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Hulu's 'It's A Wonderful Binge' Is One of the the Worst Movies In Years

By Nate Parker | Film | December 14, 2022 |

By Nate Parker | Film | December 14, 2022 |


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I have godawful taste in movies. Just the worst. Need proof?

I’ve watched The Happytime Murders at least 4 times now. I love it even though I will never think of the word “pilaf” the same way. So when I tell you that It’s a Wonderful Binge is so bad it made having a chest cold better by comparison because it meant I eventually passed out, please believe me. I’m not entirely convinced being intubated would be worse than sitting through It’s a Wonderful Binge again.

The 69th Amendment banned recreational drugs and alcohol, except for one night of the year. This year the Binge is set for Christmas Eve because no one wants to deal with their family sober. Recently-fired Hags (Dexter Darden, The Maze Runner movies and the Saved By the Bell reboot) wants to ask his girlfriend Sarah (Zainne Saleh, Cam, Henry Danger) to marry him but needs her father Keegan’s blessing first (Tim Meadows, the only reliably funny person in the whole movie). In the process, he manages to lose the family ring bestowed upon him by Grandma (a wasted Karen Maruyama, both literally and figuratively), which leads to Sarah chasing him all over town to find out if he’s cheating on her.

Meanwhile, his best friend Andrew (Eduardo Franco, Stranger Things S4, Booksmart) is feeling sorry for himself because his family is garbage, and he wants to know how the world would change if he weren’t in it, something he learns with the help of Angel (Danny Trejo). His ex-girlfriend, Kimmi (Marta Piekarz, The Binge, Queer as Folk), is stressing over the holiday, the Binge, and her neurotic mother Mayor Spengler’s (Kaitlin Olson, Dee from It’s Always Sunny…) obsession with creating a family-friendly holiday event that includes the Christmas Owl, an attempt to cash in on the holiday like Groundhog Day. The mayor’s incarcerated brother Kris (Nick Swardson) breaks out of prison to spend the holiday with his family. But the owl gets high and starts attacking people, Andrew discovers the world would be better without him, and Hags learns… something, I guess? There’s a rogue’s gallery of side characters you’ll recognize as “that guy who was in the thing with the other guy,” but none of them matter or add anything of value.

I somehow missed Hulu’s 2020 original movie, The Binge, despite Dustin’s review. He called it “a very bad movie, although it is intermittently amusing.” That’s high praise compared to anything I can say about the sequel. Tim Meadows’ deadpan delivery and constant misconstruing of Hags’s every word caused an occasional smirk. I laughed when Kimmi set Kris’s cartoonishly broken leg. That was it. The rest of the time I stared in mute apathy as old people got high, the owl attacked people’s faces, and there was a Claymation sing-along. It’s offensively bad, guys. I don’t mean “offensive” as in non-PC; I mean it insulted my room-temperature IQ to watch this movie. Its most egregious sin is the way it treats its female characters. They’re all either neurotic messes, obsessively self-centered, or abusive parents. The men aren’t much better but at least Hags, Andrew, and Angel have something to offer. Mayor Spengler is a mobile Kate Gosselin haircut who keeps demanding the security guard shoot people. Sarah is a spoiled brat whose only personality traits are selfishness and vocal fry. Andrew’s mother Deirdre (Eileen Galindo, Why Women Kill) needs a muzzle. So do both of his fathers, and his brother, and his brother’s girlfriend, and oh my god these people need to STFU. Kimmi isn’t terrible but that doesn’t make her good. She’s just the least annoying.

If you want to watch a Christmas movie with inappropriate humor, watch Bad Santa. Watch National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. Watch Scrooged or The Night Before. Don’t watch It’s a Wonderful Binge. Because unless you’re facing as many murder charges as Angel, you deserve so much better.