Clark Duke and Robin Williams in A Merry Friggin’ Christmas (eOne Entertainment)

One has hope that when a Christmas movie comes out, it can be added to the admittedly small canon of actually good Christmas movies. One also has hope that one of Robin Williams’s last films before his untimely passing will turn out to be one for the ages and not, say, Steve McQueen in The Hunter. Alas, hope can be fleeting, and when the white glare of reality shines on A Merry Friggin’ Christmas, one will say it is a flabby hodgepodge of rank sentimentality buttressed against a sadly desperate attempt at edgy humor.

Joel McHale of Community plays Boyd Mitchler, a neurotic but loving dad whose father, the boorish, drunken Mitch (Williams), decimated his belief in Santa at a very young age. Boyd is desperate to make sure his young son retains his innocence regarding the jolly old man as long as possible. Of course, circumstances dictate that the family spends Christmas with Mitch and the rest of the brood, which is something Boyd has avoided for years. One can imagine the culture clash between Boyd’s picture-perfect suburban family and the rest of the Mitchler clan, who are loud, loutish, and inappropriate. Actually, one doesn’t have to imagine it, because you’ve actually seen it a billion times… in much better films.

The plot kicks into gear after Boyd arrives at his folks’ place, and not long before midnight on Christmas Eve, he realizes he’s left his son’s present at home, which is a four-hour drive. So, he heads out and, as a plot contrivance has it, ends up sharing a ride with his estranged dad and his comically naïve brother, Nelson (Clark Duke’s performance is one of the few amusing things in the picture). They have adventures. They bond. They make up. You know the drill.

There is an attempt to give the women (Lauren Graham as Boyd’s wife and Candice Bergen as his mom) something to do. That something is to get drunk and go through things in the attic. ’Cause that’s what you do when your menfolk are out on Christmas Eve.

It’s a shame because everyone here is vastly talented. They try, but they are like a collective Sisyphus moving this 10-ton weight up a hill. There is nothing they can do with the hoary script. Williams gives it a go and gets some good jabs in and seems to relish being mean, but eventually he is forced to play his overdone sentimental side of his oeuvre and ends up as Patch Adams with three-day stubble. Candice Bergen survives with her dignity intact as one would suspect, but the wonderful Lauren Graham, one of the deftest verbal comediennes around, is utterly wasted. The funniest thing she gets to is a pratfall. It’s a pretty good one, but still.

This mess was directed by Tristam Shapeero, a TV director whose credits include Children’s Hospital, Community, and the hilarious British sketch show Smack the Pony. But here, set-ups just fall flat time and time again. An occasional secondary character shines: the sweet, open-faced, eternally optimistic state trooper who Boyd keeps getting tickets from; Boyd’s Iranian house sitter, who ends up bringing his entire clan to stay. But then you have mystifying choices such as an alcoholic and homeless Santa (Oliver Platt, utterly wasted), who keeps popping up for no reason.

I can think of many Christmas references to describe what this film is like, a lump of coal in your stocking or the horrible sweater you have to return, but then I would sink to the level of cliché found in this film. So, I will end just by saying, this is a bad film. A very bad film.