Santa’s Summer House (2012)

Who thought this was a good idea?, 15 November 2019

What a load of garbage!  I don’t understand how films like this get made.  Who thought a movie like Santa’s Summer House was a good idea?  Did anyone involved in the making of Santa’s Summer House think it was going to be a quality movie?  Is the straight-to-video market so lucrative that trash like this actually makes money? So many questions that I couldn’t care less to learn the answers to.  

There’s really no point in listing all the bad aspects of Santa’s Summer House.  Everything about it is bottom-of-the barrel. The plot is beyond ridiculous, most of the acting is horrendous (Christopher Mitchum proves yet again that acting ability isn’t inherited), the lighting is gawdy, and the sound is so poor you can hear echoes anytime a character walks across the tile floor.  The plot has a message that’s pretty decent, but it’s handled so annoyingly hamfisted that it loses much of its effectiveness. The entire time I was watching, I was just hoping and praying that 90s martial art icon (am I overstating it?) Cynthia Rothrock would do some sort of spinning-scorpion-five-finger-Shaolin-death-kick on the rest of the cast.  

If it’s so bad, then why haven’t I rated it lower?  Well, as bad as it is, it’s not unwatchable. There are a boatload of movies out there much worse than this.  And, like I said, it does have a decent message. Finally, I’ll give it a point for hilariously casting Rothrock in the role of Nanna, Santa’s wife.  

3/10