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| A couple made in ABC Family Photo via ShockYa.com |
Christmas Bounty is story of a prodigal daughter coming home to her ‘Dog the Bounty Hunter in New Jersey’ family sounds bad, and it is, and not in a ‘so bad it’s good’ sense. Tori ‘Tornado’ Bell (Francia Raisa) is a Manhattan schoolteacher, dating a corporate raider scion of Upper East Side society named James (Will Greenberg). She was called back home when a criminal her family put away is released early and threateningly starts calling her. Mikey Muscles (The Miz) is her ex-boyfriend who still works for her family. Putting aside the improbability of incapacitating an entire team of henchmen who are in the employ of Big Donna (Sidika Larbes), the main antagonist’s sister, in a crowded mall during the holiday season (and, oh my, does the Bell family do this with aplomb), Tori immediately feels the call of home and Jersey Shore-ifies herself, with way less actual resistance than her facial expressions suggest. James shows up in Jersey for some reason, and proposes as the family tries to hide its trashiness.
About thirty minutes into the movie, Manucci (Aleks Paunovic), the aforementioned antagonist, is shown eating a fabulous lobster meal, complete with lobster bib, in an abandoned warehouse. Muscles waltzes into the scene and shoots a man on a catwalk by firing his gun straight into the air without looking. Without watching any other part of this movie, you probably can tell that Christmas Bounty is every bad action rom-com ever. Oh, and our aforementioned awesome one has the dirt-worst Jersey accent ever. Don’t worry, it inexplicably goes away after a bit. Settle in.
A long club scene is up next. ABC Family-quality club beats boom as James enjoys living it up, Jersey-style; he really digs drinking a shot with a beer chaser, which he orders like he had never heard of either of those things. Muscles and Tori are there, and she's brought a blonde friend with her who's a nurse, I think? This exchange happens at the end of the scene, and it is so, so much cheesier than I can convey in words:
Muscles: Tori, what you don’t understand is…I Iove you.Next the crew going Christmas tree shopping, with the bad guy somewhere in the lot. Oh, I forgot to say, James doesn’t actually know that the family business is huntin’ bad folk. Miz and Tori split off to find the baddie, and Miz even gets his ever-hilarious “Really?” shtick in there. A gunshot-riddled fight ensues in the lot (Lethal Weapon did this so much better 20+ years ago), and Tori finally has to reveal to James she’s a bounty hunter. Muscles is driving a red late model Camaro now and CAR CHASE TIME, FOOLS. Of course, the standard-edition black bad guy van somehow outruns the good guys. Did I mention James has been abducted by the bad guys? Because he totally has. Miz promises to find James for Tori so she can get married. No way this could lead to a renewed spark of love between them, right?
Tori: Loved…past tense, right?
Muscles: Past..present…future. (Picture this in ‘Serious Miz promo voice,’ which he uses here, and it somehow is even more ludicrous than I’ve typed.)
[Almost kiss ensues]
Now Tori is questioning herself. Does she still have it in her to find the criminal, after she left her Jersey roots at the Holland Tunnel? A texted photo of tied up James means it’s time to get serious.
Big Donna’s getting married, and they’re holding James at the warehouse where the wedding is happening. All the Mafia is in attendance. There is even a gun check to go along with a coat check. How thoughtful. Muscles calls Tori sexy when she's bossy. They track James down with his phone - or so they think - but the bad guys, rather unsurprisingly, note, that it would have been quite foolish to allow James to keep his phone.
Big time wedding shootout, coming up, y’all! Tori kicks major ass, knocking all sorts of dudes out, and Muscles uses an ice bucket as a weapon, shades of Ricardo Rodriguez. Tori chases down the Manucci, and they have a quick fight on top of a room in the warehouse. She totally knocks him down to the floor. She thinks she’s got her guy, but surprise, James is right there. Now she's got a decision to make. James gets to go only if Tori agrees to go with the baddies.
They walk out of the warehouse, and you know Muscles is perched on the roof, leaping to save the day. He knocks out one henchman, but Manucci is still getting away. Stealing Big Donna’s wedding-gift Benz, Tori crashes into the bad guy’s car and cuffs his ass.
“A convict, now with an attempted murder charge, he’s going away for a long time!” Tori says, and holy shit, don’t even get me started on this. Why were they chasing him in the first place? A threatening phone call from a guy you put away does not give legal authority to a family of bounty hunters to go after someone. The only reason any criminal doing was discovered was because the Bell family went after this mafioso for no seeming legitimate reason. I’m only a second-year law student, but even I can figure this out.
Muscles gives a heartfelt speech about how much he loves Tori, but she needs to be with James, even though he's totally become a new man, even taking the steps to get into law school. James tells her he loves her even though her family is crazy and she lied to him about who she was, and he wants to love her regardless. And, because this is a movie, she promptly tells James, “I’m still a Jersey girl” and runs over a bunch of car rooftops to leap into Muscle’s arms and kiss him.
Overall Thoughts: So much of this movie makes no sense. Plot holes? You bet. A love story that isn’t underdeveloped, but undeveloped, that causes a woman to leave her fiancé for her old boyfriend? Mmmhmm. Horrible Jersey accents? Present and accounted for. Tori’s mom is a straight rip-off of Beth from Dog the Bounty Hunter, her dad looks maybe 15 years older than her. Seriously, it’s weird. Miz is a very bad actor, whose Jersey accent seemingly disappears part way through the movie.
The best part of this movie is certainly Francia Raisa as Tori. She’s no Jennifer Lawrence, but then again, no one is. If someone told me she was the only person in this entire film with acting experience, I would nod and say “Sounds about right.” Despite the tired Jersey trash stereotypes that couldn’t be more run into the ground, she’s at least okay. No one else even approaches that.
All in all, this is 90 minutes of my life I will never get back. And I have a high tolerance for anything to do with Christmas, because it’s hands-down my favorite time of year. If this would’ve been a non-Christmas movie (and it barely is,) I would have quit on it.