tek's rating: meh and a half, maybe

Twas the Night, on Disney Channel
Disney Channel Wiki; Disney Wiki; IMDb; TV Tango; TV Tropes; Wikipedia
streaming sites: Amazon; Disney+; Google Play; YouTube

This first aired in 2001, but I didn't see it until 2022. And I didn't really like it. Honestly, I'm not even sure I should bother writing a review. But I will.

Bryan Cranston (whom I know from Malcolm in the Middle) plays a scam artist named Nick Wrigley. A couple of his victims from whom he stole $30,000 find him and want their money back, but he hasn't got it. (He apparently lost it on a bad investment.) And they have a really tough enforcer with them. They give him some time to try to get the money, but instead he decides to go hide out at the house of his brother John and his wife Abby and their three kids, Danny, Kaitlin, and Peter. The movie is narrated, at least a bit, by Danny, in the style of "A Visit from St. Nicholas", aka "Twas the Night Before Christmas". On Christmas Eve, John and Abby, who are both doctors, get called in to work at the hospital, because a ton of people have caught the "reindeer flu". So they leave Nick to look after the kids.

After the kids go to bed, Nick gets on his trusty laptop, Lappy, to try to make some money. The guys he owes money to video call him on the computer, and to get rid of them, he launches a virus. The virus ends up causing Santa Claus's sleigh to make an emergency landing on the Wrigleys' roof, because this year his reindeer were out sick with the reindeer flu, so he was using technology to fly the sleigh. Santa has a bauble that can do various magical things including teleporting, freezing people in time, and changing the size of things. He ends up getting knocked out inside the house, and Nick takes the bauble and the sleigh, with Danny as his pilot (since the sleigh's controls are like a video game). He tells Danny they're going to "save Christmas", but really he's just using the bauble to help him steal from the rich. Meanwhile, Peter and Kaitlin find Santa unconscious, and wake him up. When they realize he's the real Santa, they try to help him get his sleigh back.

I don't want to say too much more about the plot, but of course Nick eventually sees the error of his ways, when continuing would mean losing Danny's respect. Or possibly losing all the kids' safety to the guys who are after Nick for their money. Anyway, the movie has some good points, I think. The bauble was kind of cool, I guess. And I liked Kaitlin, who reminded me a little bit of Eden Sher from The Middle, but of course it wasn't her. Mostly, though, I thought the movie was badly written, the acting wasn't very good, and a lot of stuff was just too over-the-top ridiculous.


DCOM index
holiday TV movies index