Christmas is that time of year where we get to see how many movies can rehash the same story. But you might want to hold your horses on this one because Just Another Christmas may surprise you. Stuck in a time loop where it's forever Christmas, a family man who hates the holiday starts to learn valuable lessons about what's important in life.
Brazilian comedian Leandro Hassam stars as Jorge. He's grumpy, complaining, whiny, but also a little bit sweet. He finds that when he goes to sleep on Christmas night, he wakes up to Christmas day again. There's a nice twist to this movie that makes it feel fresh and different in a kind of way from other Christmas movies I've come across. It doesn't feel like a rehash of those types of stories.
The beginning of the film, and even through a lot of it, there is this manic feeling to it. It is chaotic, and it is rushed, and it is just hyperactive. What that does is it puts us into the mindset of Jorge. And as I'm watching, I'm getting slightly annoyed. Not at the film, but just like there's a high-pitched tone playing someplace, and it's agitating me. That's what was happening when I'm watching this because it is so frenetic. The pace is so fast.
Things are just going on, and you see it aggravating Jorge, but it's also aggravating me. And it really did work to put me in his place. There's also this low-level, cheery soundtrack that is playing through a lot of these chaotic scenes. It's pretty happy and lighthearted. And what that does is just messes with my emotions because I'm seeing one thing visually where it is just kind of organized chaos, maybe. And it's out of control. It's not calming to me. But then you have this nice, peaceful, happy, joyous music.
There are a lot of funny moments to this also, and it's helped tremendously by the facial expressions of Jorge. He is able to contort his face some, and he makes just the perfect facial expressions for the scene. And it made me chuckle out loud more than once. I enjoyed some of the scenes with Jorge and his family because they were these sweeping, continuous takes where we would go from character to character, hearing bits and pieces of their conversation.
And we got to see how it became a mounting just tension and annoyance for Jorge. All of these things are happening around his house. And like I said at the beginning, he doesn't really enjoy Christmas. So to have all of this chaos in his home on this day with everybody celebrating and him hearing all these conversations back and forth, you just see it kind of just edge up on him. And then he's asked to do things and he doesn't want to do them.
This isn't all tension or laughs and lighthearted humor. There is an underlying sadness to this. And more than once, I began to tear up. And I think the sadness melded wonderfully with the comedy. It wasn't these harsh, abrupt turns. They flowed naturally and they fit really well with the story. And I think we needed that sadness to really reinforce the message of the film. The family is what matters most.
The makeup in this is done really well. Even if it looks like Jorge is wearing this terrible wig at the beginning of the film. Their effective use of makeup, or maybe they're removing makeup as the story progresses. It really works and it looks natural. And it's very convincing for what the character's going through and what is happening around them.
When I started watching this movie, the craziness and the speed of the scenes, it wasn't really clicking with me too much. But then I became hooked by what was going on. And I was just so invested in the story that I needed to see how it resolved. Or if it was going to resolve.
There was a point where I had to pause the movie for just a minute, and I thought it was pretty much near the end. But I was surprised that I was only an hour in to an hour and 40 minute movie. So this did feel a tiny bit long, even though the journey were taken on benefits from every single one of the scenes. As agitating and chaotic as the first part of the film is, the movie as a whole is worth checking out. I think the character of Jorge is going to grow on you, especially as he himself experiences character growth.
This is a fun, if not frustrating at times, watch. And I loved the fresh twist that they put on this. That even though it may share some of the similarities with other movies that we've seen, the way they execute it, I thought was really done well.
https://youtu.be/06vMA1GRlWk?si=m4CUGzdAY0eJYT1cIt was really a touching movie to watch. And like I said, it made me tear up a bit. I rate Just Another Christmas 7/10.
[IMDB](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt13354204/mediaindex/?ref_=mv?ref_=mv_sm)
