Review: “On Strike for Christmas” (2010)

Daphne Zuniga wears some genuinely cute skirts and boots throughout, with an overall nice wardrobe.

The rest of the cast sticks to basic jeans, sweaters, and scarves appropriate for a Bay Area Christmas.

This isn’t a romance — it’s a family story about an overwhelmed mother who goes on strike against her ungrateful husband and twin sons.

Joy organizes a holiday protest that spreads to other women in town, forcing everyone to confront their assumptions about family roles and responsibilities.

Here’s my issue: Joy has had 18 YEARS to train her boys properly. Eighteen years to raise them into the considerate, helpful men she now demands they become. And if her husband didn’t learn these lessons from his own mother, she had nearly two decades to expose him to proper “husbandry” alongside the boys.

The Bible says to “train up a child in the way he should go,” and there’s wisdom in that instruction.

You don’t wait until they’re eighteen and heading to college in six months to START teaching them. That ship has sailed.

Are the husband and sons taking advantage of her? Absolutely. One hundred percent. But whose fault is that? She ALLOWED their dependence year after year. She ENJOYED being needed to that extent. And now, suddenly overwhelmed, she blames THEM for the dynamic SHE created?

This is the fundamental flaw in the feminist “men are inherently sexist pigs” narrative this movie pushes.

Personal responsibility matters.

You can’t create a problem through years of enabling behavior and then act shocked when people behave exactly as you’ve trained them to.

Since this wasn’t a romance, there was no “first kiss.”

Rated TV-14 for light swearing like “jackass.”

Otherwise family-appropriate, though the underlying feminist messaging may grate on viewers who believe in personal accountability.

To the film’s credit, Julia Duffy’s character (Joy’s mother) serves as the voice of reason, pointing out Joy’s own errors alongside the family’s shortcomings.

This prevents the movie from becoming a complete “men are terrible” screed, even if it doesn’t go far enough in acknowledging Joy’s responsibility for creating this mess.

And here’s another thing: When you declare a strike and tell everyone you’re not doing anything anymore, you don’t then get to critique HOW they handle things.

If they hire caterers, shop online for gifts, or send e-cards instead of hand-written notes — that’s their choice. You abdicated control, remember?

I found myself siding with the men throughout this battle-of-the-sexes tale, which probably tells you everything you need to know about my perspective.

This isn’t one I’ll ever watch again.

My critique has nothing to do with the actors — as I said, I generally like Daphne Zuniga.

This is purely about the message, which fundamentally misunderstands how family dynamics work and who bears responsibility for creating them.

If you enjoy feminist takes on Christmas where men are portrayed as inherently thoughtless and women as perpetual victims of male negligence, this might work for you.

If you believe parents bear responsibility (even if just partial responsibility) for the adults their children become, you’ll likely share my frustration.