On the Second Day of Christmas (1997)

The Worst Film Ever

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

When I first read the overview of this movie I thought that it sounded familiar. I checked my Christmas movies and it turned out that Remember the Night from 1940 written by Preston Sturges was the film. Here is IMDb's overview of that film which starred Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray "Just before Christmas, Lee Leander is caught shoplifting. It is her third offense. She is prosecuted by John Sargent. He postpones the trial because it is hard to get a conviction at Christmas time. But he feels sorry for her and arranges for her bail, and ends up taking her home to his mother for Christmas" And once again they fall in love... If you enjoyed "On the 2nd Day of Christmas" then you might enjoy this older B&W film with a similar theme.

I hate the attitude of the woman in the beginning of the movie. She calls the guy a jerk for sleeping on his bed by himself and making her and the kid sleep on the sofa bed- when she is the criminal here, not him, so she should deal with the consequences of her lifestyle. She also says something like "gotta make a living"- but she is a pick pocket, that is not making a living. She's just too lazy to get a real job, she wants the easy way out. Plus she trains the kid to steal as well. No sympathy for criminals- she should have been in jail. Oh and then to top it all off the idiot guy who's watching her apologizes for the things he said. He never should have, nor did he need to, apologize. Apologising just makes all her stealing OK.

This is one of the most illogical TV movies ever made -- and that is saying a lot.(1) Some of the actors play their parts straight, and some play their parts like baffoonish clowns. (2) Pick-pocketing is ethical. (3) Our hero sees a bike stolen and sold for cash. The bike is gone, but he catches the thief with cash in hand, but he does not attempt to claim the money. (4) Closet light bulbs remain switched-on 24 hours a day. (5) City people leave their apartment without locking their apartment door which has many deadbolt locks begging to be used. (6) An income is needed to live in an apartment, but it is assumed that no income is needed to buy and run a house. (7) Decorations are purchased for a Christmas tree that does not exist. Later, at the drop of a hat, a police officer-wanna be steals a Christmas tree. No one in the world would know this would ever happen except for the writer of the movie. (8) Throughout the period the lead female characters desire to escape, they do not do so. For example, at one point the police guard wanna-be guy has both of his hands handcuffed to a handrail inside a bus. He is locked up and has no key, but no one escapes from him. (9) A violent child snatcher is released only because the movie needs him to snatch the child a second time later in the movie. (10) A silly man wearing a cast and a thick Santa's suit spends most of the movie outrunning assorted adults only two or three feet behind him.The only good part of "On the 2nd Day of Christmas" is the vigilant perfume sales lady on duty in the department store.

"On the 2nd Day of Christmas" is absolute torture. It is the cinematic equivalent of coal in your stocking. Here is a movie so unpleasant and manipulative that you will have to take a cold shower just to remove the swarminess.I have never disliked a Christmas movie so much. It tries to shamelessly manipulate our feelings. This is the kind of movie that Roger Ebert would describe as "taking tears by liposuction". That's how desperate these filmmakers are to move us. Well, it moved me. Off the couch at the halfway point. I usually sit through an entire movie, no matter how bad. But an hour and 10 minutes of this tripe was more than I could bear.With a more organized and thoughtful screenplay, this could have been a good movie. But this script has several fatal flaws. First, there are no sympathetic or likable characters. When by the twenty minute mark, you want to throw your female lead out the window, you know you're in trouble. Second, the film is overly predictable. We know what's going to happen and sure enough, I successfully predicted everything that happened after the opening ten minutes. Third, the performances feel by the numbers. There's no life or flavor, just routine unpleasantness.Do yourself a favor. Instead of wasting two hours of your life, read a book, do a jigsaw puzzle, go out for a walk. Just don't watch this movie. zero stars (out of four)