Misty Krueger

You know who should be in the center of this poster? Danny Glover, y’all. Danny. Freakin’. Glover. He is the movie. Sure that little girl is a cute throwback to Macaulay Culkin, and this movie has a lot of Home Alone vibes (which are intentional), but this movie would be nothing without Danny Glover.

When I recently posted that I thought Princess Switch: Switched Again was a crappy movie, a friend said in response that if I wanted to watch the worst Christmas movie, I could watch The Christmas Break-in on Netflix. So I prepared myself to watch the worst movie ever, and I asked my husband to watch it with me so that we could share this experience.

To our surprise, we really enjoyed watching this movie. There were a few funny slapstick scenes, but overall the “bad guys” were kind of goofy and downright weird (like, one of the characters gets turned on by the very idea of crime.) The family, which includes too busy parent mom played by Denise Richards, didn’t do much for me, and even though the actress playing the main character Izzy did a fine job, she couldn’t really carry the scenes alone. She needed Danny Glover, who plays the janitor, Sam.

We loved the scenes with Danny Glover. In a movie that is basically a reboot of Home Alone, but in a school, Danny Glover breathed a breath of fresh air into a trite holiday genre. Perhaps his role was inspired by the old snow-shoveling neighbor in Home Alone, but I think there’s more to this character than that.

Adam and I really appreciated how Sam had a backstory that bore a direct relationship to what was happening in this plot. We liked that Glover was able to make us laugh in a scene emblematic of Dickens’ Christmas Carol. We also liked that Glover made us feel something; Sam’s story touched our hearts. No spoilers, but I’ll say that this character shows viewers that you can overcome past mistakes and change your life for the better. Another lesson: sometimes family members don’t respect each other, and you don’t have to put up with that!

So maybe my friend’s right–this movie could be put on the “bad Christmas movies” list, but we actually enjoyed it and recommend putting it on your watch list.