cwade22
This movie has bad audio, bad writing, and no black or non whites. It's NEW YORK CITY! In 2015! All i see are whinywhite liberals complaining about their liberal arts classes and other boring stuff when there are tons of homeless people outside starving and freezing to death! How is there only 1 non white person in this whole cast? I'm half black and don't like modern movies with all white casts. I say modern because period films may not have a lot of diversity as those were the times. But a dumb movie made in 2015, in a democrat state like new york has almost no blacks or non whites, is strange. White liberals(the people who made this movie and star in it) are calling trump racist, but i keep seeing a trend that these same self righteous types have few black friends and in hollywood, the ones that have power to cast, seldom cast non whites in these stale comedies. This movie is so bad. I have to turn volume all the all the way up and it still sounds muffled. And all i hear are boring white liberals complaining about their perfect families and useless art history majors in college. I bet all these characters(not actors) are unemployed and protesting all the time. If there was a sequel to this garbage movie. I've never heard of this movie until it came on my television. 2015 in NYC, and only 1 Black person in the whole movie?! How can white liberals(the same ones that made this film and act in it) call everybody racist, but be okay with an all white movie like this?! The casting is unbelievable. Or is this film trying to convey that white liberals truly have no diverse friends? The writing and casting and audio all ruin the movie for me.
Lars-Toralf Storstrand
I guess that this is as short a summary as I can write. And it does have certain of the same qualities as Love Actually has, which makes me wonder why people don't like it much.A philosophical high strung bunch of people stuck together, and how the story develops. Now what makes the story lacking a little bit, are the questions we are stuck with. You'll figure them out too, if you see the film.Christmas Eve has potential to being somewhat more, though.What about a Directors Cut? There has to be a few more questions answered in other footage that wasn't used in this cutting?Let's see that, next Christmas.
Ettin
I'm secular but usually get into the holiday spirit just out of habit (my family and several friends celebrate Xmas, and hey, there's no work on the 25th), so I figured why not watch a dramedy with Patrick Stewart?The movie is not terrible. The ending ties characters from different elevators together, so that's a plus. If anything good can be said about the film, it's that you dislike most of the characters less by the end, even the two who were written to be the most unlikable (played by Margaret Clunie and Roxanne Cook). Christmas Eve is a "White Christmas" in more ways than one: outside it's snowy, and 95% of the actors are white (which is almost demographically impossible for 6 random elevators in NYC). The token black dude plays a semi-imbecile (sembecile?) who figures it wouldn't be in the holiday spirit to urinate when trapped in an elevator. The token Hispanic dude is the one who causes the power outage in the first 5 minutes thanks to his Virgin Mary statuette dropping off the dashboard of his van (I am not making that up). Patrick Stewart enjoyed his role as a Scroogy billionaire a little too much, perhaps due to his off-screen socialist leanings.The cardinal sin (no pun intended) of Christmas Eve is the sick patient demanding that the atheist/agnostic physician pray for her. As someone who knows many physicians: Please, if you are religious, don't cow a secular doctor into this even if you have a poor prognosis and are trapped in an elevator. While it shouldn't've surprised me that the Virgin Mary statuette was also part of the ending (and was the subliminal instigator of events), I was nonetheless hoping for a little less religious silliness. Bill O'Reilly would probably endorse this flick as part of his waging war against the theoretical War on Xmas, and for that reason and those stated above, I will not endorse this flick (at risk of being shunned as a Grinch).
sjfan
"Deus ex machina" can be clearly read on the side of the copier repair van at the beginning of the movie(and the trailer), but as opposed to it being the divine intervention plot device to save the protagonist, in Christmas Eve it is the basis of a story where we see God manifested in multiple ways, all from the machine.The story is slow at times, the dialogue is fair, but has its moments. This is a story designed to make you feel connected to the people around you and maybe even care about a stranger. It is not an action movie, it is not a romantic comedy, it is not 90 minutes of CGI. You have to engage in a little suspension of reality for the given situation and spend the night in an elevator with the characters that have normal lives and experience everyday outcomes.Not the best Christmas movie I've seen. I would have liked more more time focused on Patrick Stewart's character, but in fairness I've never seen anything where I thought it had too much Patrick Stewart. In the end I took my children(10&4yo) and had less to worry about in the content than I do with prime time television. For that I am immensely thankful and will watch this with my family again next Christmas.
AD
