Home Alone: The Holiday Heist (2012)
The Unhappy Christmas: Yes, really, there are now 5 Home Alone movies. This one revolves around 10 year old Finn - no relation to Kevin McAllister, and he doesn't even live in Chicago.
Ask For The Receipt When: Despite the opportunity to do something different, the filmmakers resort to having Finn defend his home from burglary with a load of booby traps.
How To Make It Delightful: Take the title's advice, and leave the poor kid alone.
Christmas Mail (2010)
The Unhappy Christmas: A postal worker is hired to spy on Kristi, a "Santa writer" whose job is to respond to letters addressed to the North Pole.
Ask For The Receipt When: It turns out that Kristi actually lives at the North Pole and is none other than Santa's daughter.
How To Make It Delightful: Kristi purchases the newly privatised Royal Mail and runs it as a not-for-profit organisation.
Christmas Evil (1980)
The Unhappy Christmas: Disturbed loner Harry takes to dressing like Santa and goes on a killing spree. This won't be the last time that happens on this list.
Ask For The Receipt When: During the prologue, the child Harry cuts off his hand with glass from a snowglobe after catching dad (dressed as Santa) groping mom.
How To Make It Delightful: Couldn't he just issue a stern word to the people on his naughty list?
Christmas In Love (2004)
The Unhappy Christmas: Two divorcees are forced to spend Christmas together and realise they still love each other.
Ask For The Receipt When: It is revealed that the couple's new spouses are already having an affair and organised the Christmas break to force the reconciliation in order to get them off the hook.
How To Make It Delightful: True love will surely prevail without that level of cynical manipulation.
Dear Santa (1998)
The Unhappy Christmas: A bad husband and father is given a shot at redemption when an elf transforms him into a 'secret Santa' who must help Father Christmas deliver the presents.
Ask For The Receipt When: The secret Santa goes 'full Yuletide' by wearing a bow tie that lights up.
How To Make It Delightful: How about the man turns into the real Santa? Oh, no, wait - that's already been done in The Santa Clause .
Christmas Present (1985)
The Unhappy Christmas: Yet another modern-day update of A Christmas Carol - but not the last on this list, oh no - this one stars future director Peter Chelsom as a yuppie forced to spend the night on a council estate.
Ask For The Receipt When: Fantasy bleeds into reality as Mary and Joseph turn up riding a donkey, looking for somewhere to sleep on Christmas Eve.
How To Make It Delightful: Avoid the ham-fisted attempts to bring Dickensian poverty into the Thatcherite 1980s.
Six Weeks (1982)
The Unhappy Christmas: Dudley Moore helps a 12-year-old ballerina with leukaemia to fulfil her life's dream of performing the Nutcracker with the New York Ballet.
Ask For The Receipt When: You realise Dudley Moore - Dudley Moore! - is meant to be playing a U.S. Congressman. You'd be better off casting Peter Cook.
How To Make It Delightful: Well, it'd be nicer if (spoiler) the girl didn't die.
Stalking Santa (2007)
The Unhappy Christmas: Mockumentary about a Santologist's attempts to track down Father Christmas.
Ask For The Receipt When: The hero discovers that the Government has been suppressing evidence that Santa exists because it would derail the economy if people discovered they didn't have to buy Christmas presents.
How To Make It Delightful: Let William Shatner - the film's narrator - play Santa.
A Golden Christmas (2009)
The Unhappy Christmas: A man and a woman fight over the house they both want to buy, little realising they were once childhood sweethearts.
Ask For The Receipt When: A magical golden retriever turns out to be responsible for bringing the couple back together.
How To Make It Delightful: If you're going to make a Christmas dog movie, just be honest about it and make a film about a Christmas dog.
Battle Royale 2: Requiem (2003)
The Unhappy Christmas: A year after Battle Royale 's survivor Shuya devastated Tokyo during a Christmas Day terrorist attack, a class of schoolchildren is sent to destroy him.
Ask For The Receipt When: Our sympathies are meant to switch from the hapless teenagers to Shuya, now an Al Qaeda-emulating psycho.
How To Make It Delightful: We're not bothered about a Battle Royale movie being delightful, but we'd prefer it not to take down Christmas with it.
Toys (1992)
The Unhappy Christmas: A war-crazed general inherits a toy factory and begins manufacturing drones. Only his nephew - Robin Williams - can stop him.
Ask For The Receipt When: Joan Cusack, as Williams' sister, gets her head blown off, only for the hero to discover she was a cyborg all along.
How To Make It Delightful: Lose the subplot where kids control the drones by playing (what they think are) video games. Don't give the Government any ideas!
It Happened One Christmas (1977)
The Unhappy Christmas: It's A Wonderful Life remade but with a woman - Mary Bailey Hatch - in the central role of the suicidal hero saved by an angel.
Ask For The Receipt When: It becomes obvious that, aside from recasting, they've basically kept the original script.
How To Make It Delightful: Watch the original.
ATM (2012)
The Unhappy Christmas: A trio of co-workers get trapped in an ATM booth by a hooded killer after leaving a Christmas party.
Ask For The Receipt When: The killer can't get into the booth without an ATM, but hasn't the gumption to simply smash the glass.
How To Make It Delightful: Pay off the killer and then use the rest of the cash to buy presents for orphans.
The Boy Who Saved Christmas (1998)
The Unhappy Christmas: A boy travels to the North Pole on a quest to have Santa help bring his parents back together.
Ask For The Receipt When: Santa's evil twin, Atnas, conspires to reverse Christmas so that he gets all of the presents.
How To Make It Delightful: Evil twin? Just... no.
Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas In July (1979)
The Unhappy Christmas: An evil wizard plans to create an army of evil snowmen using Frosty's hat, which the latter is blackmailed into giving up.
Ask For The Receipt When: Rudolph is accused of theft and his nose stops glowing.
How To Make It Delightful: Lighten the mood, maybe?
Christmas In Paris (2008)
The Unhappy Christmas: Belgian melodrama about a washed-up entertainer who helps a teenage orphan find out what happened to his parents.
Ask For The Receipt When: Yet another scene ends in one or both men breaking down in tears.
How To Make It Delightful: You're in Paris, guys. Go and watch some can-can dancers and have fun.
A Christmas Story 2 (2012)
The Unhappy Christmas: Belated sequel to the much-loved 1983 classic, whose hero Ralphie is now a teenager dreaming of getting a car for Christmas. So he's learnt nothing since the first film, then.
Ask For The Receipt When: Ralphie turns into a slapstick bumbler duelling with candy canes in a department store.
How To Make It Delightful: The original WAS delightful. Watch that instead.
Nativity 2: Danger In The Manger (2012)
The Unhappy Christmas: David Tennant assumes Martin Freeman's mantle of primary school teacher pushed into winning a national Christmas singing competition.
Ask For The Receipt When: The villain of the piece is revealed to be Tennant's identical twin brother, an arrogant composer.
How To Make It Delightful: Hire Matt Smith and John Hurt as Tennant's co-stars and let them travel through time and space… It's been done? Oh.
Autumn In New York (2000)
The Unhappy Christmas: Richard Gere falls in love with Winona Ryder, only to learn she's dying of a rare illness.
Ask For The Receipt When: Winona finally cops it on Christmas Day.
How To Make It Delightful: Let her live until New Year's Eve, at least.
The Perfect Holiday (2007)
The Unhappy Christmas: A department store Santa falls in love with a single mom while trying to make her daughter's wish come true.
Ask For The Receipt When: Queen Latifah and Terrence Howard turn up as angels Mrs Christmas and Bah Humbug.
How To Make It Delightful: A swift rewrite might prevent Santa coming across as a bit of a stalker.
A Christmas Proposal (2008)
The Unhappy Christmas: A lawyer is determined to turn a quaint village into a ski resort… until he gets stuck there and realises it's a nice place to live.
Ask For The Receipt When: It turns out the lady lawyer fighting for the village's survival is his childhood sweetheart.
How To Make It Delightful: At least try to pretend it's Christmas-time, instead of having the actors in short sleeves and the plants in full bloom.
A Nanny For Christmas (2010)
The Unhappy Christmas: A high-flying advertising exec who doesn't have time for her kids hires a nanny for the occasion. Imagine Mary Poppins shorn of anything that made Mary Poppins good.
Ask For The Receipt When: Dean Cain (he was Superman once, you know) turns up for no good reason than that the story needs a love interest.
How To Make It Delightful: Cast Julie Andrews as the nanny.
Winter Of Frozen Dreams (2009)
The Unhappy Christmas: The true story of Barbara Hoffman, a prostitute-turned-killer who was convicted in the first ever murder trial to be televised.
Ask For The Receipt When: You realise how far Thora Birch's career has collapsed since the heady days of American Beauty .
How To Make It Delightful: Set it during Summer? It might be factually inaccurate but it'd be less depressing around Christmas time.
Christmas Miracle (2012)
The Unhappy Christmas: Eight strangers find sanctuary in a church when a storm hits and help each other to overcome their woes.
Ask For The Receipt When: The film turns into one long religious hug-a-thon.
How To Make It Delightful: Make them work for their spiritual reawakening by having the church under siege from hungry wolves.
The Christmas Path (1998)
The Unhappy Christmas: A fallen angel tries to make amends to his boss - Santa - by helping out a family in trouble.
Ask For The Receipt When: You realise that the young son the angel is trying to help is none other than a pre-fame Shia LaBeouf.
How To Make It Delightful: Either this is a religious movie about an angel, or a secular one about Santa. Don't confuse the two.
Santa Claws (1996)
The Unhappy Christmas: Raven, an actress, is stalked by a crazed fan dressed in a Santa Claus outfit.
Ask For The Receipt When: The lunatic starts to bump off Raven's co-stars. His weapon of choice, thus justifying the pun in the title, is a claw.
How To Make It Delightful: Allowing the female cast to keep their clothes on would be a start.
Natale a Rio (2008)
The Unhappy Christmas: Two divorced men book a luxury holiday in Rio, but accidentally swap accommodation with their backpacking sons, who are also headed for Brazil.
Ask For The Receipt When: This turns out to be exactly the same as every other Italian Christmas comedy, except set in a different country.
How To Make It Delightful: Take a year off from taking your flat-footed slapstick on tour.
12 Dogs Of Christmas: Great Puppy Rescue (2012)
The Unhappy Christmas: A girl has to put on a Christmas show to save a puppy orphanage.
Ask For The Receipt When: The characters do a rap, despite this being set in the 1930s.
How To Make It Delightful: If you insist on having a 12 days of Christmas theme, the star should be a partridge, not a dog.
An American Carol (2008)
The Unhappy Christmas: A Michael Moore-style filmmaker is corrected of his left-leaning ways by three conservative angels, including Kelsey Grammar as General Patton.
Ask For The Receipt When: The filmmaker is taken to a future Los Angeles controlled by Islamic radicals.
How To Make It Delightful: This much right-wing bile is impossible to sweeten, but it might help to actually set a Dickens-inspired tale at Christmas, instead of the 4th of July.
Christmas In Compton (2012)
The Unhappy Christmas: Cuba Gooding Jr's brother Omar plays an aspiring music producer at loggerheads with crooked record exec Eric Roberts.
Ask For The Receipt When: The film's attempts at making a warm, upbeat African-American Christmas movie come at the expense of a stereotypical Korean character.
How To Make It Delightful: Raise the project's ambitions by casting Cuba Gooding Jr and Julia Roberts instead of their siblings.
Santa Baby 2: Christmas Baby (2009)
The Unhappy Christmas: Jenny McCarthy returns as Mary Claus, Santa's daughter, and has to stop an embittered elf taking over the North Pole.
Ask For The Receipt When: You realise that, in 1990, director Ron Underwood and actor Paul Sorvino (playing Santa) were working on, respectively, Tremors and Goodfellas . How the mighty fall.
How To Make It Delightful: Lose the gimmick whereby Mary is a high-flying suit from the City, and yet is still meant to be a loveable figure. In Christmas movies, the suits are the enemy.
Duplex (2003)
The Unhappy Christmas: Ben Stiller and Drew Barrymore's dream apartment turns into a nightmare when they meet their elderly tenant.
Ask For The Receipt When: They hire a hitman to bump off the old dear on Christmas Eve.
How To Make It Delightful: No home is worth that much hassle. Just move, guys.
Christmas Cupid (2010)
The Unhappy Christmas: Christina Milian's Hollywood publicist must visit her boyfriends of Christmas Past, Present and Future in order to find true love. Even by the low standards of Dickens adaptations, this one scrapes the barrel.
Ask For The Receipt When: You see the credit, "Songs by Mariah Carey."
How To Make It Delightful: Instead of making a film, spend the budget on a dating agent for Hollywood players. They obviously need a cuddle.
Le Martien de Noel (1971)
The Unhappy Christmas: A Martian gets trapped in a small town in Quebec and needs the help of local children to repair his ship.
Ask For The Receipt When: You see the alien, who looks like a sex pest even before he tries to lure kids aboard his spaceship with Smarties.
How To Make It Delightful: Wait 11 years, get Steven Spielberg to make it and call it E.T.
Christmas With A Capital C (2010)
The Unhappy Christmas: An atheist lawyer returns to his home time and demands that Christmas is renamed 'Happy Holidays,' in this propaganda piece from evangelical Christians.
Ask For The Receipt When: It turns out that all the lawyer needed to discover his Christmas spirit was hugs and prayers.
How To Make It Delightful: The lawyer is trying to change Christmas into a 'Festivus, for the rest of us.'
Don't Open Till Christmas (1984)
The Unhappy Christmas: A maniac gets revenge on his dad (who cheated on - and then accidentally killed - his wife while wearing a Santa outfit) by killing anybody else dressed as Father Christmas.
Ask For The Receipt When: A Santa is murdered by the killer smashing his face into the fire he was merrily roasting chestnuts on.
How To Make It Delightful: How about some 'joy to the world' for once?
The Town That Cancelled Christmas (2006)
The Unhappy Christmas: When a feud between two neighbours gets out of hand, the authorities crack down and cancel all Christmas celebrations.
Ask For The Receipt When: You realise from the amateurish hand-held camerawork that the budget didn't extend to a tripod.
How To Make It Delightful: Cancel it.
A Carol Christmas (2003)
The Unhappy Christmas: Tori Spelling is a bilious talk show host who is visited by three ghosts on Christmas Eve. Oh, right, it's yet another adaptation of Dickens, only here the ghosts include William Shatner and Gary Coleman.
Ask For The Receipt When: Shatner arrives as the Ghost of Christmas Past, using a Star Trek transporter to take Carol on her journey.
How To Make It Delightful: It's going to take more than a gender swap to bring anything new to this story.
The Dog Who Saved Christmas Vacation (2010)
The Unhappy Christmas: Paris Hilton voices Bella, a poodle who helps hero dog Zeus fend off two crooks.
Ask For The Receipt When: The plot degenerates into yet another remake of Home Alone , only this time with dogs in the Macauley Culkin role.
How To Make It Delightful: Vary the routine a bit, and have an animal that isn't a dog be the hero for once.
Der Weihnachtsmann heit Willi (1969)
The Unhappy Christmas: German comedy about two boys who win a washing machine and have no way of getting it home… until Santa offers to take it for them.
Ask For The Receipt When: "Santa" is revealed to be a thief.
How To Make It Delightful: For starters, what kind of name is "Willi" for somebody purporting to be Santa? Change it, now!
The Nutcracker In 3D (2010)
The Unhappy Christmas: Elle Fanning befriends a magical talking nutcracker. Score by Tchaikovsky, although there's no ballet on offer.
Ask For The Receipt When: John Turturro shows up as the villainous Rat King in full-on Nazi-style uniform.
How To Make It Delightful: It might help - if you're making a film based on a famous ballet - to include some actual dancing.
Chasing Christmas (2006)
The Unhappy Christmas: Tom Arnold plays a Scrooge-like dentist visited by three blah Christmas blah ghosts. However, this time there's a twist.
Ask For The Receipt When: The Ghost Of Christmas Past, desperate to become human, does a runner and Arnold has to chase him through time.
How To Make It Delightful: Stop doing Dickens wrong!
Elf-Man (2012)
The Unhappy Christmas: Jason Acuña - aka Wee-Man from Jackass - stars as an abandoned Christmas elf who discovers he is a superhero.
Ask For The Receipt When: The plot descends into a remake of Home Alone with a masked dwarf in the Macauley Culkin role.
How To Make It Delightful: Why not get back together with the old gang and make a Jackass Christmas special, Wee Man?
The Magic Christmas Tree (1964)
The Unhappy Christmas: Ultra-low-budget film about a boy who uses a magic ring to bring a Christmas tree to life, which then grants the boy three wishes.
Ask For The Receipt When: The boy wishes to have Santa to himself; Mr Claus is duly imprisoned in his living room.
How To Make It Delightful: The tree gets the three wishes instead.
Jaws: The Revenge (1987)
The Unhappy Christmas: A Great White kills Martin Brody's son on Christmas Eve. Could it be... REVENGE?
Ask For The Receipt When: The action shifts to the sunny Bahamas. What kind of Christmas film is this, anyway?
How To Make It Delightful: With the strategic addition of CGI headgear, this could easily be renamed Shark In A Santa Hat .
Elf Bowling the Movie: The Great North Pole Elf Strike (2007)
The Unhappy Christmas: Movie based on the Nintendo game in which Santa punishes striking elves by lining them up as bowling pins.
Ask For The Receipt When: The titular game is suggested as a means of resolving a dispute between Santa and evil brother Dingle Kringle.
How To Make It Delightful: Turn it into a movie about an elf flashmob.
Hercules Saves Christmas (2012)
The Unhappy Christmas: Hercules being a pit bull who takes a boy to the North Pole to convince Santa to put him on the nice list.
Ask For The Receipt When: Hercules speaks.
How To Make It Delightful: Hey, kid, why not try being nice the rest of the year and save yourself having to beg?
Jack Frost (1997)
The Unhappy Christmas: NOT to be confused with the Michael Keaton family film, this version is about a homicidal snowman.
Ask For The Receipt When: Jack rapes a pre-fame Shannon Elizabeth in the shower.
How To Make It Delightful: A pile of snow, a carrot for a nose, coal for eyes. It's not THAT difficult, is it?
A Halfway House Christmas (2005)
The Unhappy Christmas: Five recovering addicts share a house for the holidays… while being filmed for a reality TV show.
Ask For The Receipt When: Evil Jared Hasselhoff, of Bloodhound Gang fame, turns up as Santa.
How To Make It Delightful: Skip to Twelfth Night and, while you're there, you may as well skip to the twelfth step, too.
Santa And The Ice Cream Bunny (1972)
The Unhappy Christmas: When Santa's sleigh gets stuck in the sand on a Florida beach, he tells them the story of Thumbelina before the Ice Cream Bunny offers to chauffeur him around in a fire truck.
Ask For The Receipt When: An hour of the running time is devoted to the story-within-a-story because the producers have craftily filmed the Santa stuff as a framing device for a different film.
How To Make It Delightful: Ditch Santa and just make a film about the bunny instead.
Love Actually (2003)
The Unhappy Christmas: Every actor in Britain falls in love. Actually, there's a couple of Americans, too.
Ask For The Receipt When: It all gets too much and you start to feel sick from too much sugar.
How To Make It Delightful: Chop out half the plots and concentrate on the ones that don't provoke a gag reflex.
Serendipity (2001)
The Unhappy Christmas: Jonathan (John Cusack) and Sara (Kate Beckinsale) decide to let fate decide if they should be together after meeting while Christmas shopping.
Ask For The Receipt When: Years later, they're both still moping around - but neither has bothered Googling the other.
How To Make It Delightful: Who needs to put their trust in Serendipity , when Cusack already has The Sure Thing on his C.V.?
Christmas Caper (2007)
The Unhappy Christmas: Thief Kate Dove (Shannen Doherty) goes into hiding after a Christmas con goes wrong.
Ask For The Receipt When: She is forced to babysit for her niece and nephew, who gradually thaw her frozen heart
How To Make It Delightful: Drop the 'r' from the title and make Christmas Cape , about a superhero dressed as a snowman.
Fitzwilly (1967)
The Unhappy Christmas: Crooked butler Fitzwilly (Dick Van Dyke) masterminds a Christmas Eve department store robbery.
Ask For The Receipt When: The heist itself simply looks like a typically fraught afternoon's shopping on Oxford Street.
How To Make It Delightful: Dick Van Dyke should only be employed alongside singing nannies or flying cars.
Just Friends (2005)
The Unhappy Christmas: Fat teenager-turned-handsome twentysomething Chris Brander (Ryan Reynolds) gets a second chance with his high school crush, Jamie (Amy Smart).
Ask For The Receipt When: Chris ruins a children's Christmas pageant. That's about as Christmassy as this one gets.
How To Make It Delightful: Chris puts his puppy fat back on so he can audition for The Xmas Factor as a wannabe Santa.
Christmas Carol: The Movie (2001)
The Unhappy Christmas: Ebenezer Scrooge (Simon Callow) is visited by ghosts, etc etc. C'mon, you must know how this one ends.
Ask For The Receipt When: You realise the most innovative thing they've done is to slap "The Movie" onto the end of the title.
How To Make It Delightful: A surefire solution to Dickens fatigue - add Muppets.
Rent (2005)
The Unhappy Christmas: A year in the life of New York bohos begins when they're asked to pay unanticipated rent on Christmas Eve 1989.
Ask For The Receipt When: Nobody blinks when there's a reference to Thelma And Louise , not released until well after the events of this film's story.
How To Make It Delightful: Watch it on stage where it was meant to be seen.
The Great Rupert (1950)
The Unhappy Christmas: Rupert, a squirrel, decides to help the family he shares a house with by passing their landlord's money to them.
Ask For The Receipt When: The kilt-wearing Rupert starts to dance.
How To Make It Delightful: Money problems this Christmas? Roasted squirrel makes a fine alternative to turkey.
The Family Man (2000)
The Unhappy Christmas: A mysterious tramp (Don Cheadle) sends banker Jack Campbell (Nicolas Cage) into the alternative life he might have had if he'd become a family man.
Ask For The Receipt When: You realise you're being asked to watch a cookie-cutter remake of It's A Wonderful Life .
How To Make It Delightful: Nicolas Cage is forced to live a life where he continues to make good films after, say, Face/Off .
Babes In Toyland (1997)
The Unhappy Christmas: Nursery rhyme power couple Jack and Jill are caught in a witch's plan to take over Santa's toy factory.
Ask For The Receipt When: The film lurches schizophrenically from cutesy fairytale into kid-scaring goblin horror.
How To Make It Delightful: For a counter-cultural Christmas, try a concert film from 1990s girl grunge rockers Babes in Toyland.
The Ice Harvest (2005)
The Unhappy Christmas: Crims John Cusack and Billy Bob Thornton are thwarted in their efforts to escape with $2 million during a frozen Christmas Eve.
Ask For The Receipt When: It hits you that Harold Ramis is directing Cusack and Thornton, and yet this black comedy isn't very funny.
How To Make It Delightful: They're stuck in a cold town. C'mon, Ramis, give us Groundhog Day again.
Alvin And The Chipmunks (2007)
The Unhappy Christmas: Songwriter David Seville (Jason Lee) finds a trio of singing Chipmunks - Alvin, Simon and Theodore.
Ask For The Receipt When: The squeaky-voiced critters wail through "Christmas, Don't Be Late."
How To Make It Delightful: Mute the volume.
Trapped In Paradise (1994)
The Unhappy Christmas: Three criminal brothers (Nicolas Cage, Jon Lovitz, Dana Carvey) are stranded by snow in the town whose bank they've just robbed.
Ask For The Receipt When: Having exhausted conventional transportation, the brothers try to flee town on a horse-drawn carriage.
How To Make It Delightful: For once, can't the crooks be charmed by small-town values before they've intimated the locals with violence?
It Happened On 5th Avenue (1947)
The Unhappy Christmas: Hobo Aloysius T. McKeever (Victor Moore) squats in a deserted 5th Avenue mansion.
Ask For The Receipt When: McKeever's "home" becomes a mawkish refuge for a bunch of homeless G.I.s.
How To Make It Delightful: The squatters are a bunch of elves trying to make it in Manhattan.
I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus (2002)
The Unhappy Christmas: A boy jumps to the wrong conclusion after seeing the titular snog and sets off on a hate campaign against Santa.
Ask For The Receipt When: The plot resolution requires that the boy discovers that Santa is really his dad. Way to break the news there's no Santa.
How To Make It Delightful: The only other option is that it really is Santa, but do we really want to reinvent him as a home invading sex pest?
Santa Buddies (2009)
The Unhappy Christmas: Puppy Paws, son of Santa Paws, is bored of the North Pole, so chooses a naughty dog off Santa's list to move in with.
Ask For The Receipt When: Christopher Lloyd cameos as a dog catcher. Back To The Future was a long time ago.
How To Make It Delightful: We preferred it when Santa just had elves helping him.
Mixed Nuts (1994)
The Unhappy Christmas: Christmas Eve in a suicide hotline run by Philip (Steve Martin).
Ask For The Receipt When: The plot neatly resolves with the lame twist that Philip's mercenary landlord (Garry Shandling) is also the serial killer everybody has been worrying about.
How To Make It Delightful: Perhaps an angel could come down to Earth to talk a suicidal man out of topping himself?
Prancer (1989)
The Unhappy Christmas: Young girl Jessica finds Santa's reindeer injured in the woods and looks after it.
Ask For The Receipt When: Prancer becomes the plot device to reconcile Jessica with her stern widower father (Sam Elliott).
How To Make It Delightful: Santa and the other reindeer show up and Jessica has to hide all of them from the authorities.
The Family Stone (2005)
The Unhappy Christmas: Meredith Morton (Sarah Jessica Parker) makes a hash of things when she spends Christmas with her boyfriend's family.
Ask For The Receipt When: Conservative Meredith tries to engage the liberal Stones in a cringeworthy debate about homosexuality.
How To Make It Delightful: Turn it into a documentary about Sly and the Family Stone.
Arthur 2: On The Rocks (1988)
The Unhappy Christmas: Arthur (Dudley Moore) is broke. Worse, he's got to sober up 'cause his wife Linda (Liza Minnelli) wants a baby.
Ask For The Receipt When: John Gielgud returns as Arthur's butler, but only as a drunken Yuletide hallucination.
How To Make It Delightful: Arthur reconciles Christmas spirit with Christmas spirits, and gets sloshed on the sofa watching Eastenders .
How The Grinch Stole Christmas (2000)
The Unhappy Christmas: The Grinch (Jim Carrey) gets his revenge on Whoville by stealing all of the town's Christmas presents.
Ask For The Receipt When: Dr Seuss' wicked imagination is transformed into random assemblage of overcooked, sub-Tim Burton art direction and Carrey in green face-paint.
How To Make It Delightful: The 1966 TV animation directed by Chuck Jones cuts to the chase in a brisk 26 minutes.
Pocketful Of Miracles (1961)
The Unhappy Christmas: Gangster Dave the Dude (Glenn Ford) sets about transforming bag lady Annie (Bette Davis) into the duchess her daughter believes her to be.
Ask For The Receipt When: Capra's remake of his own 1933 movie Lady For A Day feels even more old-fashioned than the original.
How To Make It Delightful: If Dave's such a dude, he'd have given Annie enough money to be well-off for more than just a day.
Santa's Slay (2005)
The Unhappy Christmas: Santa (Bill Goldberg) is freed from a 1000-year present giving curse, allowing him to return to his serial killing ways.
Ask For The Receipt When: James Caan hits a new low having a chicken leg rammed down his throat by Santa.
How To Make It Delightful: Do the backstory instead, and show how the demented psycho became the jolly gift-giver.
Eight Crazy Nights (2002)
The Unhappy Hanukkah: Yes, you read that right. This is a Hanukkah movie, although Davey Stone's (Adam Sandler) shenanigans otherwise obey the rules of a bad Christmas movie.
Ask For The Receipt When: Rob Schneider turns up voicing Mr Chang, a Chinese restaurant owner. Not the most obvious casting choice - unless you're Adam Sandler.
How To Make It Delightful: If only Sandler had stuck to the original lyric that provided the title, and delivered "eight crazy nights of presents."
Friday After Next (2002)
The Unhappy Christmas: Craig (Ice Cube) and Day-Day (Mike Epps) have to try and pay the rent after a robber dressed as Santa steals all of their money.
Ask For The Receipt When: There's an outbreak of Yuletide homophobia, as an attempted anal rape by gay ex-con Damon (Terry Crews) is thwarted by grabbing his balls with a pair of pliers.
How To Make It Delightful: Console yourself that Christmas won't fall on a Friday until 2015.
Reindeer Games (2000)
The Unhappy Christmas: An ex-con (Ben Affleck) pretends to be his dead cellmate, and ends up doing "one last job" disguised as Santa.
Ask For The Receipt When: Every single person in the cast is revealed to be a complete liar. No wonder the UK distributor, no doubt embarrassed by this being deemed a Christmas movie, changed the title to Deception .
How To Make It Delightful: Change the title? Change the plot! And the cast!
Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer: The Movie (1998)
The Unhappy Christmas: Origins story about how a young deer with a scarlet schnoz went from bullied misfit to hero.
Ask For The Receipt When: The evil ice queen Stormella shows up to make this even more formulaic than you already thought it was going to be.
How To Make It Delightful: Stick to the lyrics - his nose glows, he's perfect for night-time reindeering - and down with redemptive character arcs.
Elves (1989)
The Unhappy Christmas: A teenager accidentally reawakens a demonic elf, which now wants to rape her.
Ask For The Receipt When: We find out the elf is being helped by neo-Nazis intent on fulfilling Hitler's hitherto undocumented wish for a half-human/half-elf master race.
How To Make It Delightful: Nuke the Nazis (always a good idea) and make the elf less rapey (also a good idea).
Fred Claus (2007)
The Unhappy Christmas: Fred Claus (Vince Vaughn) has to pay off a debt by working for the brother he hates, Santa (Paul Giamatti).
Ask For The Receipt When: Ludacris shows up as Donnie, the DJ-ing elf. No, Hollywood, no.
How To Make It Delightful: Remember to spend time with your own family this year, preferably all watching Die Hard together. Yippee-kay-ey.
The Preacher's Wife (1996)
The Unhappy Christmas: An angel (Denzel Washington) decides to help preacher Henry Biggs (Courtney B. Vance) to pay more attention to his wife (Whitney Houston).
Ask For The Receipt When: Whitney sings. Clearly, we learnt nothing from The Bodyguard .
How To Make It Delightful: If anything, this one is laying on the delightful with a sugar-coated trowel. A little less schmaltz, please.
The Nativity Story (2006)
The Unhappy Christmas: Mary (Keisha Castle-Hughes) gets pregnant, but the father isn't Joseph (Oscar Isaac). Awkward.
Ask For The Receipt When: It becomes obvious that the combo of downbeat realism and angelic visitations is neither realistic nor heavenly.
How To Make It Delightful: Buy a camcorder, and film your local school's nativity.
The Holiday (2006)
The Unhappy Christmas: Kate Winslet and Cameron Diaz houseswap for the holidays with (it says here) "hilarious consequences."
Ask For The Receipt When: The A-list stars from both sides of the Atlantic are outclassed by 90-year-old Eli Wallach.
How To Make It Delightful: At the very least, throw all of the characters (including Wallach's) into a single house.
The Polar Express (2004)
The Unhappy Christmas: A boy is taken to the North Pole aboard the Polar Express.
Ask For The Receipt When: Anybody looks at you with their cold, dead CGI eyes.
How To Make It Delightful: Ever thought about using those folk called actors, Robert Zemeckis?
I'll Be Home For Christmas (1998)
The Unhappy Christmas: College student Jake (Jonathan Taylor Thomas) has to get to his family's dinner by 6pm Christmas Eve, or his Dad won't give him a vintage Porsche. Boo hoo.
Ask For The Receipt When: A bully abandons Jake in the desert and steals his girlfriend (Jessica Biel) - and Jake's more worried about the car.
How To Make It Delightful: Ditch the whole Porsche subplot. It's only there for the inevitable "twist" whereby Jake realises there's more to life than material wealth, anyway.
Black Christmas (2006)
The Unhappy Christmas: Psycho Billy Lenz and his disfigured sister/daughter Agnes don Santa costumes to hunt a college sorority.
Ask For The Receipt When: This remake of the 1974 slasher pioneer ignores ambiguity in favour of grim flashbacks to the killers' childhood.
How To Make It Delightful: How about a nice psycho who leaves presents for kids whose rubbish parents haven't bought them anything?
Christmas With The Kranks (2004)
The Unhappy Christmas: The Kranks (Tim Allen and Jamie Lee Curtis) decide to blow their traditionally extravagant Christmas budget on a Caribbean cruise.
Ask For The Receipt When: The neighbours (led by Dan Aykroyd) launch a hate campaign to force them to invest their money into the community spirit. The irony is lost on them.
How To Make It Delightful: Screw the hypocritical neighbours and get some sunshine.
All I Want For Christmas (1991)
The Unhappy Christmas: Two kids (one a pre-fame Thora Birch) hatch a plan to reunite their estranged parents.
Ask For The Receipt When: Leslie Nielsen shows up as a department store Santa, and thinks he's still playing Frank Drebin.
How To Make It Delightful: Let the kids show some ingenuity, rather than their sociopathic plan here to tie up Mom's new boyfriend in an ice cream truck.
The Christmas That Almost Wasn't (1966)
The Unhappy Christmas: When Santa falls behind on his rent, his landlord Phineas T. Prune (Rossano Brazzi) plans to evict him.
Ask For The Receipt When: The Italian cast is dubbed, badly, into English. What is this, a Spaghetti Western?
How To Make It Delightful: Santa wins the Lottery and buys the North Pole outright. He deserves it.
Ernest Saves Christmas (1988)
The Unhappy Christmas: It's up to Ernest P. Worrell (Jim Varney) when Santa leaves his magic sack in the back of Ernest's taxi.
Ask For The Receipt When: Ernest disguises himself as a snake rancher to help Santa. Know what I mean? No, not really.
How To Make It Delightful: John Malkovich Saves Christmas , scripted by Charlie Kaufman.
Jack Frost (1998)
The Unhappy Christmas: Jack Frost (Michael Keaton) is killed in a car crash but reunited as a snowman in order to console his son.
Ask For The Receipt When: The hero is given the name Jack Frost. What the hell were his parents thinking? Bound to become a snowman with a name like that.
How To Make It Delightful: Presumably if his name was Jack Russell, he'd be reincarnated as a dog.
Home Alone 4: Taking Back The House (2002)
The Unhappy Christmas: Kevin McCallister (Mike Weinberg) spends Christmas with his divorced Dad, only to run into old foe Marv (French Stewart).
Ask For The Receipt When: Kevin reveals he's younger than he was in Home Alone 2 . Reboot? Or just poor continuity?
How To Make It Delightful: If they made the film now, Macauley Culkin could play the dad...and still be the one getting left at home.
Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 (1987)
The Unhappy Christmas: Ricky Caldwell (Eric Freeman), brother of original Santa-costumed killer Billy, goes nuts too.
Ask For The Receipt When: Endless footage from the 1984 original is used to pad out the new material to feature length.
How To Make It Delightful: Ricky becomes a good Samaritan Santa determined to wrong his brother's rights.
The Santa Clause 3 (2006)
The Unhappy Christmas: Jack Frost (Martin Short) tricks Santa (Tim Allen) into speaking the Escape Clause, so he can take over running the North Pole.
Ask For The Receipt When: Not content with rehashing The Santa Clause 2 's "Polar opposite" plotline, the filmmakers try to take down the memory of It's A Wonderful Life , too.
How To Make It Delightful: Invoke the Sanity Clause, and end this madness.
Jingle All The Way (1996)
The Unhappy Christmas: Howard Langston (Arnold Schwarzenegger) has a fight on his hands when he realises his son's must-have Christmas present is everybody's must-have Christmas present.
Ask For The Receipt When: Arnie's rivalry with another giftless dad (stand-up comic Sinbad) reveals that consumerist Western civilisation is on its way to hell.
How To Make It Delightful: Remember the days when Christmas presents were hand-made by elves in the North Pole?
Four Christmases (2008)
The Unhappy Christmas: Brad (Vince Vaughn) and Kate (Reese Witherspoon) are forced to spend Christmas with each of their divorced parents.
Ask For The Receipt When: Four Oscar winners (Robert Duvall, Sissy Spacek, Jon Voight, Mary Steenburgen) embarrass themselves stooping to Vaughn's level.
How To Make It Delightful: The parents all get together without the kids.
Santa Claus Conquers The Martians (1964)
The Unhappy Christmas: Martians realise their children aren't having enough fun, so they decide to kidnap Santa.
Ask For The Receipt When: The credits end, and we realise that the story is being told from the viewpoint of the Martians (aka actors with green face-paint).
How To Make It Delightful: Use the aliens from Mars Attacks! Ack, ack, ack…
Deck The Halls (2006)
The Unhappy Christmas: Steve Finch (Matthew Broderick) gets jealous when new neighbour Buddy Hall (Danny DeVito) tries to outdo him for extravagant Christmas decorations.
Ask For The Receipt When: The neighbours' tit-for-tat rivalry turns the season of goodwill into the Christmas version of Bride Wars .
How To Make It Delightful: There's a power cut, forcing these idiots down the local soup kitchen where they can do something useful.
Santa With Muscles (1996)
The Unhappy Christmas: Blake (Hulk Hogan) gets amnesia. Naturally, when he looks in the mirror, he assumes he's Santa.
Ask For The Receipt When: "Santa" decides to save the orphanage - an orphanage that, by the looks of it, only has three children.
How To Make It Delightful: Santa gets amnesia and thinks he's Hulk Hogan.
Santa Claus (1959)
The Unhappy Christmas: Lucifer attempts to ruin Christmas by sending the demon Pitch to Earth to lure Santa into a deadly trap.
Ask For The Receipt When: Merlin the wizard shows up. For no reason whatsoever.
How To Make It Delightful: This one's screaming out for an ultra-camp remake starring Nicolas Cage as Santa.
Surviving Christmas (2004)
The Unhappy Christmas: Jerk-off Drew Latham (Ben Affleck) pays the family living in his childhood home to pretend they are his family, to help with his therapy.
Ask For The Receipt When: Drew writes a script for his pretend family to read, and it's better than the one being used by the director.
How To Make It Delightful: Impossible. This one will be on Santa's naughty list for all eternity.
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