Whether or not The 12 Days of Christmas Eve is an awful riff on a Christmas classic is of no matter to Kelsey Grammer. Presumably killing time before the launch of a Fraiser spin-off, the former X-Men man appears in a worrying number of straight-to-streaming features. Not so merry a Christmas for Brian Conway (Grammer), whose role here is to be a dreadfully observed entity of Scrooge. A formidable blend of The Grinch and hating the Christmas cheer so pertinent to the festive period. Nothing special. Gluttony is far too simple a note of negativity for this feature, but the awfully made throes of the Christmas festivities do not matter much to Grammer and company, who storm through regardless.
Far too horrific and insulting a rip on Charles Dickens’ original this may be, The 12 Days of Christmas Eve appears to move itself on a little further by having twelve instances rather than three. More is more and, in this instance, beyond nothingness. Cutting corners in the most worrying of ways, to green screening the background of an office building or the demands of a youngster to cartwheel in front of her grandfather. That is the key to Christmas, is it not? Having Grammer stalk the corridors of a failing business while his granddaughter repeatedly asks him to see her cartwheel, until eventually he relents and realises the meaning of Christmas is children, not cash. Woeful scenes like that are constant.
Constants like that are the difficult hoop The 12 Days of Christmas Eve must jump through though, and it is brushed to the side nicely by the setting it dictates. Groundhog Day but for Christmas and without the benefit of Bill Murray. Christmas features of the modern variety find themselves in that uphill struggle of attempting to be better than what came before it. Very, very few are lingering on. Perhaps that is because with youth slipping away, audiences need something grounded and more focused on the foibles and troubles of the real world. The 12 Days of Christmas Eve is proof against that. Despite its festive charms and presence as a larger-than-life piece, it lacks the escapism so present in the Christmas classics of old.
Horribly shlock-filled and awfully cheesy, there are some utterly dreadful moments throughout The 12 Days of Christmas that are meant to inspire some layer of Christmas cheer. Even then, the heroic characters who hope to bless the world with Christmas cheer are also those that provide the most judgemental and unengaged performances of all. Selfish elderly men turn to the gift of giving almost out of the blue, with stock effects and some horrid choices all the way through. Grammer stumbles through the piece with relatively little damage done to his abilities as a performer. It is a far stretch away from the likes of Money Plane, but even the most fervent of Christmas fans would admit The 12 Days of Christmas Eve is a nightmarish rendition of a classic story. Is it even a classic story, at this stage? It has been through the wringer so many times that the fundamentals are now beyond whatever the most recent adaptation could hope to prove, offer or convince of.
