It’s an indisputable fact that Christmas music is the most horrible music, as clearly demonstrated by the multitude of holiday songs incorporating onomatopoeia — click-click-click, thumpety thump-thump, pa-rum pa pum-pum.
Your dignity is diminished just by singing it. And the most awful film genre is Christmas films, with the exception of Die Hard and every movie written by Shane Black. It stands to reason that an Austin-based Christmas film is going to feature a whole lot of Christmas music, and indeed, Angels Sing has a cast that includes Harry Connick Jr., Lyle Lovett, Nashville‘s Connie Britton, Kris Kristofferson, and Willie Nelson.
So there’s a lot of onscreen music-making, some of it amazing, the rest Santa-related. Connick is Michael, a character to whom things happen. He hates Christmas as a result of post-traumatic stress from a horrible childhood incident.
After a near miss with a reindeer on a bike trail (srsly LOL), he has a chance encounter with a mysterious man named (sigh) Nick, whose mama presumably didn’t take the correct advice about what not to let your babies grow up to be, and probably smells like a jolly, sticky holiday nug.
Nick’s beautiful house is for sale, and on a miraculous whim, he agrees to sell it to Michael for half of its worth. Through circumstance, more passivity, and the jingly obstinacy of every other character, Michael is forced to acknowledge the joy of the season basically the way Papillon was forced to eat centipedes — there’s just no other way to survive.