movies

'There's another terrible Christmas movie on Netflix and you won't be able to stop watching.'

You may have recently watched A Christmas Prince and thought to yourself “there cannot possibly be a Christmas film that exists that is worse than this”.

Challenge accepted, my friends, because I’m about to introduce you to another little Netflix gem, released just in time for the holiday season.

It’s called Christmas Inheritence and it makes A Christmas Prince like an Oscar-winning film.

Seriously. If A Christmas Prince is say, Lady Gaga, then this film is… well… her terrifying wax figure.

Scary stuff.

LISTEN: Looking for a Christmas movie that isn’t Love Actually? Michelle Andrews does her absolute best to sell us on ‘A Moody Christmas’.

In the film’s opening moments, we meet Ellen Langford, a rich NYC party girl who is set to take over her father’s multi-million dollar gift business.

We know she’s a rich NYC party girl because a) she’s doing shots and b) she falls over and ruins a Christmas tree. Classic rich NYC party girl behaviour, really.

#PartyGurrrlll

Her dad is, naturally, pretty unimpressed and decides she must head back to the small town where her family grew up to learn about the SPIRIT OF CHRISTMAS.

(Okay, he actually says "the spirit of the company" but we all know what he actually means).

For reasons that remain unknown, she also has to take a box of sentimental Christmas letters with her and is not allowed to tell anyone who she is. Presumably so some small town boy can fall in love with her for who she ~~really is~~. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

We meet said small town boy - his name is Jake Collins, FYI, because that's what all men from small American towns are named, obviously - when Ellen arrives in Snow Falls and struggles with her many, many suitcases (because she's RICH and likes NICE THINGS, remember?)

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"LOL HOW DO I DO THE THINGS?"

(Also, yes, the town is Snow Falls in case you forget that a) it's Christmas and b) it sometimes snows at Christmas and that makes it even more magical and Christmas-y).

Jake and Ellen's relationship mostly revolves around him making fun of her "lack of clothes" and her being freezing all the time, which feels like a pretty inappropriate and sexual thing to say to someone you just met.

"You're in the Deep North now," he says, despite the glaringly obvious fact he has a Southern accent and the 'Deep North' is very much... not a thing.

"I'm from the Deep North. But I have a Southern accent? Pls help me."

Ellen argues she's from New York City and that's why she's not used to the snow. I'd like to take this opportunity to remind Ellen that in the last week and half alone it's snowed no less than THREE TIMES in New York City.

I know because I live there. But we shall not let facts like these get in the middle of a timeless Christmas story.

There's a lot of references to the true meaning of Christmas - you know, things like baking cookies for the town and sitting in front of open fires - and we learn what a "nice guy" Jake is.

Seriously, one character utters the line, "Jake is such a nice guy".

The movie also includes such things as: a loveable homeless man dressed as Santa who Ellen befriends, a walk through a dark, haunted-looking forest to a clearing filled with... creepy ice sculptures, and a man pouring fish food into a fish bowl that very obviously contains precisely zero fish.

At one point in the film, Ellen discovers that Jake is a secret artist. She praises his sketches, and says he should pursue a career as a professional artist.

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I'm no art critic, and I shall therefore reserve my explicit judgement of his skills, but the drawing in question looks a little something like this:

Um.....

Later on - somewhere between a montage of Ellen cleaning a hotel room in which some sort of orgy has just occurred and Jake uttering the words, "I think this is the part where we're supposed to kiss" - someone in the movie actually says, "That makes absolutely no sense".

I'm not even a little bit ashamed to admit I didn't resist the urge to scream 'NEITHER DOES THIS MOVIE' right into my screen.

I'm not going to ruin the ending because there's a major plot twist you definitely won't see coming (just kidding, it ends exactly how you expect it will) but I will tell you this:

The best part of the film is Andie Macdowell (yes, of Groundhog Day fame) singing a truly terrible rendition of Silent Night at the world's saddest Christmas charity dinner. This movie is that depressing.

You have no idea how much I wish this song was good.

(Fun fact: Silent Night is also Jake's most hated song because his wife left him as the song was playing one time. It's... bizarre).

Christmas Inheritance is, unsurprisingly, truly terrible Christmas viewing. It's also a film I'm likely to watch at least three more times before Santa arrives.

What can I say? The Christmas spirit is so bloody infectious.

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Jessica Clark is a news and entertainment writer at Mamamia. Follow her Facebook page, or find her on Instagram at @jess__clark .