Stream It Or Skip It: ‘A Christmas for the Ages’ on Great American Family, a Celebration of Four Very Boring Generations in One Family

Four generations celebrate the holidays in their own unique style in A Christmas for the Ages (now on Great American Family), a movie that plays like a cheesy radio-station tagline: It’s Christmas for the ’40s, ’60s, ’90s and now! Former Charlie’s Angel Cheryl Ladd is the notable cast member of this far-beyond-fluffy rom-comedy-drama that doesn’t lean very hard into romance, comedy or drama. In fact, it’s almost a faith-based movie, but it doesn’t lean very hard into that, either, because leaning hard into things is something it’s not particularly interested in. Should we hold that against it? I dunno, maybe, but probably, actually yes. 

A CHRISTMAS FOR THE AGES: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Exterior: a McMansion worth probably about $1.2 million, surrounded by a Wal Mart-and-a-half’s worth of inflatable Xmas decor. Yes, that’s a lot. Inside, an airy, open-concept layout covered with tinsel and bulbs and wreaths on so many surfaces you can only assume the interior designers are on around-the-clock retainer, and also insane. These people go HARD on Christmas. They deck the living shit out of the halls. They have candy canes in their veins and private frankincense stewards and you half expect one of them to smile and have holly and boughs weaved through their dentalwork. Or so you’d think, anyway – in reality, they’re just the average extended family that always looks perfect and lives in perfectly styled homes and presumably work jobs, but mostly spend their time throwing and/or attending ridiculously elaborate Xmas parties. 

Who are these lunatics, you’re no doubt asking. Let’s start with Savannah (Natasha Bure, daughter of GAC stalwart Candace Cameron Bure), who’s in her early 20s and working in theatre-with-an-re promotions, and if you want to know anything more specific about who she really is and her interests and goals and dreams, too bad! The movie doesn’t get into that stuff, other than the implication that she and her family live to celebrate Christmas and almost certainly hibernate in crypts from Jan. 2 to Nov. 1. Her mother is Kristi (Kate Craven), her grandma is Joan (Ladd) and her great-grandma is Marie (Anna Ferguson), and we first meet them at their annual ladies-only Christmas tea party, where they say things like “these little Christmas tree sandwiches are so CUTE!” before they move on to daisy-chaining plans for the next several dozen holiday gatherings. And they decide some of those gatherings will celebrate each generational era with a theme party: the 1940s for Greatest Generation great-grandma, the ’60s for Boomer grandma, the ’90s for Gen X mom and now for Zoomer Savannah, and that’s me adding in the generation tags, because I yearn, oh do I yearn, to fight the good fight against this movie’s virulent generic nonspecificity.

Case in point: These people talk about praying and reading the bible, but we never actually see them doing any of it. This movie is full of these people talking about things and not doing any of them, presumably due to budget restraints or a lack of ambition (although probably both). Anyway, this isn’t much of a plot, so the added wrinkle of interest is the ZOMG coincidence that Savannah and Marie have new boyfriends! The youngest AND the oldest! Imagine that! And the goal is to shuffle these new guys into the family’s sprawling multitude of Xmas celebrations. Savannah’s challenge is getting her fresh beef Rudy (Anthony Timpano) past her vaguely antagonistic father, a beardstubbledad who gives off some hedge-fund-bro vibes, which would explain the giant overdecorated house. And Joan wrestles with the idea of her mother getting over the loss of their father/husband (who presumably died, but this movie is so maddeningly vague, it never says what happened, so we also could assume he was kidnapped by aliens to toil in a Jawa slave pit or something), although Marie’s beau Jim (Mel Tuck) is such a sweet guy, it’s impossible not to be charmed by his gentlemanly demeanor. All this almost-plot leads up to one thing: Christmas! And then life for these people ceases, one assumes.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: GAF’s Santa, Maybe also gave us a protagonist who works at a theatre-with-an-re-theatre, so it looks like they’re already recycling ideas. 

Performance Worth Watching: The lord god has been so kind to all these people, their lives are almost wholly free of substantive conflict. So let the glory go to him! 

Memorable Dialogue: Decontextualized from the ’90s party:

“Cushy balls made of rubber strands!”

“They’re fun to squish!”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: I’ll reiterate: Without Christmas, these people likely don’t exist. You’ll be two-thirds through A Christmas for the Ages and wondering not just if there’s any conflict here, but if there’s any real plot whatsoever. The story is a cross-generational gimmick in search of any purpose beyond exalting the MAGIC and FAMILY TOGETHERNESS of the holiday season. These characters are smiley Christmas ghouls reciting empty aphorisms that reflect their grotesquely uncomplicated emotional lives, which can be summed up like so: They like things, but they don’t like anything as much as they like Christmas! Whatta buncha drips.

Most Xmas movies need a gimmick, but there’s not much pop to this one; the time-capsule parties are presented on an apparent tight budget, and strung together without much suspense or buildup to Christmas, more specifically, to a Christmas concert that the four women will participate in. Along the way, they hang out in their various homes, which all look the same: gigantic, airy and positively drowning in Hobby Lobby decor. They almost experience feelings outside of “hooray for Xmas,” mostly rooted in the new-boyfriend situations, which are pleasant and free of friction, or to put it less pleasantly, anything that might make us feel invested in any of this. A last-minute “conflict” is thrown in and resolved in about two minutes, but otherwise, Ages lumbers along pseudo-pleasantly without much purpose, delivering plenty of faux-atmosphere but not much of a story. Oh, and everyone here is into God, so if you need that in your GAF Christmas content, consider yourself placated. 

Our Call: Even then, you might praise the lord but not praise this sub-mediocre movie. SKIP IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.