I mix in a small dash of personal stuff into these reviews every once in a while.  Very small personal stuff, but still personal, all the same.  Film does this with me, where there are stages in both my life and my feelings about individual films in general, sometimes with film as a whole.  At the moment in time that this review was typed, 2016 was winding to a close.  Though I may be young and have very few years behind me when compared to others, I hope it wouldn't be too...too...  Well, look at that.  I can't come up with the word.  It's not "presumptive", but another one at the tip of my tongue, like "overdramatic"/"melodramatic".  Anyway, I hope it wouldn't be too *insert the proper word here* to say that this has been the worst year in my recollection that I have ever gone through.  I am not going to list all the reasons why.  For some others in the world, including notably, though strangely, the United States, they have felt some similar shifts.  I pray to God that there is never another year like this.  This will have marked one of the most negatively and positively impressing years of my life.

I came home from a Christmas break away to see family that did not turn out the very best.  I had prepared for myself the movie of this discussion, Good Luck Charlie: It's Christmas!, for when I got back.  I did not know if I would necessarily be in the mood for it, possibly be all Christmased out.  Instead, the opposite happened.  I came home desiring to watch this movie very much, so that I could actually experience some of that Christmas cheer that has become so synonymous in my head with the holiday.  I am familiar with the television show that this movie is a special of, and though I have never been a frequent watcher of it, on an occasion it has happened to show up on the television screen and I have been a little bit charmed.  Good Luck Charlie is not as good as some of the classic shows that have sadly faded into memory, but there are other family channel programs that are far worse than what this one has had to offer, so I at least thank the show for that.

Maybe if I could turn off the critical part of my brain I would have been able to enjoy this movie more.  It did not instill in me feelings of merriment and joy, the kind that I was hoping for, or even gentle feelings of nostalgia from the program that has now been a couple years deceased.  I don't mean to be a Scrooge, or even a Grinch, but the movie didn't work for me.  I could pop in a couple of the Christmas movies that in the past have affected me a great deal, but I seem to have lost the joy of watching film that I once used to have, in the pure sense of the word.  I am no longer as enraptured as I used to be.  I could say it was this year that caused it, but it has been a gradual slope down since maybe 2011 or 2012.  I am sorry to be a downer this holiday season, but I haven't been given much cheer to actually be feeling any of it.

I feel like I have started this drum roll question before, and due to no new creative ingenuity, here I go again: What did the movie do wrong?  Nothing, really.  Compared to other holiday movies I have seen, though, it is largely unambitious.  I felt the sagging cable production values all the way through, noticed similar scenes and ideas from other stories (with these reproduced ones having no real energy put into them to ensure at least a certain freshness), some overdone or over-serviced acting, stretched and dramatically ill-attuned plot, a few awkwardly unrealistic images and happenings, and probably just plain handling in general.

Well, I guess the plot really isn't all that stretched.  Stranded-and-trying-to-get-somewhere-before-a-certain-deadline has been done to death, many times in short form throughout countless movies.  It's the stuff that happens along the way, along with the eventual payoff, that determines the final quality you give to a film that inserts itself into that patch.  As I stated before, unremarkable goings-on when thinking about other movies like this.  You have the loaned or cheap car that is not meant to operate, the people you hitchhike with who turn out to be even weirder than you are.  I think what I really felt made the movie's plot stretched out is the acting and writing.  The pacing's all right for a smooth cruise.  These characters can work for a half-hour long show, but they do not feel dramatically upholding over a longer-spread plot that is 81 minutes in length.  It strips away the amusing feelings you associate with each individual family member's quirkiness, and there is not really all that much left over.  In this movie, there's not enough stunts, not enough wit for the actors to play around with.  It's too nice for that.  It longs to be all nice, warm, and fuzzy, and so falls short by distancing us from feeling what is really going on.  It wants to retain the slight weirdness of the original show, but ends up making the characters too ordinary, and doesn't give us enough reason to like them as they are, but instead crave through hints of their truly bizarre nature to really break out.  (Though when this plea is tried in the beginning it is a bit too much.)

Though there are a few other parts of the movie that I can recall that stood out poorly (the unrealistically-long vehicle-falling-apart sequence, the image of zany alien abduction victims with their huge and briefly petrifying tools for removing tracking devices which feels like it was meant for a different film, natural set lighting choices throughout, and a supposedly comic caroling fight between Teddy and her mother for money among them), the biggest problem was the ending.  People who don't really care about the quality of the production when watching the movie won't care about the irksome ending either.  There's no dramatic heft, it felt lazy, and while aiming for feel-good it ends up as schmaltz, with "of course!" and "why not?" moments happening here and there.  Because, you know, that's what all feel-good movies should end with, right?  On a more positive note, "wicked child" with Charlie during the monsters-on-tv sequence was of a better note, as was the continuous gag of the different business owners who bought each other out.

If you don't see the reason why any of these things might have made me give this movie a low rating, or that I didn't explain some of my points enough, to the latter, I already feel like I may have given too much away, and to the former, then go ahead, watch the film when you feel like it, and prove me wrong.  If you don't know very much about the final season and a half or so of the show, there is one mild surprise regarding Momma Duncan that may feel like a little bit of a payoff as well.  My rating: 2 1/8 /5

Formerly titled: Technology Does Not Like Me

Beside from Puppet Master: The Legacy, I had one other review typed up here and ready to go, for Another Cinderella Story, with another for Resident Evil: Extinction on the way, but then the Internet went down, and now they are lost.

* Puppet Master: The Legacy - I obviously did not look enough into what this eighth installment of the Puppet Master franchise was really about beforehand.  The DVD case the movie came in led me to believe that an actual story was going to be the main focus.  If you look up my ratings for the first seven movies, you will know that I am not a big fan of this series.  If you are a fan of the series, you will likely look at my rating for this eighth installment, scoff, and not actually read anything I have to say about Puppet Master: The Legacy.  Here is why you should: I am not a fan of this series, but the eighth film hits a record low, not just for the series, but for movies I have seen in general.  This movie can be interpreted as either the very definition of a cash-grab or a poorly cut-together and thought-out ode to the series and its "legacy".  Despite what other sources may tell you, even the DVD case, the movie clocks in at about 72 minutes.  Over an hour of that short runtime is devoted to showing extended patches of scenes from every movie in the franchise up to this point, and having 10 minutes or less of new footage spaced out between the scenes, billed as the real "plot", to try to tie them all together.  The "plot" is mostly empty, and oftentimes we don't understand what the flashbacks have to do with what the two present-day characters are talking to each other about.  I give the movie credit for bringing up a few questions I myself have had, but it brings them to the forefront and then doesn't attempt to answer them, as the characters already think they know what they are talking about, but maybe they don't, and we ourselves can't tell.  Is Toulon good or evil?  Are there even more repercussions possible for bringing inanimate objects to life than have been alluded to earlier?  In the end, why are there so many Puppet Masters?  What do the puppets really feel toward their creator and the masters that came after his reign?  I thought the movie was going to answer these, but then there is a plot twist in the last minute and a half, and everything becomes even more convoluted, as there is apparently an even bigger variable to consider, but darn me if I was able to understand what that variable really is.  I thought the film was saying that the puppets had had enough again and were turning on the newest master, them being the Immortals, but after checking on Wikipedia, I'm not that sure about much of anything in this movie anymore.  What is it that all the Puppet Masters have created?!  Wikipedia is also nice enough to tell me where all the films land chronologically; this movie is the furthest into the future, followed only by the crossover with the Demonic Toys series.  The audio quality of the flashbacks, at least on my disc, was better than in the actual movies they come from, even though they all came in the same pack.  It feels most of the time, if you have already watched the previous movies, that you are wasting your time while watching this, and the ending doesn't make you feel any better.  I am surprised the studio even mentioned to the public that there are people who made this movie, as almost all of the footage is taken from past films, and darn if Robert Talbot, or Charles Band, or however directed this (as there are some discrepancies on even this matter when doing research, or maybe Robert Talbot is Charles Band?!) classifies this as a full film that he can add to his filmography.  I would have been much better pleased if they would have cut the flashbacks down in size to essential images and then took the rest of the runtime up with an actual plot.  The given film is inadequate to stand as a true one, and so I give it a highly discouraging grade of 1/5, the only merits being a lumpy road down memory lane and at least admitting there are some topics that could be discussed further that the previous movies didn't answer.  I was willing to pretend that movies #1-3 + 7, 4-5, and 6 took place in their own versions of reality, but since this movie insists they all happened and are a part of the same continuum, I am afraid that I must say that my dislike for this series has turned to hate.  This film has changed its "legacy" for the worse.