A beautifully average Christmas movie with heart and compassion, but laced with too incomprehensible plots, too crowded of a cast, supporting cast and mumbo jumbo chickens and cows. Even Eddie Murphy is not himself here, seems lost, at times disinterested and grumpy in his heart, not showing his awesome funny smile and comedic capabilities (though the film screenplay nearly doesn't help with those either). Believe it or not, Jillian Bell (Pepper) had the best acting out there.
The visuals are beautiful and at times stunning, but visuals get destroyed when the script and to some levels the acting + the score are not on par. That's not a goofy police procedural where you can walk gray-colored in brightly colored comedy photography and filming. Nevertheless, that's exactly what happened, uncompelling characters as a whole with so so acting (-50%) blended with a (+15%) score in a colorful filming environment (+75%) and the result is around 38% at best.
That's what the director Reginald Hudlin needs to take into account in her next comedy project!
The visuals are beautiful and at times stunning, but visuals get destroyed when the script and to some levels the acting + the score are not on par. That's not a goofy police procedural where you can walk gray-colored in brightly colored comedy photography and filming. Nevertheless, that's exactly what happened, uncompelling characters as a whole with so so acting (-50%) blended with a (+15%) score in a colorful filming environment (+75%) and the result is around 38% at best.
That's what the director Reginald Hudlin needs to take into account in her next comedy project!
- Screenplay/storyline/plots: 5
- Development: 7.5
- Realism: 5.5
- Entertainment: 5.5
- Acting: 6
- Filming/photography/cinematography: 8
- VFX / CGI: 7.5
- Music/score/sound: 6
- Depth: 6
- Logic: 5
- Flow: 5.5
- Comedy/family/fantasy: 5.5
- Ending: 5.