“You had me walk into an open manhole? Who am I, Wile E. Coyote?”

Justin’s rating: Time to do this again

Justin’s review: When you’re in the thick of your annual two-week Christmas movie marathon, there usually comes a point where quality is sacrificed for the sake of Getting the Thing Done. I’ll shamelessly admit that I ended up trawling through Freevee’s Christmas offerings to see if anything looked halfway good or quirky or smelling of a genre other than “girl dates a foreign prince on Christmas.” And lo and behold, Page 3 of my search landed on 12 Days of Christms Eve.

That guy from Wings? That girl from Superstar? A possible holiday time loop flick, a la 12 Dates of Christmas? I think we’ve met our bare minimum threshold for review fodder.

Calvin (Steven Weber) is a workaholic Scrooge-like exec whose dogged pursuit of a big deal on Christmas Eve makes everyone’s life around him miserable. While taking a client around to his original family store, a giant sign falls and conks him on the head. He wakes up to find the Ghost of SNL telling him that he’s got 12 repeats of this day to get things right — or he may never wake up on Christmas at all.

Considering that A Christmas Carol was already toying around with time as a storytelling engine, it fits well to have this modern-day Scrooge get sucked into a repeating loop of Christmas Eves. There are a lot of relationships for Calvin to have to sort out, including those with his son, his dad, employees, and new business partner. And as he exudes a lot of charm and energy already, it’s less about changing his personality and more about changing the focus of his attention.

The only guide he has for these repeat days are his nurse (or possibly guardian angel) Angie, played by Molly Shannon. It was refreshing to see Shannon play against her usual type, electing instead to be the a somewhat mysterious figure who’s a master of acidic wit. At the end of each day, the pair of them get to spar and bicker with a zest that almost nobody else in this film gets.

Calvin isn’t a mustache-twirling Ebeneezer, but he also doesn’t get what really matters in life, either. When he realizes he’s being tested, he tries to fake his way to goodness without actually changing the person underneath. What he needs to do, in the end, is develop his empathic side — to see other people and understand what they actually want in life.

12 Days of Christmas might not have been quite the caliber to be a studio release, but it definitely exceeds the typically low standards for a TV movie. Weber and Shannon bump up the quality level and play well off each other in a lightly antagonistic fashion. Sure, the plot is nothing we haven’t seen before (and before and before), but that doesn’t make it any less enjoyable. Seeing Calvin play things different on each day and gradually become a better person is satisfying, as are all the different ways he gets killed.

The inevitable comparisons to Groundhog Day will highlight one serious deficiency in this movie, however. 12 Days of Christmas isn’t that funny. It’s charming and sometimes even sweet, but this is one of those “comedies” that are actually a joke desert.

And that’s a shame, because if they could’ve nailed this element, this might’ve become a holiday classic. As it is, it’s an enjoyable story blend that threatens to be completely forgotten when the next Christmas Eve rolls around.

Intermission!

• This is a guy who appreciates a good remote control in his life
• The Buck Stops Here is a terrible business name
• It’s one of the Martias from Arrested Development!
• Smacked down by the giant hand
• Good thing you have your computer print out what day it is
• “Drew… is time relative?”
• Why so many Dutch angles?
• “Were the gods testing him… or punishing him?”
• His exasperation when the elevator falls
• Giving away $1.2 million seems fun
• Killed by a garbage can is the way to go
• Kids love getting big boats with Xboxes, right?
• “I didn’t get a whole day!” “It wasn’t going very well.”
• Skydiving during a weird crisis where you keep getting killed doesn’t seem that smart
• The skydiving greenscreen is so bad
• “All right, give me the finger.”
• Calvin’s turtleneck is so distracting
• Nice hospital fakeout