The Fifth Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films – Door 2

2015’s Daddy’s Home is a run of the mill comedy vehicle for Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg. It’s fairly predictable, eminently forgettable and even at a slender 96 minutes, probably slightly longer than it needs to be. It’s the kind of movie that, if you’ve seen the trailer, you’ve probably already seen all of the best bits, and yet the trailer gave me no particular desire to watch this.

But I had an inkling it would make the cut for my pointless Christmas countdown, so I took a punt. Perhaps because my expectations were fairly low going in, I did find the film mildly diverting and I did laugh a few more times than I might have anticipated. I doubt I’ll watch it again, but I didn’t hate it.

Score for Christmasishness

I really only watched this because I was aware that the sequel is set around the holidays and I never like to watch a sequel without having seen the original movie. However, this one has some mild Christmas credentials of its own. It’s never actually Christmas proper during the timeline of the movie, but there is a very Christmassy scene, which includes Ferrell’s character in full Santa Claus garb. It makes perfect sense within the movie’s internal logic even though the aforementioned scene takes place in April. Indeed the scene is so Christmassy that the movie definitely deserves to be considered as slightly Christmas(ish).