Shut your eyes and pray for Easter if you cross paths with the joy-smothering Christmas cheer crematorium, Tinsel Town. Suspects include director Chris Foggin and writers Piers Ashworth, Adam Brown, and Jake Brunger. Big Hollywood action star Bradley Mack (Kiefer Sutherland) has passed his expiration date and has been put out to pasture. The only gig his agent (Katherine Ryan) can find him is theater work in England, which at least would get him within parenting distance of his kid, Emma (Matilda Firth). Not that his ex-wife (Alice Eve) or her new husband (James Lance) are holding their breath that Mack is ever going to show up. This time, though, he has a good excuse, as he is three hours north of London in a very picturesque pile of bricks in the sticks.
Bradley’s West End stage debut is actually a village Christmas pantomime of Cinderella, wherein he is to play Buttons. There is a fairy godmother (Maria Friedman) who wants to jump his bones, but other than that, Mack is already heading back out the door. However, his agent/lawyer, Sukie Huntington (Jaimi Barbakoff), let him know he is in an ironclad contract and has a snowball’s chance in hell of getting out of it. On top of everything else, the short-tempered choreographer, Jill (Rebel Wilson), is pissed that Mack is already five days late for rehearsals and has not learned his blocking. So everyone just buggers on ahead with Christmas, just as miserable as the audience is.
“…Bradley Mack has passed his expiration date…the only gig his agent can find him is theater work in England…”
Poor Kiefer Sutherland! Poor Rebel Wilson! Blink three times rapidly if you are being held against your will in this movie. Remembering any part of this film puts me in a black depression. I am usually Mr. Christmas, who bleeds peppermint, but Tinsel Town made me want to go to sleep until January. Tinsel Town is an iron candy cane with spikes that shoot through your lips. In other words, there are some serious pain-loving weirdies outthere who may actually dig this with a plastic fork. I’m not saying this movie is so bad it is good, because it isn’t. But some do marvel over how bad bad can get, with lots to explore here in the endless s**t caves.
Sutherland has to be putting us on with his portrayal, because he can’t be this unfunny with it not being on purpose. There are flashes of his well-documented talent flashing through the wreckage, but it is fleeting. I couldn’t make it past the so-called musical numbers, each as fun as another puncture from a rabies test. There also aren’t enough gratuitous Christmas light displays. I was so decoration-starved that I almost hyperventilated when a juicy Christmas fair popped up out of nowhere. It was a wonderful Yuletide relief before slipping back into the black pudding of the film. With all the talk of how wonderful Christmas pantomimes are in the script, the whole movie seems to shrink away from any tradition that may have made this pitiful excuse of a Santa sneeze enjoyable.
"…remembering any part of this film puts me in a black depression."
