Review: "8-Bit Christmas"

With Thanksgiving in our rearview mirrors now, it is inevitable to see Christmas movies on our televisions as it is the season to be jolly. On Thanksgiving Day, this film was available to stream to anyone with a subscription to HBO Max. Anyone that watches it will surely be hit with just as much nostalgia as product placement. However, it is a heartwarming tale that many once had a Nintendo console or memories of wanting a video game console so bad will surely enjoy. 8-Bit Christmas sticks to the old tropes of most Christmas movies for better or for worse throughout the film and at its core, it is really difficult to have a hard time enjoying Christmas movies on some level.

The plot follows Jake Doyle (Neil Patrick Harris) telling the story of his ten-year-old self (Winslow Fegley) embarking on an epic quest to secure a prized Nintendo console for Christmas to his daughter. In an attempt to tell the story to his daughter, who is hellbent on getting a cell phone for Christmas, Jake is not only explaining how he got his prized Nintendo console, despite his parent's aversion to it, but also how he came to enjoy Christmas for what it meant to him.

Neil Patrick Harris has the starring role but, in fact, he is merely channeling his inner Barney Stinson at times and narrating throughout a majority of this film. The real star is Winslow Fegley portraying the sometimes nerdy Jake Doyle who just wants a Nintendo console to play with his friends. It is a notion that I am sure plenty of people, including myself, can relate to. I know at a younger age I was surely a pain to my parents asking for all kinds of consoles and it made it easy to see myself in the main character. However, once that nostalgia waned, the film lost its footing and dragged a bit as it kept rehashing reused plot points in a rather boring manner. It is also weird at times seeing Neil Patrick Harris wearing so many different hats throughout the entirety of the run time. In the beginning, he sounds like a stiff sitcom dad, to then a great voice actor narrating a weak story and then finally being a kind and sincere father. That in itself is a perfect metaphor for the film as it juggles between being a comedy-drama rather poorly. With such a charming premise with a cast of child actors that surprisingly are funny in spurts, the script itself doesn't have many laughs. It just meanders through the plot.

The Nintendo nostalgia is obviously the big draw for the film, and it lays it on thick throughout even as it goes into the worry of parents thinking that video games can ruin their children. It also goes far beyond the console being used as a holy grail of sorts filling in for a story about how a young boy learns the true meaning of the holidays. It then has plenty of fun in making fun of itself, including making fun of the heavily flawed Power Glove, which only the rich kids seemed to have and attempted to hold dominion over the least fortunate with such. All of it is cute, but at times it just gets flat-out weird. Including a scene in which Young Jake finds a Nintendo console on display in a toy store seemingly calling out to him. It doesn't just stop there as the Nintendo speaks to him and calls him a "good boy" which I am sure the filmmakers thought it would be funny, but instead it just feels like a stranger danger moment.

The performances by the actors are nothing special nor bad. Winslow Fegley is likable as the affable young Jake that can't seem to catch a break as do the other young actors. Jake's parents are also largely the source of laughs thanks to the talents of the always great Steve Zahn and June Diane Raphael. Again, the biggest issue with this film lies in the script as midway through the film it drags and just loses any kind of nostalgia factor and its humor disappears. At its core though, it does what it set out to do and gives the audience what it is expecting. The nostalgia and Christmas tropes will be enough to make an enjoyable watch over the holidays.