Christmas Eve movie review & film summary (2015)

On top of that, Napoleon Dynamite himself, Jon Heder, might give the best performance as a just-fired tech specialist who is forced to share the office elevator with the fantasy-football-obsessed jerk who canned him (Max Casella). Or, as Heder’s character dubs him, “the spawn of Satan himself.” 

As for the other inconvenienced elevator sharers, they include an annoying gum-chewing photog (James Roday of TV’s “Psych”) who badgers his shy female companion to pose for him like a model in exchange for a candy bar. For some reason, we are supposed to consider this a favor and not harassment. There is also a gang of seven bickering musicians, including “Curb Your Enthusiasm’s” Cheryl Hines as a sassy trumpet player, who can’t agree on much other than that someone has rudely farted in the confined quarters and not owned up to it.

Then there is a randomly oddball quintet consisting of two TMI-afflicted ditzy girls, a musclebound dude in a skimpy Santa getup (I thought I heard him mumble, “I am a eunuch,” but my mind might have been wandering off), an effete germophobe art expert and a high-IQ type in an Einstein T-shirt (since that is what smart people like to wear) who passes the time by testing everyone with brain teasers.

Oh, there is another surprise. Davis, who is also responsible for Mormon missionary drama “The Other Side of Heaven,” is rather timid about inserting many direct observations about religion into his script and instead forces us to infer what it means when several stuck characters are revealed to be related to those caught in different elevators. I am guessing it might have to do with it being a small world after all, or that fate, or some sort of Supreme Being, decided to teach these humans a lesson.

The lesson I learned? If you want to make an uplifting film, you won’t get there with broken elevators.

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