Stream It or Skip It: ‘All I Didn’t Want for Christmas’ on VH1, Where Gabourey Sidibe Crushes as a Romcom Lead

VH1 presents a new twist on a couple of holiday favorites in All I Didn’t Want for Christmas. This holiday comedy stars Gabourey Sidibe as a wannabe radio host and Kel Mitchell as an elf tasked with giving humans a glow-up, emotionally and spiritually. Does All I Didn’t Want for Christmas give viewers what they want? Or is this a movie that you’ll want to exchange for store credit?

ALL I DIDN’T WANT FOR CHRISTMAS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Gabourey Sidibe plays Emily Harris, the producer of a popular radio show who dreams of getting behind the mic. She has the chance, too, because her boss is retiring. All she has to do is make a pitch to him at the station’s holiday party and — oh, wait. He’s already given the time slot to Emily’s perfect, perky rival. Drunk and angry, Emily pens a sloppy, sarcastic wishlist for Santa Claus and deposits it in a mailbox for kids’ letters to Santa… and it actually ends up at the North Pole.

That’s when Emily’s fate is handed over to an elf named Wolf (Kel Mitchell), a low-key screwup who’s been given one last chance to shape up before he’s shipped off to work for [gulp] the Tooth Fairy. His new gig: helping guide people towards the right path in the Lost Souls department — and Emily is his first case.

Emily wakes up the next morning in a new world, one where all of her wishes — yes, her drunken, scribbled wishes — have been granted. Now she has until Christmas to figure out what she really wants — and not just for Christmas, but for her life.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The premise is like a smart mashup of It’s a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Carol (although the tone is way more Scrooged).

Performance Worth Watching: It’s such a joy having Kel Mitchell back on television again. He’s older but he’s not necessarily wiser — and that’s great. He still has the same cool charisma and carefree energy that made him such a dynamo on Kenan & Kel and All That. Please let 2023 be the year of the Kel-aissance.

Memorable Dialogue: Emily looks in her mirror and practices asking her boss for his time slot: “Ken, baby — listen up, okay? I want to take over for you with my groundbreaking advice show Ask Emily. The ratings are gonna spike so high, you’ll think you’re on cocaine again — but in a good way.”

Also, when Emily gets frustrated by Santa having granted all of her wishes literally instead of going by the spirit of what she meant, Wolf replies, “Santa is into lessons this year — I know, it’s super annoying.”

A Holiday Tradition: Emily’s mom Lorraine (Loretta Devine) competes in a Christmas tree decorating competition every year, and she will stop at nothing to win. Nothing.

Two Turtle Doves: Hallmark’s Ghost of Christmas Always presents another twist on this classic holiday movie format. There’s also Spirited on Apple TV+, if you want your redemption of a wayward soul to include songs and dancing.

Does the Title Make Any Sense?: Considering that the movie premieres on VH1, a TV network that helped make Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” into a seasonal staple back when VH1 played music videos, I’m gonna say yes. I appreciate the callback.

Our Take: Just when it feels like you’ve seen every twist on the classic “lost soul finds their way again at Christmastime thanks to help from an angel or ghost or Muppet or twinkling light or cricket” genre, a movie like All I Didn’t Want for Christmas comes along and calls you out. This premise, Santa granting the insincere wishes scrawled out by a depressed and hopeless drunk and leaving an elf to do the dirty work, feels different enough from all of the other reality-warping holiday movies and lets All I Didn’t Want for Christmas really assert its own vibe.

And that vibe, y’all, is hilarious.

We absolutely do not talk enough about Gabourey Sidibe’s work as a comedic actor, because she is a force. This role really lets her do it all, from playing a kind of meek, Mary Tyler Moore type to letting loose as the drunkest girl at the party, to being a sarcastic and rascally handful for poor Wolf. Everything she does in this movie evokes emotion, whether it be genuine laughs or genuine sympathy. Give Sidibe her own comedy series.

The real winning combination here, though, has to be Sidibe and Loretta Devine. Just when you think that All I Didn’t Want for Christmas is going to be 90 minutes of irreverence and snark (well-written irreverence and well-acted snark, mind you), the movie zeroes in on Emily and Lorraine’s relationship and just goes for it — hard. These are real, at times painfully so, mother/daughter issues, the kind that we rarely see in holiday movies because the moms are usually dead in holiday movies. I’m really not joking. Seriously.

The fact that All I Didn’t Want for Christmas actually gets into some real issues that people really struggle with during the holidays is just the cherry on top of this Christmas sundae (eggnog ice cream, red and green sprinkles?). Without the surprise depth, this movie is still packed with real laughs and a scene where Emily and her fruitcake feet are chased by a stop-motion monster.

This movie is wild and full of heart.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Is it possible for VH1 to get this in theaters so Gabourey Sidibe can be considered for another Oscar nom?