Romanian film review – Christmas mess at the mall: Ho Ho Ho

I hope you've had a lovely Christmas and your holidays are full of joy, happiness, and uplifting holiday movies. In a time when I've re-watched classics like It's a Wonderful Life and Scrooged and more recent hits like Love Actually for the umpeth time, I've been wracking my brains trying to come up with at least one recent Romanian Christmas family film. There are some amazing titles revolving around the holidays but they are anything but family entertainment: Corneliu Porumboiu's pitch-perfect comedy A fost sau n-a fost?/12:08East of Bucharestor Radu Muntean's acute relationship drama Marți, dupăCrăciun/Tuesday after Christmas. But thanks to the ever-amazing wonders of the internet, I came across a glossy production from 2009. Ho Ho Ho, starring heartthrob musician/actor Stefan Bănică Jr., is indeed a movie made by all rules of easy family fun. To be more precise, it has cheerfully stolen from a bunch of Hollywood blockbusters, from the burglary topic including a precocious child and a team of moronic thieves of Home Alone to the grumpy, criminal Santa of Bad Santa. And in between, there's a lot of seen-before family tropes and at least one romance. Horațiu, an adorable and uncannily clever boy gets lost from his mother on Christmas day while shopping at the mall and what ensues is a determined mother's fierce attempts to find her son and Horațiu's mix-up with the aforementioned foul-mouthed guy working as Santa Claus (Stefan Bănică Jr.) - actually a decent guy who buries his grief over the separation from his family in lots of alcohol and bad behaviour – and a bunch of stupid thieves planning on burgling the mall's jewelry store. I so wished it was all done with panache and some original elements but the plot is terrible, the acting bad, the jokes hilariously flat, and the 'emotional' and 'tense' moments have the most horribly clichéd soundtrack. But there is something so wonderfully amusing about the film's happy usage of all clichés and there is great joy to be found in the idiotic character development and the (involuntarily) silly dialogue. A great piece of fun trash, the film is streaming in its entire mad glory on YouTube. And brace yourselves, there is also a sequel.