Worst Holiday Movies Ever Made

This version of the Charles Dickens classic boasts a strong cast and was directed by Robert Zemeckis, who is considered to be a special effects innovator. While it was hailed for its digital 3-D animation technique, the holiday movie was also criticized for being uneven, lacking in storytelling. The film has only a 54% rating among critics, and an audience approval score of 58%, on Rotten Tomatoes.

Though it ranks among the worst Christmas movies, moviegoers are divided on this one. Billed as a romantic comedy, the film’s cloying sentimentality has built a cult following. Still, some critics say “Love Actually” is decidedly un-romantic — even anti-romantic — and miscategorized as a Christmas movie.

Though the film is certainly a comedy, the beginning of the story is rather dark — the real Santa is accidentally killed. Luckily, Tim Allen’s Scott Calvin takes his place, and hilarity ensues. However, there’s little to inspire most viewers with any true holiday spirit.

Though the film is certainly a comedy, the beginning of the story is rather dark — the real Santa is accidentally killed. Luckily, Tim Allen’s Scott Calvin takes his place, and hilarity ensues. However, there’s little to inspire most viewers with any true holiday spirit.

Essentially, “Just Friends” is about a formerly overweight teen who gets the opportunity to date his high school crush 10 years later after his flight to Paris is forced to land near his home town over Christmas. Cute premise, but there’s some unnecessary mean-spiritedness that can sour the film for the viewer — and the third act seems painfully slow as moviegoers wait for the leads to finally get together.

Vanity Fair called Ron Howard’s version of the beloved book classic, the “worst movie ever,” though it’s gone down as one of the highest grossing Christmas films of all time. Reviewers tended to dislike the film’s departure from the source material, giving the Grinch a backstory in which he left Whoville as a child over a Christmastime mishap in school.

There’s some laughs and decent performances from Nicolas Cage and Téa Leoni in this fish-out-of-water tale. Cage gets spun out of his single Manhattan high life into an alternate reality of a wife and children in the suburbs. Most audience members liked the film, but many reviewers felt the film was overly sentimental, calling it “sap,” “sentimental fluff,” and “predictable.”

A revival of the 1958 musical-cartoon franchise, the movie elicits some cheap laughs at best from the now digitally formed chipmunk trio who take a serious back seat to the live-action characters. The movie includes the Chipmunks signature tune “The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don’t Be Late).”

This horror film makes its way onto the list because the plot takes place around the holidays. Emily Blunt serves up an American accent in this boring thriller where a car gets stuck on a creepy highway and sinister things happen.

Renowned movie critic Roger Ebert wrote in his review that the title of the film was sadly appropriate, because the plot was “nothing more than a hook on which to hang a new version of the Peter Pan story.” The film lacks any magic in bringing Peter Pan into the contemporary world as a businessman who has forgotten who he is. Less than 30% of critics on Rotten Tomatoes gave the film a positive review.

The movie unfolds over the Christmas holiday and is full of booze, strip clubs, mobsters, and dirty money. It’s a tale of a man who needs a quick fix to live, so he steals a lot of money. The film isn’t fleshed out enough beyond its recycled plot, according to the Times review.

Kevin Smith’s tale of a man who realizes the importance of family above material wealth lacks imagination and blatantly pulls on audience heartstrings, leaving a lackluster movie-going experience. Even a tenuous Christmas theme could not save the film from bombing. It grossed nearly $10 million less at the domestic box office that it cost to make.

Tim Allen returns as Scott Calvin, whose mission is to find a bride in order to continue on as Santa and suss out the source of his son’s angst at the same time. Critics were not taken by the movie, which got a 55% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Brit Julian Farino’s American feature debut takes place during the Christmas season and puts an outstanding cast in a dud of a dysfunctional-family movie. Trying to be both comedy and drama, the film fails to inspire.

“Friday After Next” is the third installment to the “Friday” film franchise. The movie gets kudos for its ability to communicate a sense of place. Reviewers disliked the scattered and uneven lighting and editing, and said it did not hold up compared to the original. The film features a scene in which Ice Cube gets robbed of his Christmas presents and is pummeled by a Christmas tree.

This sequel to “Bad Moms” with a holiday backdrop loses any semblance of substance, opting instead for the cheap, fun, drunk night out route as mom friends gather to commiserate about their lives. The majority of movie critics and audience members who reviewed the movie on Rotten Tomatoes did not like it.

Another sequel failure is the follow up to “Daddy’s Home.” The sequel also features the fathers of the dads — Mark Wahlberg’s father is Mel Gibson, and Will Ferrell’s is John Lithgow — who come to a party at Christmas time. Just 19% of critics gave the movie a positive review on Rotten Tomatoes, and the consensus called “Daddy’s Home 2” a “formulaic comedy that’s unlikely to spread much yuletide merriment.”

An awkward family gathering lies at the heart of this drab holiday movie with no less than five Oscar winning actors, including Reese Witherspoon, Sissy Spacek, and Robert Duvall. It centers on a couple that initially planned to spend Christmas on an exotic vacation, but learn to love their families after the trip is canceled and they instead make their way through four separate celebrations.

Yet another ho-hum family-above-career movie, trailing the lives of Thomas and Kate Baker and their 12 children. A job opportunity that Thomas gets around the holidays that would mean moving the family roils the brood. The film notches a critics’ rating of 24% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Santa Claus as a serial killer? You’ll find that to be the case in this 1984 Christmas slasher film that raked in $2.5 million upon release but was made for just $750,000.

On Christmas Eve, a businesswoman awakens after being attacked in a parking garage. She is tied up and is now sitting across from none other than the obsessed security guard. Critics on Rotten Tomatoes said it was full of gore and not very suspenseful.

Would-be comedy “Fred Claus” focuses on family dysfunction that begins with Scrooge-like tendencies only to deteriorate into saccharine-sweet sentimentality. Critics on Rotten Tomatoes gave “Fred Claus” a 21% freshness rating.

“Home Alone 2” was the second highest grossing film of 1992. Its plot is a repeat of sorts of the original, with the little hero against the same foes, this time transplanted into the chaos of New York City over the holidays. Critics on Rotten Tomatoes gave it a freshness rating of 30%, but audiences diverged with critics a bit, with 61% liking the sequel.

“Love the Coopers” may have gotten the right cast with Steve Martin, Diane Keaton, and John Goodman among others, but the movie missed the mark with its beat-the-audience-over-the-head approach to family dysfunction over the holidays.

Unsurprisingly, the third installment of The Santa Clause also made the list of worst holiday movies. It’s best to call it for what it is: a bad Christmas movie that is big on cheap laughs, as Mrs. Claus, who’s about to give birth, sees her parents come to “town” — they think it’s Canada because they don’t know she’s married to Santa.

The movie’s convoluted plot involves a man released from prison who is looking to start a new life but is pulled into a scheme to rob a Michigan casino on Christmas Eve. Despite a strong cast of Ben Affleck, Gary Sinise, Charlize Theron, and Donal Logue, the movie has just a 25% rating among critics on Rotten Tomatoes, and only a 27% audience score.

Even the film’s hero, a child savior whose birthday is near Christmas Day, couldn’t save this movie. As the chosen one battles forces of evil, the movie is decidedly uninspiring and predictable with no sense of impending doom. Just 14% of critics on Rotten Tomatoes gave it a freshness rating.

The story follows a boy whose deceased father comes back as a snowman. The movie melted pretty quickly with moviegoers, and it garnered just a 20% critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Arizona Republic critic Bob Fenster said the film features a “guy in the snowman suit who looks like he didn’t make the first cut at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade.”

This holiday road trip of sorts misses the target with moviegoers as Ice Cube turns from being anti-children in that Ebenezer Scrooge kind of way into a doting dad-to-be. The problem is, the kids were given such bratty roles, viewers are left wondering why on Earth would he want to adopt them as his own.

This tale of two brothers who get out on parole and then trick their third brother into robbing a bank on Christmas Eve plays with very few laughs, despite a cast that boasts Nicolas Cage, Jon Lovitz, and Dana Carvey.

Unfortunately for star Adam Sandler, his brand of vulgar comedy did not translate well to animation in the eyes of critics and audiences alike. Though billed as holiday fare — in this case Hanukkah — it was given a rating of PG-13, not typical for this category.

Critics didn’t find “Jingle All the Way” to be much of a Christmas darling. But movie-goers paid to watch Arnold Schwarzenegger desperately trying to find his son a Turbo-Man action figure during the waning hours of the Christmas season. It’s one of the highest grossing Christmas movies of all time.

A film that was 15 years in the making and cost $40 million only lasted in theaters for six weeks and took in a dismal $21 million. “Toys,” a fantasy film about an imaginary world set inside a giant toy corporation, was met with some criticism as just 30% of reviewers and 39% of audience members gave it favorable marks on Rotten Tomatoes. However, the film has apparently struck a chord with viewers in recent years who have come to appreciate it, according to director Barry Levinson.

Nothing compares to the 1974 original, which is credited with helping launch the slasher film genre, by the way. In this remake, over Christmas time, an escaped homicidal nutjob returns to his home, now a sorority house, and proceeds to kill the sorority sisters one by one. This tedious version, however, focuses the attention on the killer himself, who turns out to be not so terrifying.

John Hughes returned to write the third film in the franchise, but Macaulay Culkin was replaced by Alex D. Linz as the kid who spends his holiday season snuffing out the bad guys in brutal cartoon-like fashion. The problem is, Culkin will always be Kevin McCallister, and the majority of critics agree that this script runs dry of any of the appeal in previous Home Alone movies.

Ben Affleck stars in the role of an ad exec who loses his girlfriend when he suggests they go to Fiji instead of Christmas with her family. Affleck’s character subsequently spends the holiday with the family who now occupies his childhood home as he searches for meaning in his life. The film only managed to garner eight positive reviews amongst the 113 collected by Rotten Tomatoes.

“Christmas with the Kranks” is a Christmas comedy about a couple who has to celebrate the holiday at the last minute when their daughter decides to come home from the Peace Corps with a new fiance. Released the same year as “Surviving Christmas,” “Christmas With the Kranks” proves that 2004 was a bad year for fans of holiday movies. Despite the star power in the cast, just 5% of critics said the film was worthwhile on Rotten Tomatoes.

New neighbor Danny DeVito threatens to dethrone Matthew Broderick as the “Christmas guy,” and the two try to outdo each other with Christmas sparkle. The shiny bulbs are the only things that light up the screen in this tepid movie-going experience.

“Jack and Jill” currently has a pitiful 3.3 rating out of 10 on IMDb. The movie, starring Adam Sandler, centers on Thanksgiving and a visit from his fraternal twin sister (also played by Sandler) who refuses to leave. While Sandler has some major cinematic successes under his belt, he fails to recreate the magic here.

The third movie in the franchise was probably better left off the development table considering its dismal $10.3 million box office results. John Travolta and Kirstie Alley return, now with children – as well as pets – old enough to talk and the film follows the family as they head to a forest hideaway on Christmas Eve. Many critics found the sexual overtones in the movie, which is the third installment in a franchise that was once aimed at children, off-putting. No critics on Rotten Tomatoes gave the film a positive review, and it has a 29% audience score.

Topping the list of the worst holiday movies ever made is this Kirk Cameron vehicle, where he plays himself and is out to save the Christmas spirit. He does this by arguing in favor of all the lavish spending and extravagance that come with the holidays. This message failed to resonate with critics, however, and the movie currently has zero positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. It didn’t do much better with audiences, with only 30% of users reporting that they liked the film.