How I keep finding these movies that are all shot on a camcorder I'll never know. Personally I hate this style of filming for many reasons. There are very, very, very, VERY few movies I like that are shot like this.

This story takes place in 1985 where a clueless and pathetic husband/father buys a camcorder for Christmas and he decides to record their holiday family gathering. His youngest son gets his hand on the camcorder and starts to record every embarrassing family moment and every family secret which spirals into a web of hilarity.

'Coopers' Christmas' starts out like a fresh carbonated soda; cool and effervescent. Then it fizzles out and becomes stale. The jokes seemed to become predictable and unimaginative (probably due to the binge drinking the main characters participate in). Then we're reduced to seeing 'shock humor' (e.g. excessive vomiting, toilet humor) which I find funny in a comedy, but it seemed drawn-out and overdone. It seemed as if all the relatively good jokes spanned from beginning to the middle, then it goes down hill from there.

And I've stressed this before regarding this movie style that during a dramatic point, nobody is not thinking "get the camera so we can tape this!" Especially since this story takes place in 1985, that wasn't the knee-jerk reaction for people. And how is it that the youngest figured out how to work the new camcorder? I have had one of those camcorders from the 1980s, and I'm telling you they were not user-friendly. So maybe an explanation would have been good unless I missed it, but I am certainly not going to re-watch it for that one minor glitch.

So I watched it once, but for sure not watching it again.