Santa's Boot Camp

Dir: Ken Feinberg

2016

*

After very stiff competition and some strong contenders I am happy to announce that the prize for worst Christmas film 2016 is... Ken Feinberg's Santa's Boot Camp. Clearly filmed in the middle of summer (and seemingly unconcerned with trying to hide it), Santa's Boot Camp is a misguided tale of redemption that teaches children a valuable lesson. That lesson is capitalism will always win, so make sure you're with a strong union. Basically, the Elves think Santa gets all the credit and decide to go on strike. The Elves are played by brattish children who say everything like it's an insult and spend the entire film with their arms folded. To fill in for them, Santa kidnaps a group of young stereotypes and forces them into slave-labour in order to meet his quota and of course teach them a valuable lesson - judgmental bastard that he is. After and very long hour and a half, the children somehow acknowledge the errors of their ways because they've mucked out some reindeer and have had slightly nastier children be nasty at them. I'm for escapism and a bit of fantasy but Santa's Boot Camp has all the magic and imagination of an empty cereal box. There is no festive fun to be had here. If your idea of a good time is watching annoying kids arguing with each other and being smug about being smug, then this is the film for you but if you treasure your eyes, ears and general sanity (not to mention your well-earned time off) you should probably partake in something else a little more interesting like dusting or counting your own arm hairs. The signs were there but this is a particularly bad Christmas movie and is best avoided unless you like pain and misery. Merry Christmas everyone.