El Camino Christmas (2017)

You won't be disappointed!

Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

It's not that I regret watching El Camino Christmas, it's just an average movie, nothing special to it, nothing that will make you remember it. In fact I'd better write it down that I already saw it because otherwise I might watch it again in a couple of months because I totally forgot about it, and I don't want to watch it again. It's just not good enough, and it's certainly not a comedy, or maybe I don't get that kind of humor because I didn't laugh once. The story isn't terrible but again nothing special neither. The acting could be much better with this cast. I think that not all the actors were that thrilled to play in this movie. The only good thing about this movie is that they show the police as dumb and triggerhappy, that's exactly how I see the American police. Other than that it's pretty dull.

I decided to review after reading all the ridiculous reviews.This is a Christmas movie in the same way Die Hard is a Christmas movie and a Comedy in the same way The Lobster and/or Welcome to Me are Comedies. This is not your classic Christmas or Family Comedy (dispite the way it is portrayed via Netflix's user interface). If any of the aforementioned movies don't make sense in their categories, this *might* not be for you. It has a really simple plot that gets predictable, it has some great one liners, a fantastic cast, a few good moments of action and is well paced, overall. Personally I didn't like the ending, but enjoyed it well enough. I probably won't watch it again, but I don't regret watching it by any stretch of imagine. If you've got 90min and looking to be entertained, I say give it a shot. What do you have to lose? If it was rated using the MPAA system, my guess would be either PG-13 or R for a few moments of strong language, some brief violence and a drug reference. It could probably play, unedited, on AMC or FX after 9pm.

American cinema doesn't do ensemble that well very often, and it frequently gets punished at the box office, as well as by viewers and by reviewers, for even trying. This film pulls together a low-key cast with an intelligent script and ends up as a quirky, darkly humorous drama that unfolds over Christmas Eve. The characters are a motley crew of misfits and losers, stereotypical small-towners on the surface, with the obligatory pregnant woman arriving as a tv reporter from the big city. The actors, many of whom we're used to seeing in bigger roles where they tend to take up a lot of screen, give dialed-back performances that allow - even expect - the audience to fill in the subtext. And there's a fair bit of subtext lying behind and between the stripped-down dialogue: about power and corruption, war and trauma, family and gender roles, the nature of life's choices and the cold reality of death. This could be done as a stage play and it would be getting rave reviews that mentioned Tennessee Williams. I'm not used to seeing so much packed into a contemporary, for-the-masses movie, and I'm plainly not alone in that. The poor reviews may be due in part to an un-sparing execution that's cutting too close to the tragi-comic reality of the modern American south.

I thought this was going to be a crime comedy. The comedy is nowhere to be found. So let's call it a drama. It fails here too because the story seems so empty for over 90% of the film. At the last it makes an attempt to tie it all together in a dramatic way quite late...to no avail.. It's simply too empty for too long with too little too late. I wonder how this got the nod at all for a production. It is that senseless. No one really delivers a convincing performance here with so little to inspire. A complete mess I'd say with a ridiculous coda to the ending. I want my 90-minutes back.