down his father’s last known address and is met at the door by a brash, unscrupulous man named Charles. Meanwhile, convinced he’s up to no good, local Deputy, Carl (Vincent D’Onofrio) and bumbling Deputy Billy (Dax Shepard) throw Eric in jail overnight. When he is released early the next morning by a regretful Billy, Carl comes after him. Embroiling both Eric, Charles and a handful of locals in a liquor store stand-off on Christmas Eve.
Despite having some very significant actors in tow, El Camino Christmas doesn’t perform as well as it probably should have. Taking on a seasoned comedic talent like Tim Allen, and not giving him a more joke-heavy role seems like a misstep. While a grizzled, dishonest, alcoholic veteran Tim Allen would be a welcome sight in any drama – the weight of a character like Charles felt particularly heavy in a Christmas comedy. While Grimes hits the mark with his boy-next-door good looks and nice-guy approachability, he seemed to lack the ability to volley back and forth with the biting wit of Allen. I felt playing Eric dry and well-meaning gave very little dimension to our main protagonist. As well as creating a less than believable romance between him and single mum, Kate (Michelle Mylett). Their bickering, while intended to seem like romantic spark, almost flips entirely from romantically-charged to being almost platonic and sibling-like. While they do have a few moments alone to build tension, not one of them lands with any particular emotional resonance.
The stand out for me, by far, was D’Onofrio’s sociopathic Deputy Carl. Spitting threats through gritted teeth while nursing a particularly bloody leg wound, Carl is a perfect stand-in for any troubled, middle-aged man with a uniform and a badge. Hellbent on proving Eric is in fact ‘a bad seed’, D’Onofrio’s Carl has an almost villainous intensity that frequently overshadows the sometimes scattered and apathetic plot.
All in all an El Camino Christmas wasn’t going to make any best-of lists, but is pleasant in its watchability. However, it did leave me with one burning question:
“What the hell makes this a Christmas movie?”
3 / 5 gold sheriff’s badges ⭐️
Jeremy’s verdict:
El Camino Christmas felt like the kind of movie I wanted to laugh at more, but couldn’t. The setup felt promising, each character being woven into the narrative separately, and the anticipation to see how it would piece together in a petrol station hostage showdown was good fun. Dax Shepard’s Deputy Billy Calhoun provided the most laughs, as a semi-bumbling cop who slowly starts to come into his own, and he bounced off Kurtwood Smith’s straight, cynical “too-old-for-this-crap” Sheriff well. Smith is basically Red Forman (That ’70s Show) but as a cop – it’s what you’d expect, in a good way. The scene where Shepard and Smith are returning each other’s fire from either side of the petrol station had me laughing, as did Shepard’s incredibly awkward TV interview with Jessica Alba’s Beth Flowers, the TV journalist who finally stumbles upon a serious story on Christmas Eve.
However the core characters we had stuck inside the petrol station didn’t feel like they were particularly funny or engaging enough to carry the film. I wanted to really care for them, but sometimes it just didn’t feel like they were letting us in. It’s telling when an emotional and pivotal plot reveal involving Tim Allen and Luke Grimes feels so masculine and stoic that the film cuts to shots of Michelle Mylett looking emotional on their behalf, so that the audience know that something meaningful is happening. It’s something that carries through Allen’s and Grime’s characters right to the final culmination of the narrative, in an ending that felt like it wanted to be ‘heroic’ and selfless, and maybe even a little funny – but instead, rather than walking the line of what I read as dark comedy, it just became overwhelmingly dark. The lessons here are tell your family you love them, and try not to get yourself involved in hostage situations in servos on Christmas Eve.
2.5 / 5 gold sheriff badges ⭐️
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