There’s Now a Chuck E. Cheese Christmas Special (???)

In May 2024, Chuck E. Cheese announced it was phasing out most of its famous animatronic bands – a key part of their arcades since the beginning. According to CEO David McKillips, the decision was made because children today enjoy entertainment in different ways than they used to. He told The New York Times that kids of all ages now primarily consume entertainment on screens.

When Mr. Cheese announced they were getting rid of the animatronic bands, the backlash was huge! They ended up keeping three of them running – thankfully, I can still catch a show in North Carolina, Illinois, or Long Island. But so many others were sadly dismantled. It really feels like that same spirit – replacing real experiences with just more screen time – is behind their new Christmas movie. It just feels…different, you know? Like they’re giving us entertainment to consume instead of a place to actually experience something special.

A recently uploaded YouTube video called A Chuck E. Cheese Christmas is quite unusual. Though it’s under 50 minutes long – barely qualifying as a feature film – it essentially functions as an extended advertisement. While promoting the Chuck E. Cheese brand, it especially highlights the company’s mascot and, subtly, their pizza.

The cartoon versions of Chuck E. Cheese’s old robot characters – Chipper the mouse, Jasper the sarcastic dog, Helen Henny the kind chicken, Bella Bunny the cute rabbit, Munch the monster, and Pasqually P. Pieplate, the pizza chef with an Italian accent – are featured in the show.

Chuck E., often referred to as “Chuck E.” – a name that inevitably brings to mind a certain horror movie villain – is a delivery driver with a unique vehicle called the “Partymobile,” designed like a giant party horn. He spends his days spreading Christmas cheer by delivering decorations throughout town, until Santa decides to retire due to a perceived lack of holiday spirit.

Santa is upset with the town for losing the spirit of Christmas and reminds them that it’s about more than just gifts – it’s about renewing hope and kindness for the year ahead. Chuck E. Cheese believes the best way to help Santa rediscover his Christmas joy – and fix the town’s problem – is to throw him an amazing party, because, as Chuck E. Cheese puts it, a good party can solve anything!

The message is clear: according to Chuck E. Cheese, the best way to celebrate Christmas is with a party at their restaurant. This isn’t a huge surprise, considering Chuck E. Cheese has been the place for kids’ birthday parties since 1977.

The Christmas party in A Chuck E. Cheese Christmas doesn’t actually take place inside a Chuck E. Cheese. Instead, it’s held at Pasqually’s, an Italian restaurant. Keen viewers will remember Pasqually’s as the name of the pizza delivery service Chuck E. Cheese launched in 2020 to help stay in business during the Covid-19 pandemic. The story goes that they used the name – taken from one of Chuck E. Cheese’s friends – to make their pizza seem more grown-up and hide its connection to the kid-friendly restaurant.

Essentially, the A Chuck E. Cheese Christmas special feels like an advertisement for the restaurant’s ghost kitchen concept. Staying true to its history with animatronic bands, the special includes a song where Chuck E. Cheese and his friends celebrate the importance of Christmas. There’s also a scene where Pasqually creates a cookie pizza for Santa, which might soon be a new dessert option at Chuck E. Cheese if it isn’t already.

And get this: the movie has a villain named Legamos, who’s basically a copy of Legolas from The Lord of the Rings. He wants to cancel Christmas because he’s fed up with his job at the North Pole and wants to go back to fighting trolls!

This just in: Orlando Bloom found dead in a ditch.

Okay, so I went into A Chuck E. Cheese Christmas bracing myself, but honestly, it wasn’t terrible! It actually looked better than I thought, especially compared to some of the really bad animated movies on streaming services, like that Marmaduke movie on Netflix. The best part? It’s free to watch on YouTube, which is good because I’d feel awful if anyone actually paid to see it. Though, fair warning, it does have ads – basically commercials for other brands popping up during the 49-minute Chuck E. Cheese ad you’re already watching. I guess that’s just how it is, right?

Watch A Chuck E. Cheese Christmas Below

The Worst Christmas Movies Ever

15. Deck the Halls (2006)

The movie centers around Buddy Hall, played by Danny DeVito, and his family. Matthew Broderick’s character doesn’t get along with Buddy, leading to the punny title – he wants to ‘deck the Halls.’ The humor is definitely over-the-top, featuring silly gags like camel spit, an awkward scene about a police officer’s clothing choices, and even DeVito and Broderick making inappropriate comments about their own teenage daughters – all in what’s supposed to be a Christmas movie!

14. Office Christmas Party (2016)

The movie Office Christmas Party relies more on blatant beer advertising than actual humor. While it features plenty of nudity, sexual content, and drug use – plus a particularly memorable scene with Jason Bateman and an eggnog-filled ice luge – it doesn’t offer many genuine laughs. It definitely earns its R-rating, but being shocking doesn’t equal being funny. Despite a talented cast, including a standout performance by Jillian Bell, the comedy is surprisingly boring, especially considering the large number of people involved – two editors, eight producers, six writers, fifteen prominent actors, and two directors. It makes you wonder just how many people it takes to create a truly funny movie!

13. I’ll Be Home For Christmas (1998)

This movie feels like a cheaper version of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off set during Christmas. Jonathan Taylor Thomas plays a mischievous troublemaker who wants to spend winter break with his girlfriend, Jessica Biel. His dad makes him a deal: if he can get home by 6 PM on Christmas Eve, he’ll get the family Porsche. But things go wrong when a rival kidnaps him and leaves him stranded in the desert. The movie then asks: will he make it home in time for the Porsche? Will he learn a valuable lesson about Christmas? And, perhaps most frustratingly, are we supposed to root for a spoiled kid who’s being offered a luxury car just for visiting his family? The answer, unfortunately, is yes.

12. The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause (2006)

Okay, so by the third Santa Clause movie, the original idea had really run its course. They tried to spice things up by throwing in a bunch of other mythical characters, and Martin Short as Jack Frost was… a lot. The movie starts with this whole council of legends – Santa, Father Time, the Tooth Fairy – trying to kick Jack out because he’s openly trying to take over Christmas. And somehow, instead of actual punishment, he just gets community service at the North Pole… where he continues to try and steal Christmas! Meanwhile, Tim Allen’s Santa is dealing with his in-laws, Alan Arkin and Ann-Margaret, at the North Pole, but they can’t know where they are, so everyone pretends they’re in Canada and just keeps saying ‘eh?’ It’s ridiculous, but honestly, it’s the only thing in the whole movie that actually works. Seriously, his in-laws buy it completely, and it’s just… baffling.

11. Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964)

Technically, this is a truly terrible movie. The Martians are poorly acted, wearing silly green outfits and homemade-looking helmets. The title is also misleading – Santa doesn’t defeat the Martians, he just cheerfully puts up with them trying to kidnap him. However, some people might enjoy just how bad it is. If Tommy Wiseau had directed a Christmas film in the 1960s, it might have looked a lot like Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. In fact, it would probably sound like it too, with a script full of strangely direct lines – like a news reporter calmly announcing, “And Mrs. Claus has positively identified the kidnappers as Martians.”

10. How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000)

The makeup work on Rick Baker’s Grinch is fantastic, and the film’s overall design creates a wonderfully strange world – even small details, like Cindy Lou’s bent pencil, add to the effect. However, the story itself is deeply disappointing. How the Grinch Stole Christmas doesn’t just focus on the Grinch, it feels as if he directed it, with his grumpy and unpleasant attitude throughout. Expanding the simple moral tale of Dr. Seuss to a full-length movie means spending too much time dwelling on the Grinch’s unhappiness – and Jim Carrey’s exaggerated performance.

9. A Christmas Carol (2009)

I’m always up for a Jim Carrey movie, especially when he plays a silly character! But Jim Carrey and a Christmas story? Not usually my thing. And Jim Carrey, Christmas, and a lot of fancy motion capture effects? Definitely not. This isn’t a traditional take on Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol; Jim Carrey worked with director Robert Zemeckis to play Scrooge and all three ghosts using motion capture technology. It’s technically impressive, but the special effects don’t really add anything new to the classic story.

8. Jack Frost (1998)

As a lifelong movie fan, I stumbled upon this film about a musician named Jack Frost – not the one from The Santa Clause 3, a completely different guy! He’s a dad in his late 40s, trying to make it big as a rock star, but his ambition keeps him away from his family. He promises his wife and son a special Christmas trip, but sadly, he dies in a car accident on the way home. But that’s not the end of the story! The next Christmas, his son builds a snowman wearing Jack’s hat and scarf, and somehow, Jack’s spirit returns as that snowman! It’s a pretty strange premise, honestly. The movie could have gone in a lot of directions – a dark comedy, maybe even a horror film – and there’s actually another movie called Jack Frost that’s a horror flick. This one, though, is pure heartwarming comedy. It’s funny – and a little unsettling – to watch a dead dad come back as a talking snowman, having snowball fights and playing hockey with his son, all while carefully avoiding the big question: he’s basically proven life after death exists! It’s a bizarre choice, and fun fact: the snowman doesn’t even look like Michael Keaton, who played Jack! Apparently, George Clooney was originally cast and modeled the character, but dropped out. I always wonder what happened there!

7. The Nutcracker: The Untold Story (2010)

For over a century, Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker has been a Christmas tradition. But a bizarre reimagining, The Nutcracker: The Untold Story (also known as The Nutcracker in 3D), decided the classic needed… Nazis! Released during the brief 3D movie craze after Avatar, this version is a cinematic disaster. Set in 1920s Austria, it throws in fantastical creatures inspired by Nazis, an evil Rat King, and even features Nathan Lane as Albert Einstein singing a song about physics. Honestly, this strange take on The Nutcracker is best left forgotten.

6. Santa With Muscles (1996)

Before Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Hulk Hogan was the first professional wrestler to become a big movie star. However, Johnson actually had acting talent, something Hogan lacked. This is painfully clear in Santa With Muscles, a bad Christmas movie where Hogan plays a vitamin company owner who hits his head, loses his memory, and thinks he’s Santa Claus – a very muscular Santa Claus. The movie tries to copy the formula of Kindergarten Cop by putting an action hero with a group of kids, but Arnold Schwarzenegger could play up his tough-guy image for laughs, while Hogan delivers his lines awkwardly, as if he’s reading them for the first time. Interestingly, one of the movie’s producers was Jordan Belfort, who would later be the subject of Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street. Unfortunately, that’s where any comparison to Scorsese’s work ends, as Santa With Muscles is a very different kind of film.

5. Surviving Christmas (2004)

Ben Affleck plays an ad executive who’s heartbroken after his girlfriend breaks up with him due to his fear of commitment. Alone for Christmas, he travels back to his childhood home and surprisingly pays the current owners – James Gandolfini and Catherine O’Hara – a quarter of a million dollars to pretend to be his family for the holidays. Affleck apparently realized the story was quite strange and decided to play his character as completely unhinged. While his character is meant to be depressed and lonely, Affleck’s performance is over-the-top, loud, and unusually cheerful – he’s constantly smiling and making exaggerated faces, reminiscent of Jim Carrey. It’s a very odd and bizarre portrayal. (And, like the movie Deck the Halls, this Christmas comedy includes an incest joke – actually, several of them. Why are incest jokes a recurring theme in Christmas comedies?)

4. Santa’s Christmas Elf (Named Calvin) (1971)

It’s a stretch to call this a Christmas movie. It’s more like a narrated puppet show featuring an elf named Calvin who constantly gets into trouble at the North Pole. Strictly speaking, it’s not a film, which is reason enough to question its inclusion. Plus, the puppets have a… unique look – they resemble inflatable dolls, which isn’t exactly the aesthetic you’d expect in a children’s Christmas special. But, that’s just one person’s opinion.

3. Saving Christmas (2014)

What truly defines the meaning of Christmas? Is it family, generosity, or religious observance? The film Saving Christmas argues that none of these capture the real spirit of the holiday. When Kirk Cameron’s brother-in-law, Darren Doane, expresses concern that their family has focused less on God and more on festivities – suggesting they could have used party funds to help those in need – Cameron strongly disagrees, accusing him of falling for a flawed way of thinking. He then launches into a long argument defending lavish spending and materialism, even claiming Doane is ruining Christmas for everyone. This is particularly ironic given that Cameron earlier stated Christmas inspires kindness and compassion. While the film’s message is unusual, it’s delivered in a remarkably dull way. Most of the 80-minute movie consists of Doane and Cameron simply talking in a parked car. Even if you agree with the film’s premise – that extravagant celebrations are the true meaning of Christmas – there are surely more engaging ways to convey that message than a lecture-like presentation.

2. Christmas With the Kranks (2004)

I have to say, Christmas With the Kranks really missed the mark for me, much like Saving Christmas. The movie centers around a couple, the Kranks, whose daughter is serving in the Peace Corps during the holidays. They decide to skip all the usual Christmas fuss and use the $6,000 they normally spend on decorations for a cruise instead. But their neighbors absolutely freak out and basically force them to participate in all the holiday traditions. It could have been a clever commentary on society, but instead, it’s just a really unfunny story that seems to say the Kranks are wrong for not giving in to peer pressure. Honestly, it’s just one depressing, slapstick gag after another – Tim Allen getting drenched, a Botox mishap that freezes his face… it just left me feeling like saying ‘Bah humbug!’

1. Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny (1972)

This incredibly low-budget Christmas movie features a Santa Claus who looks ridiculous – think a thin man in a bad wig, fake beard, and a poorly-made suit. To make matters worse, the movie throws in old footage from one of the director’s previous films. The plot? Santa’s sleigh gets stuck in the Florida sand right before Christmas, and instead of helping himself, he falls asleep and telepathically calls on local kids for assistance. It doesn’t make much sense.

This Santa is remarkably lazy; he spends the entire movie lounging on the beach while the children are sent on a bizarre quest to find animals – including a horse, a cow, and even a man dressed as a gorilla – to try and pull the sleigh free. He then wastes time – pretending to teach the kids about courage – by retelling the story of Jack and the Beanstalk. Consider yourself warned: this movie is a truly awful experience.

2025-12-02 00:30