I'll Be Home For Christmas

In a way, a film celebrating those Christmas sentiments of greed, venality, and hypocrisy is refreshing. Too bad it's not funny. Up for the Worst Dialogue Award against John Carpenter's Vampires is I'll Be Home for Christmas, and when it comes to holiday spirit, the latter should win hands down.

A charmless Jonathan Taylor Thomas plays Jake, a prep-school scam artist off to the East Coast with his girlfriend, Allie (Jessica Biel), to visit his estranged dad -- who has sweetened the deal by promising Jake a classic Porsche if he makes it home for Christmas Eve dinner. Naturally vengeful jocks led by Jake's rival Eddie (Adam Lavorgna) kidnap him, glue him into a Santa Claus outfit, and leave him in the desert. Jake must use his wits and growing sensitivity to bum rides cross-country, seething while Allie rides in Eddie's SUV. Such laughs and warm insights along the way: Jake vomiting in the back seat of a car full of elderly Tom Jones fans, or fleeing the police with an idiot redneck who believes he's the real Father Christmas. It makes Planes, Trains and Automobiles seem like Chekhov, and in the end it's the kind of film where you're rewarded not only with your Porsche but with the smug satisfaction of being above such crass materialism. Will I'll Be Home for Christmas enter the pantheon of great holiday movies? Only in the filmmakers' dreams. At the Holiday, Lincoln Mall, Showcase (North Attleboro only), Tri-Boro, Warwick Mall, and Woonsocket cinemas.