After being captivated by the works of Writer, Director and dreamweaver ‘Scott Hillman’ in ‘Baby Cat’ and ‘Blue Belt’ I figured it was probably a good way to round off my current exploration of his filmography by checking out one final film written and directed by him, and starring the ever wonderful Socks Whitmore. And to my absolute delight, they made a christmas movie back in 2021. So I hunkered down with a tall hot chocolate and decided that August really wasnt too early to watch Christmas films…and as the credits rolled. I kind found myself a bit lost as to my feelings on this one.

The plot sees Socks playing our lead once again here as ‘Pace’ a non binary accountant with a masters working as a bean counter for a film production company, its December 23rd and they’re getting ready for a ‘muted’ holiday season, as their parents have disowned them for their life choices, and their cool aunt is the only person to give them a christmas present…and its wrapped in Amazon packaging.

Pace leads a pretty pedestrian life, they have a one bed apartment, all their friends are ‘online only’ and the office is really the only place they go to, other than home. That is until Christmas eve, when their boss (who in the opening titles is portrayed as a cruel and heartless man who wants to kick orphans out of their orphanage during the holiday season) bursts into the office full of life, wearing PJ’s and a night cap announcing that, during the night he was visited by 3 spirits who have convinced him to change his wicked ways and renounce his cold heart in favour of giving.

This manifests itself as him turning the office into essentially a christmas explosion, where all the employees are tasked with a holiday errand, while he desperately tries to recreate scenes from ‘A Christmas Carol’.

Pace, is given the job of getting a Christmas tree, but not just ANY Christmas tree, the boss wants a real, from the forests christmas tree thats perfect in every way and ‘magical’…whatever that means.

So, Pace grabs an axe, loads up on snacks and heads up to a nature reserve, where a park ranger almost immediately stops them, tells them that the trees in this reserve are oak for about 100 miles, and that the furs that lay beyond that are protected…BUT! chopping down trees in national forests is kinda sorta legal, and he slyly guides pace to a nature trail where they’ll be able to find fur trees.

Unfortunately for Pace, their plans go awry, when they’re stopped by a person claiming to be a wood elf by the name of Buddy who’s the guardian of the forest and refuses to let Pace desicrate this pleasent land by removing one of their protectees.

And from there…what follows is essentially a half hour montage of Pace trying to locate fur trees while Buddy mocks and misleads them, all the while the pair begin to grow closer as its revealed Buddy is also non binary, and their parents have disowned them too, leading to them setting up in the woods for 5 months.

While back at the office we get mild and gentle comedy courtesy of the office workers being split into pairs to do errands including:

*A recently divorced woman who’s gone ‘all in’ on christmas, and a muslim woman who doesnt celebrate being forced to work together to prepare a MASSIVE christmas goose, in the office, with only office supplies and the company microwave to work with.

*A laid back guy who’s shirking all the jobs and trying to get another job as quickly as possible

*The VP of the company, who is trying desperately to get the festive boss removed, committed or both.

*and another two guys who…seemingly are only there to add exposition and context to upcoming sequences.

The film cuts back and forth between Pace and Buddies storyline, and the office storyline right up to the start of the third act, when the ranger reappears and tells Pace to be careful because theres a crazy homeless person wandering around the woods claiming to be an elf…causing Pace to have to decide whether Buddy really is crazy, or if she’s just in need of a tender heart (awww…)

And given Scotts other films, this one really is a game of two halves. The scripts a bit patchy if im being honest. The plot itself is fine. and I really quite enjoyed the LGBTQIA+ themes, it was refreshing to see a film tackle issues like abandonment without mincing their words. However, I found the blossoming relationship between Buddy and Pace to feel a bit forced and simultaineously rushed…while also totally padded to the gills.

the romance elements really dont even begin to fully play in till about 15 minutes off the end of this film, and before that, there are very light suggestions…but the vast majority of their relationship is them just sharing information about themselves while wandering aimlessly around a national park and Buddy building lore around the elves and what they do. Its frienemies to lovers essentially, but that transition is so quick that it feels a bit hollow. Without going into heavy spoilers I cant really fully explain, but essentially their entire relationship comes out of a series of ‘You do this?! *I* do this too!!!’ moments that are all compressed together, and outside of that, its just the pair making slightly dry or sarcastic comments to one another.

Adding to this that the office sequences are literally all filler, non of whats happening there really ultimately matters, its a pointless B-plot that *feels* like a pointless B-plot (to me at least) just as a way to cut away from Pace and Buddy to just…ANYTHING else that isnt folks wandering around in the woods…

Comedy, as I always say, is subjective. What may leave me stoney faced, may make others uncontrollably weep with laughter. this film? to me? was gentle. theres a LOT of eye rolling gags here, groanworthy honestly…i’d say theres maybe 3-4 gags in the whole thing that raised a stifled titter from myself. Which, given this is tonally aiming to be a quirky and somewhat surreal rom-com…does not bode well…if the rom feels a bit unevenly paced and out of nowhere, and the comedy is almost non stop, but only really landed gags a single didget number of times. then i’d say tonally? its failed.

The characters are all fairly one note, Pace and Buddy are the only ones to really get any kind of complexity. and even then I feel there characters are underwritten, Pace plays a quirky but lonely employee who slowly blossoms into a…befriended and quirky employee, and Buddy gets to go from person claiming to be an elf with a troubled past whos lonely…to befriended person who claims to be an elf with a troubled past. (Also, can I just take a minute to acknowledge the GAUL of the production to name their second main lead after LITERALLY one of the most famouse ‘Elves’ of the 21st century…I know they were probably being cute…but even so.)

But the entire remaining cast get one charictaristic (I.E: Your a woman going through a divorce who TOTALLY isnt over the divorce, your a muslim woman who doesnt celebrate christmas, being forced to do christmas, your a wicked boss who’s just gone through a scrooge style visitation) and then are basically told to run that trope into the ground with a very blunt script that requires them to lean as heavily into that trope as its possible to get.

Throw in the fact that the act structuring is a bit wonky as well, with there being no real clean transition between the 2nd and 3rd acts…alongside some really ropey dialogue in places thats aiming for mid 2000’s ‘Office’ style awkward comedy…but just ends up being awkward and stilted. and while I legally CANT say this is scotts worst written work (because ‘Baby Cat’ exists) I can say that its not his best.

Mercifully, from here things to pick up a bit. On a direction level I have no notes really, As with all of Scotts films, the credit lists are a bit misleading. It may have been that he had a full crew for 1 day and then shot the remaining 2-3 days by himself, it could be that he had a handful of people around for the full 3 days, it could be a skeleton crew. As such it makes it kind of hard to really judge Scotts ability as a director here, but what I will say is, this is probably his most consistent and coherent work i’ve seen to date.

There are a couple of wobbly bits on trying to do ‘day for night’, but on the whole Scotts worked well with his crew and solo here to produce something that has a clean coherent vision and flows pretty well, is it the most incredible and astounding work I’ve ever seen? No. But its sturdy, sound and gets the job done. given the fact this is a low/no budget film, I kind of have to give him some kudos on a ship well steered here.

Same goes with direction of the cast, given a lot of this is first (and only) takes, its clear Scott makes certain his cast know exactly what he wants from them, but also that they are allowed to breath in the scene a bit and bring their own personalities to the role. while the quality of the performances themselves vary (more on that shortly) I could believe that what im seeing here is as close to what Scott envisioned in his head as possible. and again, while its nothing particularly astounding, it is definitey a solid attempt.

On the cine front, again we’re pretty much fine. Shots are well composed, sequences are well structured, the edit is sound. colour use of Dark greens, blues and browns get distinctive works. It looks professional for the most part and I really honestly have no notes, it just works as a solid piece for me…Barring 3 criticisms.

1 – There is a MASSIVE overeliance on stock footage here, basically every 5 minutes or so we get an extended montage of stock shots of L.A or of woodland animals…which is massively distracting.

2 – For some reason, Scott CGI’s a bear into this film a couple of times…it isnt integral to the plot and it only really gets referenced once…its a really bad effect and reminded me heavily of Neil Breens CGI inserted tigers.

and 3 – The Lighting, which is a bit all over the place, the office sequences look washed out and greenish, with no real attempt at creating any kind of distinctive lighting arrangements. Its all just flat profile and slightly desaturated. And the woodland scenes almost all rely on natural light, which is very hit and miss, and again, for a holly jolly christmas film, the fact they went for a pea soup green, washed out colour grade really works against the type and tone of this production. It left it feeling about as christmassy as a grindhouse feature.

Performance wise, its not the best, Socks Whitmore and Ky Mullen as Pace and Buddy are about as good as it gets, both get a decent range to work with, both have slightly awkward deliveries here and there, but both at least vaguely feel believable and naturalistic, I had a soft spot for their portrayals here, and I think they just about saved the film from collapse in my opinion.

The rest of the cast though, no…not for me im afraid, it runs the gauntlet from really dry quiet and uninteresting character performances that made me wonder why they were even there, to overtly hammy and border stereotypical performances that felt awkard and irritating to sit through. Noone here, even Socks and Ky have any kind of significant physical presence on screen, everyone feels like they’ve been given specific marks to hit and told not to move unless they have a damn good idea to get out there. its, not the best cast i’ve ever seen.

And the soundtrack? almost entirely stock and audio library christmas tracks or classical music. Im not shocked or surprised, its used about as well as it can be used, but its a bit flat and uninspired in my opinion…I dont think it suited the film well at all.

All in all? ‘Meh.’ I didnt hate this, if it was on in the background I wouldnt turn it over, for low/no budget its kind of impressive honestly…But the scripts so minimalist and plodding, uninteresting at times, full of holes and unfunny to me, combined with everything else just being kind of ‘sturdy’ or ‘solid’, that I cant in good faith recommend it, I could see myself revisiting this one at some point…but giving it my full attention again? I dont think so.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-magical-christmas-tree/