Merry Christmas! El Camino Christmas isn’t actually a Christmas movie. But it does take place on Christmas, and after Christmas Vacation and Elf you are surely Christmas movied out. Pick up this darkly comic country noir instead about an accidental hostage situation in a liquor store on Christmas Eve and Christmas.
The casting is excellent. El Camino Christmas is one of those hey-that-guy! flicks. The cast includes Luke Grimes (Kayce from Yellowstone), Kurtwood Smith (Red Forman from That 70s Show), Dax Shepard (Frito from Idiocracy), Michelle Mylett (Katy from Letterkenny), Emilio Rivera (Marcus Alvarez from Sons of Anarchy), Jessica Alba (Sartana from Machete), Vincent D’Onofrio (Wilson Fisk from Daredevil), and the ultimate in Christmas movie stunt casting, Tim Allen (all the Christmas movies).
Luke Grimes, playing a man whose trip in search of his absentee father goes about as badly as conceivably possible, is particularly outstanding. Tim Allen winds up the only sour spot in the cast, but then Hollywood is as bad at acting drunk as it is at talking with a Southern accent.
This isn’t a heartwarming story. Hostage situations always end in tears. It is just a question of how many. But it is funny, if in a blackly comic fashion (as in: two small-town police officers get into an accidental shootout with each other with the hostages in the middle). And it does end in about as few tears as possible.
Hillbilly Highways 