8-Bit Christmas
In suburban Chicago during the late 1980s, ten-year-old Jake Doyle embarks on a herculean quest to get the latest and greatest video game system for Christmas.
- Released: 2021-11-24
- Runtime: 98 minutes
- Genre: Comedy, Family
- Stars: Neil Patrick Harris, Winslow Fegley, June Diane Raphael, David Cross, Steve Zahn, Jacob Laval, Santino Barnard, Jackson Reid, Chandler Dean, Johnathan'tae Sturgess, Cyrus Arnold, Sophia Reid-Gantzert, Bellaluna Resnick
- Director: Michael Dowse
Comments
- JayWolfgramm - 9 December 2022
A 7-Bit Christmas
It is very nice of Hollywood to make a movie specifically for me. Safe to say that I am an easy mark for a movie like this. I love me some Nintendo. Not to nerd flex, but I have beaten all 3 Ninja Gaidens, Punch Out!!, Contra and Double Dragon.
I also love me some Christmas. I am a sucker for the Christmas Cheese and sentimentality that comes with these kinds of holiday movies.
An 8- Bit Christmas clearly takes inspiration from 80's classics like "A Christmas Story" and "Princess Bride" with its narration and memories of a childhood Christmas and the gift they really wanted.
So, with all that in mind, what keeps this from being the new holiday classic? Well, as mentioned it is a bit derivative of older movies that do the narration framing in better ways. A lot of the movie feels like filler waiting to get to the point of the story. A lot of the jokes have funny set ups, but don't go all the way through with the joke. Steve Zahn as the father is written too frustrating for the majority of the film.
A lot of the movie is not grounded enough to take me back to the time period, and not stylistic enough to remind me of childhood imagination. But the movie pulls things together in the ending. It is so sweet, that it makes up for a lot of the movie's shortcomings.
Unlike most NES games, this movie has an ending that makes it worth going through the rest of the story.
