Christmas movies have a special place in the world of entertainment. The festive season is absolutely rinsed of plot ideas and what traditionally makes a movie "good" is thrown out of the tinsel-covered window fairly sharpish.

American cable network Hallmark is, well, the hallmark for these types of movies. And I'm nothing if not impressed by how many they manage to churn out a year. Lately, Netflix and other streamers have joined the festive race, bringing their warm and fuzzy Christmas films to the global masses.

In fact, original Christmas movies have skyrocketed over the last decade. IMDB list more than 200 new feature films and TV movies with the word 'Christmas' in the title in 2021.

So, why would I engage in the sick experiment of watching the worst-rated Christmas film on Netflix then, one might ask? And that would be a perfectly logical question - a question which I still don't really know the answer to.

Perhaps it's my endless curiosity. My need to get inside the brain of the creators, the actors and everyone involved in this project. Or maybe, in the infamous words of Irish explorer Tom Crean before setting out across the Antarctic, "Someone has to do it, I suppose?" He definitely said that, no need to look it up.

'Father Christmas is Back'

First of all, let me start by saying: I know this film and others like it aren't going for Oscars. They are pure, undiluted Christmassy content to be watched while consuming your choice of festive booze and a mince pie or four.

That being said, if you'll indulge me, I need to talk about how ridiculous this film is. So ridiculous, in fact, that even when I saw the Rotten Tomatoes audience score of 9%, I was still shocked me by how terrible it was.

The plot is relatively simple. Four sisters get together at Christmas to celebrate with their mother and extended family. The unexpected arrival of their estranged father and his young American fiancé causes absolute chaos. Oh and their surname is Christmas, which conveniently answered the question "How can we put the word Christmas in the title of this film?"

We're first introduced to the family, who rock up to host Caroline's (Nathalie Fox) countryside manor in what has to be the clunkiest character introduction I've ever seen. She greets her siblings one by one as they arrive, in some sort of choreographed catwalk down the footpath, waiting on the doorstep for what seems like hours.

Caroline lives with her husband, Peter (Kris Marshall) and their two children - who everyone seems to hate (more on that later). She clearly despises her siblings but, for some reason, insists on having a nice Christmas with them.

Liz Hurley plays sister Joanna, whose introduction scene is dubbed over with generic rock music (so we know she's a badass). She also hates everyone. Talulah Riley arrives as the youngest sibling, Vickey. All we know about her character is that she recently travelled across America and likes to have sex. This fact is brought up multiple times in front of the aforementioned neglected children.

Then there's Beatles-obsessive Paulina (Naomi Frederick), who just strides up the pathway as if she's late for a meeting. There's no sign of a car and they're in the middle of the countryside. Did she walk here? If she was in a car, where is it? It doesn't matter, stop asking questions.

Finally we see a creepy looking old man holding a shotgun at the end of the garden. Hey wait, that creepy old man is John Cleese! He walks into the house and joins the gang without the audience knowing what his relationship is with them. It's later made clear that he's the girls' uncle. But for the entire first half of the movie all we know is, and I'm not making this up, his name is 'John'. As far as I could tell it was just John Cleese playing himself and making terrible boomer jokes about vegans for the first forty minutes. Which sounds about on point for Cleese, to be perfectly honest.

Everything seems to be going swimmingly so far. Joanna is mercilessly mocking the children for their shite Christmas decorations. Her new boyfriend, who everyone has just met, is enquiring about her sibling's sex lives and asking them about his own girlfriend's age (You've been together nearly three months, how can you not know that by now?). Caroline is signalling distress by making weird noises again. So, completely normal family stuff.

Enter Dr. Frasier Crane himself. He's been sneakily invited by Vickey to travel from America with his young fiancé to spend the holidays with his daughters and ex-wife, who he hasn't contacted in decades. A solid plan, by all accounts.

At this point it feels like the writers just didn't know how to introduce characters. Every time a new one comes into the movie, everyone just stops what they're doing, lines up in formation and smiles at each other awkwardly like the final scene in 'A New Hope'. This exact thing happens when Kelsey Grammar's James pops arrives in the hallway with his new sweetheart (Does anybody in this movie close the door after them?).

Without going into too much detail about the rest of the plot (I implore you to watch it yourself), but barely any of it makes sense. A brilliant example of this being Caroline Quentin and Liz Hurley playing mother and daughter. In real life they're five years apart in age. That really does sum the whole mess of a movie up.

A note on the children in this film, by the way. They are continuously ignored, made fun of and abandoned in other rooms while the grown ups fight with each other. The climax of the film involves their performance of the Nativity for a community play. During it the family are all talking over them, desperately attempting to close their storylines before the movie ends. It truly is the spirit of Christmas.

One line said by Grammar at the end of the film really stood out to me. Addressing Peter and Caroline, he says, "any fool could see that you two love each other". It was at that point I started yelling incoherently at the screen in protest. They've been screaming at each other for most of the movie, how is it obvious!?

But then it dawned on me - Maybe that's the issue with this film and the many others like it that are essentially just clickbait at this point; the writers take us for fools. They take us for the type that will just lap up any movie with the word "Christmas" in its title. And, you know what, on some level, they're right. People don't watch these movies expecting incredible performances, or great writing. They watch them to feel Christmassy. That sickly sweet nostalgia shot directly into our eyeballs.

The only issue here is that they're a victim of their own success. The film is lazily written, terribly acted and full to the brim of unsympathetic, shallow characters. Nobody is likeable, there are no redemption arcs. It doesn't even land in the coveted "so good it's bad" category. It's an insult to Christmas films.

So what did I learn from watching this astoundingly bad movie? Maybe the true meaning of Christmas is the friends we make alo- sorry, sorry they nearly got me.

I've learnt that there is such thing between a good Christmas movie and a bad one. The good ones speak to us on a human level and hit us right in the feels around this special time of year. Think 'The Holiday', 'Home Alone', even 'Love Actually' (which 'Father Christmas is Back' so blatantly tries to rip off). There's a genuine art to them and watching movies like this makes me appreciate those a little bit more.

'Father Christmas is Back' isn't a bad Christmas movie, it's just a bad movie. Any fool could see that.