America’s affection for conspiracy theories has evolved considerably over the years. What used to be fodder for the fringes found its way into the White House. The slow drip of falsehoods from the President’s Twitter account lends a weird feeling of nostalgia for the seemingly mundane claims of Bob Lazar, who made considerable news in 1989 when he came forward about his alleged work at the S-4 facility in Nevada, commonly associated with the Area 51. Jeremy Kenyon Lockyer Corbell’s new documentary Bob Lazar: Area 51 & Flying Saucers explores the man behind the UFOs.

Corbell begins his documentary by laying out his intentions, telling viewers that he seeks to “weaponize” their curiosity. The film is largely compromised of footage interviewing Lazar at his home alongside archival clips from when he first made his claims. Las Vegas news anchor and prominent UFO true believer George Knapp, who Corbell lists in the credits as a mentor, is also heavily featured. Most of Knapp’s scenes are featured via phone interviews with Corbell, where the focus almost always seems to be an effort to heighten Lazar’s credibility.

The notion of credibility was always destined to play a major role in a documentary like Area 51 & Flying Saucers. Lazar’s story experiences credibility problems on a number of levels, from the very notion that the government could keep such a secret for all these years to his inability to verify his claims of attending Cal Tech and M.I.T., neither of which have any record of his attendance. Lazar’s attempts to muddy the water as to his employment records leave a certain degree of ambiguity to a sympathetic audience, but the complete and utter lack of any piece of evidence that could credibly prove he took classes at either school is an issue that Corbell seems intent to dispose of as quickly as possible.

Corbell largely abandons any effort to objectively present Lazar’s story, at one point professing to Knapp that he finds that the evidence supporting his subject’s claims outweighs the many holes in his story. Almost everyone featured in the documentary, including Knapp, Lazar’s friends and family, and the director himself reports to believe his claims, a problem largely of Corbell’s own making. Corbell’s desire to “weaponize” his audience is undercut by his indifference toward trying to convince anyone watching who wasn’t a true believer already.

A reported FBI raid on Lazar’s house during the filming of the documentary further undercuts Corbell’s credibility. A dramatic sequence of a text message conversation about the raid starts off the movie before taking a backseat for much of the narrative. The raid is suggested to have been a government attempt to locate “atomic element 115,” but neither Lazar nor Corbell present any bit of proof to suggest that such a raid occurred, not even a disheveled house.

It’s one thing for a documentary to feature Lazar’s claims without necessarily getting to the bottom of any of them. That’s pretty much to be expected. Corbell destroys his own credibility by being far too eager to play along with Lazar’s stunts, relieving his audience of the obligation to take him seriously. Lazar can tell the audience to take it or leave it with regard to his claims, but that approach carries far less weight coming from the filmmaker himself.

Area 51 & Flying Saucers also features cutaways with pseudo-philosophical narrations by Mickey Rourke that sound like drunken Terrence Mallick impressions, complete with mumbles at the end of several passages. While the narration offers some well-placed comedic relief at times, it fails to tie any of the strands together, perhaps best illuminating the documentary’s core issue. Corbell managed to get Lazar to open up for the first time in years, but he doesn’t have anything particularly interesting to say. This is a film made for true believers. The rest of the audience may come away amused by Lazar’s antics, but Corbell wasted an opportunity to dive deeper into a fascinating subject.

The Christmas movie genre has hundreds of entries that play to similar themes, exploring the “true” meaning of the holiday or presenting new takes on Santa’s seminal sleigh ride. From its opening few minutes on, Elliot: The Littlest Reindeer makes clear that it doesn’t want to be governed by typical holiday film rules, casting out a wide net of issues to tackle in a ninety minute run time. Few seasonal movies care to take on broader geopolitical threats such as climate change and automation, but perhaps the North Pole shouldn’t be excluded from the crises that pose an existential threat to humanity.

The plot of Elliot: The Littlest Reindeer is best described as a blend between Olive, the Other Reindeer and the Triwizard Tournament section of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire with sprinkles of All the President’s Men on top. The main narrative driver appears to be the titular reindeer’s quest to replace the retiring Blitzen on Santa’s team, but the film has several subplots that take up much of the screen time. Samantha Bee steals the show with a performance as Elliot’s sidekick Hazel, a sardonic goat with a petulance for eating garbage who supplies most of the film’s best moments.

Most Christmas movies require a hefty helping of suspension of disbelief in order to digest the neatly tied up resolution at the end. Elliot: The Littlest Reindeer never seems satisfied with this device, instead choosing to explain just about every mystery of the North Pole. We learn how reindeers fly, why reindeers are specifically used to pull the sleigh, as well as the inner workings of human/animal communication. None of the exposition is particularly necessary, but there’s something oddly endearing in the film’s attempt to justify every piece of magic deployed.

The film operates with an acute awareness of the duel demographics of its audience. Films marketed to young children are inevitably also watched by their accompanying parents. From an early parody of Braveheart to a Gwyneth Paltrow divorce reference, the movie consistently offers up material that will sail right over the heads of its target base. Some might knock Elliot for shedding commentary on athletic doping kids won’t understand, but Christmas is a holiday that can’t be neatly packaged to age-specific groups. The genre as a whole is consumed in family settings. There’s something endearing in the lengths to which Elliot: The Littlest Reindeer goes to appease parents who are dragged along for the ride.

The scattershot approach creates an unwieldy narrative that will largely be lost on the young children to whom Elliot and Hazel are marketed toward, but the result is a movie that wins over its audience through its sheer force of will. The narrative parallels Elliot’s own perseverance in its effort to throw everything resembling a plot at the wall, hoping something might stick. The film is often a complete mess, but too few Christmas movies offer more than a few things to talk about after their conclusion. You could spend hours discussing the broad socioeconomic positions the Elliot takes over the course of its runtime, something that can hardly be said for most holiday movies. The film makes a sincere effort to ease the suffering that parents are expected to endure on behalf of their young children’s holiday cheer. If for any other reason, it’s worth a watch this Christmas season.