Bah, Humbug! The Worst Christmas Movies of All-Time
5 Holiday Movies Straight Off the Naughty List!
From ho-ho-ho to no-no-no.
We here at E! News love the holidays. The time spent with family. The seasonal beverages. The twinkling lights. The food. And, of course, the movies. There’s nothing we love more than a cozy Sunday evening spent watching Hallmark’s latest cheesy but irresistible Countdown to Christmas movie with a steaming cup of hot cocoa. (We have the evidence: We’ve ranked all their past offerings. Yes, all of them.)
But while we love us a cheery Christmas flick, that doesn’t mean we don’t have standards: We can spot the difference between a gift (think classics like Home Alone, Christmas Vacation and Elf) and a lump of coal that leaves us colder than the frigid temps outside.
Not every seasonal outing can go on to become annual event programming like Love Actually or The Santa Clause. Some are just destined to end up at the tail-end of Netflix’s Christmas suggestions scroll a.k.a. the entertainment version of the South Pole. As Kevin McCallister would say, Yikes.
And bad holiday movies can happen to good actors, including Keira Knightley.
With her “visceral childhood memory,” of attending The Nutcracker ballet with her mom, she went all in on bringing the performance to life in 2018’s The Nutcracker and the Four Realms, even affecting a sweet AF, high-pitched voice to transform herself into the Sugar Plum Fairy.
“[It’s] mostly the idea of that sense of magic,” she shared with Entertainment Weekly of the story ahead of its release. “Of all of these sweets and these toys coming to life, which is what every kid wants when you’re playing with toys. You want it to be real.” But the as magical as it seemed, the movie didn’t exactly have filmgoers waltzing out of theaters.
And though Michael Keaton‘s Jack Frost had a heart-melting premise in theory—after dying in a car crash, a dad comes back to spend time with his son as the titular friendly snowman—the 1998 film proved more haunting than heartwarming.
So which Christmas films over the years have failed to become classics, instead becoming go-to examples of the holidays gone very wrong? We’ve made a list and checked it twice. You’re about to find out who we’ve deemed naughty and nice.
(Originally published Monday, Dec. 2, 2019 at 12 p.m. PST)
For the latest breaking news updates, click here to download the E! News App