There are a lot of bad Christmas movies out there. I mean a lot. Cheap to make and having a built in audience for one month out of the year, there are way too many quick cash grabs to count. But those aren’t the ones we are looking at here. Below are ten movies where the people involved really should have known better before signing on. Sorry, there will be no Kirk Cameron here.

Christmas with the Kranks

Oh cute, they found a way to work in her reaction after reading the script into the final product.

No one should be surprised about a shitty Tim Allen movie. But getting Jamie Lee Curtis and Dan Akroyd caught up in this flaming pile of reindeer poo as well? The premise is dumb, the jokes, well there aren’t any jokes, just feeble attempts at humor that wouldn’t even elicit a laugh from a young child hopped up on sugar. The leads are lucky in their preexisting fame, because movies like this are career enders to most anyone else. Speaking of…

Jack Frost

Kid, this is the happiest I’ll be for a decade.

How to kill a career in one movie. This snowy turd basically made Keaton persona non grata until he played himself in Birdman. If one were to come back to life in order to be a better person to their kid, why would it be in the form of something that disappears as soon as the thermometer hits 33? Or something that that is so out of place that people who see it start to wonder if someone’s poisoning the water supply? Or…I need a drink.

Bad Santa 2

That look you have when you play the idiot and know that this shit is beneath you.

The original Bad Santa was an amusing, if uneven tale of a shitty person finding redemption. Written by the Coen brothers, it had just enough heart to balance all of the genuinely awful things that were taking place. Add in a great ensemble cast and you’ve got a cult classic. What happens when you don’t get the Coens to return? Or most of the original cast, but to be fair, a few of them were dead. A shitty plot and a bunch of dumb jokes that are crude just for the sake of being crude. It tries too hard to be offensive, completely missing what made its predecessor enjoyable in the first place.

Jingle All the Way/2

Someone get me another action flick, quick!

I’ll admit to having a soft spot for Kindergarten Cop, one of Arnold’s earlier roles that strayed from his action hero persona. Smack in the middle of his post True Lies slump, this tale of a dad trying to get that one hot Christmas toy is a tough watch, even with the low expectations one goes into something like this with. It’s a small idea stretched way too long and of course has to end with Arnold beating that crap out of people dressed as the toy in question. But it’s biggest sin is that it did well enough to spawn a straight to video sequel starring Larry the fucking Cable Guy. Ugh.

The Santa Clause 3

Nothing to see here. Just a creepy man holding a ball. In a children’s movie.

I get it. The first is still charming enough that it got a sequel. The sequel made enough money and didn’t yet cross the line into spoiled egg nog that we got a third after it. A trilogy! But this premise wasn’t ever enough to carry three movies and it shows. With a ridiculous story that involves Martin Short’s terrible Jack Frost trying to take over Christmas and trying to convince Tim Allen’s in-laws that they are in Canada and not the North Pole. Unsurprisingly, this ended the franchise.

Surviving Christmas

This is from the Sopranos because fuck this movie.

Jon Favreau turned this down to do Elf. Everyone else should have turned this down to stay at home and get alcohol poisoning. Even if you imagine this as Tony Soprano going at it with Daredevil it still sucks.

Home Alone 2: Lost in New York

Grids are so confusing.

There would be no movie if Kevin just waited until he was on the airplane to replace the batteries in his Talkboy and we would all be better off for it. It’s better than the third (yes, there are three), but that’s a pretty low bar.

Fred Claus

It’s an Oscar nominee dressed as Santa! How droll!

Hey look, it’s the only character Vince Vaughn ever plays, but this time he’s a jerk to Santa. Even if you haven’t seen this, you really have. They made Ludacris an angry elf DJ so they could get a song out of him, so it’s go that going for it, I guess.

Disney’s A Christmas Carol

Dead inside in more ways than one.

Remember when this style of animation (also used in The Polar Express), helmed by director Robert Zemeckis, was going to be the future? Well it wasn’t, it was just creepy. Journey into the uncanny valley that this is, there are just dozens of better versions of Charles Dickens’ classic tale, so why even bother? Though this may be the only version that will scare your kids before the ghosts even show up.

Star Wars Holiday Special

Harrison Ford’s face says it all.

Anyone who claims that the recent Star Wars entries have killed the franchise have clearly never seen this (or any of the prequels I’m guessing). A cash grab if I ever saw one, it was also the first time we really saw that George Lucas needs someone to reign in some of his more, ahem,“interesting” ideas. Have the whole thing take place around a Wookie holiday and having the lot of them just growl at each other the whole time without providing any sort of subtitles or conext? This makes me yearn for Jar Jar.