Seriously. Every time I feel like I’ve hit the lowest of the low of the lowest Christmas movie, something pops up that shows me we can go lower. Today, that something is Godmothered, a new movie available on Disney Plus starring Jillian Bell and not Amy Adams (Isla Fisher).
You see, this movie is about Eleanor Fay Bloomingbottom, a young fairy who’s in training to become a fairy godmother in a magical place called Motherland. The problem? She’s not very good. Then Eleanor discovers a letter from a 10 year old girl named Mackenzie Walsh, and the plucky fairy decides now’s the chance to prove herself to all the old lady fairies in Motherland.
The other problem? When Eleanor comes to our world, she discovers Mackenzie isn’t 10 anymore, and now she’s got a whole wealth of adult problems.
So yeah this movie was bad. But how bad was it as a Christmas movie?
Romance: 7/10. So Mackenzie is a single parent whose husband… mysteriously disappeared? I really don’t remember, and while I tried Googling it, I couldn’t find the answer so I’m going to just assume the movie did a bad job of explaining this. Anyway, Eleanor believes the best way to get Mackenzie to live a happier more fulfilled life is to get her in a new relationship. So there is a little budding relationship happening between Mackenzie and her delightful coworker, a single dad with a heart of gold.
But the real “love story,” we’re told at the end, is between Mackenzie and her two daughters, who are her real “true loves.” Cute, yes. But romantic? No.
Still the little romance between Mackenzie and coworker is cute, so I’ll give it a few points.
Morality: 10/10. This movie has a fun feminist message, so I have to give it points for that. Remember how annoyed I was with the last Christmas movie I covered? When the female lead character realized she couldn’t be fulfilled unless she had a family and stuff? Well, this movie is kind of saying the opposite. Kind of.
Here’s the deal. Fairy Godmothers in this movie are going out of style. And by the end of the movie, Eleanor realizes it’s because all those old Fairy Godmothers have a severely outdated idea of what it means to live “happily ever after,” and if that’s even a goal that women should be striving for in the first place. The big message of the movie is that happy can look different to different people. For women especially, this is an important message. You don’t have to be married to be successful and happy. There are plenty routes to success and happiness. For the Fairy Godmothers to succeed, they had to learn this. And for us as people to succeed, we have to learn this too.
Music: 2/10. I guess it’s a big deal that Mackenzie’s daughter wants to be a singer and she sings a song at the end, but it’s not, like, a Christmas song? And I don’t remember very much Christmas music in this movie at all.
Christmas Spirit: 1/10. I really had to ask myself several times while watching this movie if this could really even count as a Christmas movie. The plot has zero to do with Christmas. The only reason we know it’s Christmas is because there’s snow and Christmas decorations everywhere. But it really felt to me like Christmas was an afterthought. Like they made this movie, realized it was coming out around Christmas time, and just jumped back in and stuffed mistletoe into a couple of corners of the movie. I mean, it worked because I probably wouldn’t have watched this movie if it wasn’t “about Christmas.” But this is a Christmas movie in the most technical sense of the word.
Warmth: 4/10. I remember nothing about the children in this movie, so they weren’t bringing the kind of heart we expect from children in a Christmas movie. The most warmth I felt was when coworker dude called his kid on the phone. And that was at the end of the movie and he wasn’t the person I was supposed to be caring about. Tell me more about this other family, movie. They seem more interesting. How did their Christmas go?
This movie gets 4 warmth points. Two are for that phone call. The other two are for the pig. Yes, there was a cute pig in this movie. I die for cute pigs.
So how did we do, movie?
24/50 = 48% - So this movie officially failed as a movie and as a Christmas movie.
If you don’t want to take my word for it, hop on over to Disney+ and check it out now. Or, you know, don’t.
See you very soon for more death by Christmas movies.