“I’m feeling like a hamster on a wheel, Harry.”

Drake’s rating: Let’s do the time loop again.

Drake’s review: It didn’t take much for me to hit the play button on the remote for this one, based purely on the director involved. After all, Martha Coolidge was responsible for two of the best teen comedies of the ‘80s, Valley Girl and Real Genius, and that pair of movies alone get her the benefit of the doubt when it comes to watching an obscure TV movie starring Molly Shannon and that guy from Wings*.

And it’s the holiday season, after all, a time for giving, so I should be willing to give up ninety minutes for this flick, right? Even if all I get in return is a stocking full of coal and just enough material to squeak out a Culty Christmas review.

Still, The 12 Days of Christmas Eve is actually a fairly good time. Unoriginal, sure, but it steals from some solid sources, including Harold Ramis and Charles Dickens, and even with the lead character dying every ten minutes or so, Coolidge keeps it light and a tad sentimental without steering that sled off the road and into maudlin territory.

So, Calvin (Steven Weber, The Shining**) is a rich muckity-muck who wants to be even richer. He owns a discount chain that he built up from a failing business with his own sweat and tears as well as by underpaying his overworked employees and cutting their benefits to increase the corporate profit margin. At least, I’m pretty sure that’s how he did it. It seems like the way most businesses operate. He’s now trying to make a deal with a bigwig from Brazil to lock up the South American market as well, and he’s willing to wreck Christmas Eve for family and employees alike to get it done.

Unfortunately***, his own sign falls and gives Calvin the finger. The big metal finger, since the sign is a big metal hand. He wakes up in a hospital setting with a mysterious woman named Angie who’s dressed as a physician (Molly Shannon), but after a brief conversation with her, Calvin ends up back in his own bed. Where his Christmas Eve starts again because, and say it all together now, “This is a Groundhog Day movie!”

Now we all know the drill for movies in this rather narrow genre. The protagonist, often an insufferable sort, wakes up and re-lives the same day over and over again until they figure out how to get out of their 24-hour time loop. It’s the basis for Groundhog Day, of course, and even more recently Palm Springs. Here, it’s taken and mashed together with Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” and the resulting cocktail of disparate influences, while not nearly as strong as its separate parts, is still pretty good.

The catch here is that Calvin doesn’t have an unlimited number of days to get everything hunky-dory. In fact, he only has 12 days, and by the time he finds this out, three of them are gone. Early on and unaided, Calvin does seem to pick up on the fact that he missed out on at least some of the things he should have been doing, so on do-over Number One he goes to his son’s Christmas pageant. But he still keeps his executive assistants late making the big deal and, having wised up to the finger of death, avoids the falling sign.

And then walks right out into the street in front of a speeding snow plow.

As the deaths continue and Calvin keeps waking up in the care of Angie, he finally finds out that he’s supposed to be having the perfect Christmas Eve and that he has a limited amount of days in which to do it. Armed with that knowledge, Calvin approaches the situation with all the business acumen he can muster, handing out money and keeping his stores open late so that rampant consumerism can continue long into the night.

Unsurprisingly, that isn’t the way to a perfect Christmas Eve either, and the deaths continue. Poor Calvin can only approach the problem with pithy Sun Tzu quotes and wads of cash, trying to buy his way into the hearts of family and friends with extravagant gifts, since that’s how he sees happiness. Does Calvin figure it all out and finally make it to Christmas?

Hey, we’ve all seen Groundhog Day, or at least a reasonable facsimile. There are no big surprises here, but as a made-for-TV movie, The 12 Days of Christmas Eve is a lighthearted and inoffensive piece of holiday fluff. It’s not going to be the best thing you watch during the season, but you also won’t be embarrassed to have it playing in the background when the relatives arrive.

Unlike a certain Hulk Hogan holiday flick I refuse to name.

*No, not that guy. The other guy.
**No, not that one. The other one.
***Opinions may vary

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 Christmas 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
• The paper is called The City Post. What city? Who cares? It’s Groundhog Day Christmas Eve!
• Calvin quotes “Art of War” constantly. Sure sign of an ‘80s MBA graduate.
• Have to say, walking into an open flame would be my least favorite death.
• It’s a nice, understated performance by Molly Shannon here. Sympathetic with just a sprinkle of cynicism.
• “You had me walk into an open manhole? Who am I, Wile E. Coyote? “
• Co-star Teryl Rothery has made a metric ton of Christmas movies over the years, with titles like A Bramble House Christmas and Holiday Crown. I have no idea whether this was a conscious career choice, or if she’s been kidnapped by Hallmark.