December finds us in the heat of the Holiday Movie Season, as a selection of the year's biggest movies outside of the Summer make their way into theaters to take advantage of the Holiday Break and family outings to the movies. There's usually a slight slant toward family entertainment this time of year (although not necessarily, as we may see this year), as well as larger movies that may have awards season hopes. Among the December movies of most note this year include the second part of Peter Jackson's epic trilogy adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG; ANCHORMAN 2: THE LEGEND CONTINUES, the sequel to the 2004 comedy cult classic; SAVING MR. BANKS, Disney's Oscar-hopeful of the behind-the-scenes story of adapting P.L. Travers' children's book, Mary Poppins; and a couple of Oscar-heavyweight glitzy period-crime films, David O. Russell's AMERICAN HUSTLE and Martin Scorcese's THE WOLF OF WALL STREET.
THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG (FANTASY/ACTION-ADVENTURE)
Opening December 13th
Starring: Martin Freeman, Richard Armitage, Ian McKellen, Orlando Bloom, Evangeline Lily, Luke Evans, Mikael Persbrandt, Lee Pace, Benedict Cumberbatch
PG-13 for extended sequences of intense fantasy action violence, and frightening images.
Peter Jackson continues his three-part adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, following his $1 billion-grossing first part from last year, as the Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman), the titular hobbit, continues his journey with the band of dwarves to reclaim their homeland of Erebor, currently held in the greedy possession of the dragon Smaug. Meanwhile, Gandalf (Ian McKellen), their wizard counsel, is taken away to investigate the Necromancer, as mysteriously introduced in the first part. THE LORD OF THE RINGS-favorite Legolas (Orlando Bloom) makes a return as one of the Elves of Mirkwood, who the band of dwarves encounter on less than friendly terms, and the action quotient appears higher this time which can only be a good thing, following the "dinner party in real time scene" of the first film. I think that now we can be assured that this isn't quite LOTR, but that's okay, as long as it's a decent adventure on its own terms, and better than its part-one predecessor.
TYLER PERRY'S A MADEA CHRISTMAS (COMEDY/DRAMA)
Opening December 13th
Starring: Tyler Perry, Chad Michael Murray, Tika Sumpter, Kathy Najimy, Larry the Cable Guy
PG-13 for sexual references, crude humor and language.
Tyler Perry returns as his trademark character, loud-talking "mad black woman" Madea, this time taking a trip to the country with a friend to see her friend's estranged daughter a surprise visit over the holidays. Naturally, relationship revelations arise and Madea dispenses her take-no-prisoners form of urban wisdom. If you liked the previous Madea films, I'm sure you'll like this one, but their hardly art, are they?
ANCHORMAN 2: THE LEGEND CONTINUES (COMEDY)
Opening December 18th
Starring:
Will Ferrell, Paul Rudd, Steve Carell, David Koechner, Christina
Applegate, Kristen Wiig, Fred Willard, James Marsden, Harrison Ford,
Vince Vaughn
PG-13 for crude and sexual content, drug use, language and comic violence.
The
Channel 4 News Team is getting back together for the 24-hour cable news
circuit, anchored by the legendary Ron Burgundy (Will Ferrell), as they
get into 1980s New York-style hijinks. The plot is probably minimal,
to make way for the jokes, which, with a PG-13 rating, won't be quite as
wild as those in the Unrated DVD that made the original a
post-theatrical release hit, but expect plenty of stupidity, vulgarity
and political incorrectness regardless. There aren't really any great
sequels to comedies though, so we'll just have to wait and see how this
super-hyped comedy pseudo-epic turns out.
AMERICAN HUSTLE (CRIME DRAMA)
Opening Nationwide December 20th
Starring: Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper, Jeremy Renner
R for pervasive language, some sexual content and brief violence.
This fictional ensemble crime drama from Oscar-darling David O. Russell stars Christian Bale as a brilliant conman forced to cooperate with Bradley Cooper as a wild-card FBI agent in infiltrating the world of Jersey powerbrokers and the Mafia in the 1970s, as politics and heated relationships play into the mix. Glitzy, glamorous and with a spectacular cast of Russell's latest greatest hits (Lawrence won an Oscar for Russell's SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK, alongside Cooper and Robert De Niro; Bale won an Oscar in Russell's THE FIGHTER, alongside Adams), this will probably be a strong, if "honorary" presence at the coming awards season, and will hopefully be a novel yet familiar crime story.
WALKING WITH DINOSAURS 3D (ADVENTURE/FAMILY)
Opening December 20th
Starring: Justin Long (voice), John Leguizamo (voice), Tiya Sircar (voice), Skyler Stone (voice)
PG for creature action and peril, and mild rude humor.
Inspired by the 1999 BBC documentary miniseries Walking With Dinosaurs, this family feature starring computer-animated dinosaur characters over live-action footage tells the story of three Pachyrhinosaurus, each accompanied by voice-over narratives, as the grow up and become leaders of the herd during the Late Cretaceous Period. By the time this one comes out, Disney's family film juggernaut FROZEN will have well wound down, so it may be a decent option for family audiences, but frankly, it looks like little more than a semi-interesting trifle.
SAVING MR. BANKS (DRAMA/COMEDY)
Opening Nationwide December 20
Starring: Emma Thompson, Tom Hanks, Paul Giamatti, Colin Farrell, Jason Schwarztman, B.J. Novak
PG-13 for thematic elements including some unsettling images.
Based on the true-life events behind the making of Walt Disney's classic 1964 Academy Award-winner MARY POPPINS, this film is the story of how Walt Disney (played by Tom Hanks) courted Mrs. P.L. Travers (Emma Thompson) for the right to adapt her book, Mary Poppins, for film. This is the first real awards season-bait that Disney has released as a "Disney" film in quite a while (the only one in recent memory), but is also likely to do pretty strong business with older families, as a feel-good, PG-13-rated Disney dramedy. I don't think it will do well for the "big awards," I don't think the Hollywood elite take it seriously enough for those, but it has a good shot at a pair of Oscars (nominations at the very least) for its two stars. It doesn't look like that serious, complex look at these two persons that it could be, but its apparently easygoing gait gives it a wider appeal, and it looks like a nice feel-good film.
47 RONIN (ACTION-ADVENTURE/FANTASY)
Opening December 25th
Starring: Keanu Reeves, Hiroyuki Sanada
PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, some disturbing images, and thematic elements.
A fantastical take on the national legend of Japan, the Forty-Seven Ronin, rogue samurai in Feudal Japan, seeking honor through vengeance after a cruel lord kills their master and has them banished, this film has had a disastrous production history, initially intended for release in November 2012, and then this past February, before finally being completed ahead of time for this Christmas. It would have been cool to have a big-budget samurai adventure film, but unfortunately, this doesn't look like the one we want, starring Keanu Reeves has a half-English/half-Japanese samurai, because there has to be a half-white guy for us to focus on, and after being apparently mismanaged by a first-time director, then heavily edited and re-shot under studio instructions, this just doesn't seem worth the time.
GRUDGE MATCH (SPORTS ACTION-COMEDY)
Opening December 25th
Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Robert De Niro, Kevin Hart, Alan Arkin, Kim Basinger
PG-13 for sports action violence, sexual content and language.
The "senior citizen comedy" seems to be a bit of a rising sub-genre of film lately, this following last month's LAST VEGAS (also starring De Niro), and there's also a trend of old-school action stars sending up their cinematic reputations, and GRUDGE MATCH is combining both trends. Stallone and De Niro, each famous for their roles in boxing movies, ROCKY and RAGING BULL, respectively, star as washed-up boxing icons who re-enter the ring after thirty years, to finally settle a botched match for the title. Expect plenty of GRUMPY OLD MEN-style jokes about medications, hip replacements and erectile dysfunction, but probably an okay, if unremarkable, comedy/homage.
THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY (COMEDY-DRAMA/ADVENTURE)
Opening December 25th
Starring: Ben Stiller, Kristen Wiig, Adam Scott, Sean Penn
PG for some crude comments, language and action violence.
Based on the classic short story by James Thurber, Walter Mitty (Stiller, who also directs) is a milquetoast desk jockey who daydreams of grand adventure, and is now thrust into a global-scale adventure to find a missing picture needed for the final issue of Life magazine, where he works. The early reports from film festivals have been divisive, with some loving it and others thoroughly underwhelmed, with a majority of the latter. Stiller's directed some pretty good stuff like TROPIC THUNDER, but this is slightly more serious fare than he's dealt with in the past, which could produce an issue, but the advertising is mostly focused on the film's hallucinogen-style imagery. With a surprise PG-rating though, it could be a decent draw for families.
JUSTIN BIEBER'S BELIEVE (CONCERT/DOCUMENTARY)
Opening December 25th
Starring: Justin Bieber
PG for brief language and mild thematic material.
This concert-documentary about the "behind-the-scenes" life of pop star Justin Bieber knows the audience it's aiming for, and it simply doesn't care if you're one of the naysayers. Personally, I have nothing against Bieber, except that he's Canadian, but we should pity him for that. He's not a uniquely negative influence on his youth audience, and at least on occasion, he seems to have a decent sense of self-deprecating humor. Either way, this is an obvious case of a film that you already know whether or not you'll like it.
THE WOLF OF WALL STREET (BIOPIC/CRIME-COMEDY)
Opening December 25th
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Matthew McConaughey, Jonah Hill
R for sequences of strong sexual content, graphic nudity, drug use and language throughout, and for some violence.
After a botched initial release date from November 15, due to an excessive running time of early cuts and difficulty in editing the film to avoid an undesirable NC-17 rating, Martin Scorcese's biographical epic black comedy about Jordan Belfort, a New York stockbroker swept up in a huge Wall Street corruption case in which he refuses to cooperate, is finally coming out Christmas Day. This one looks excellent, full of caustic humor and moral depravity, like a GOODFELLAS of our day when Wall Street irresponsibility appears so frequently in the news. Leo will probably be nominated for the Best Actor Oscar again, too (no, of course he won't win).
Friday, December 6, 2013
25 Days: Santa Claus (1959- The Mexican One)
Typically, Santa's job description merely entails delivering gifts to all the children of the world all in one night, but sometimes Santa must fight the eternal battle of good vs. evil against the Devil himself:
SANTA CLAUS (FANTASY/CHILDREN, 1959)
Directed by Rene Cardona (U.S. Dubbing by K. Gordon Murray)
Starring Jose Elias Moreno, Jose Luis Aguirre, Lupita Quezadas
Not Rated (G-level, Nothing Likely to Offend)
Naughty or Nice?: Nice
Religious or Secular?: Quite a Bit of Both
Cynical or Sentimental?: Very Sentimental
Holiday Relations: Christmas is Integral to the Plot
OVERALL: 0 out of 4
If you know anything at all about this strange holiday confection from South of the Border, it's probably that this is that one Santa movie that also has Satan in it. You've probably seen it listed somewhere on Netflix or listed with terrible Christmas movies. It's the one with Santa Claus on it, and a bright red guy with a goatee and horns, with fire all around. That is the movie we're talking about here.
You can no longer see the film in its entirety, as it was slightly edited from its original release in Mexico when it played in the United States, and all the available formats for the film are transferred from those theatrical prints that have since aged and worn something terrible. Honestly though, the film required some editing anyway. If you do watch it, it's very much recommended that you either watch it via the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode from Season 5, or with your own movie-riffing buddies. This is a terrible movie.
Set on a Christmas Eve, Santa Claus (Jose Elias Moreno) is hard at work keeping tabs on his child slaves as they build toys for Santa from all around the world. No, okay, so the movie doesn't actually acknowledge these children as slaves, but they seem to fill what is typically the role of Santa's elves, and in a surprisingly extended stretch of time, Santa plays an organ (occasionally with disturbing enthusiasm), which brings up video images of all his children "helpers" from around the world. To get that ball rolling, we see Santa's little helpers in Africa, who sing and dance with drums, painted faces and bones in their hair. Nice. That's the most blatantly racist moment, but then there's also the belly dancing little girls of "The Orient" and a wide
collection of other stereotypes. Only making it so much funnier, is the fact that almost every child in this film appears utterly unhappy to be there, even when the narrator (U.S. distributor/dubbing director, K. Gordon Murray) is quite insistent that whatever child onscreen is meant to be happy. The narrator is on of the best parts, present throughout, offering commentary and shouting advice to the onscreen characters. It's funny that MST3K did an episode of it, because SANTA CLAUS already has someone shouting at the screen.
SANTA CLAUS is full of unnecessarily extended moments like Santa's organ-playing, and like that the bizarre ballet that is occurring simultaneously down in the depths of Hell (keep in mind that these were the 1950s, and most people were still of the persuasion that Hell was full of homosexuals). Down in Hell, we meet Pitch (Jose Luis Aguirre), the film's villain who, like the rest of his satanic pals frolicking happily in Hell, has bright crimson skin, horns, a black goatee, and wears pantaloons with tights. In case you didn't catch on, he's about as evil as evil gets. He's not the boss in Hell though; that would be Lucifer, who is heard from offscreen as he orders Pitch to travel to Earth and finally turn all the world's children to evil and against Santa Claus. If Pitch fails, Lucifer warns, he will be forced to eat nothing but chocolate ice cream! So Pitch travels up to Earth and appears out of nowhere beside three brothers looking through a Christmas shop window, and whispers in their ears to throw a rock through the window. The result is one of the film's best moments, when the rock shatters the window and hits... Santa Claus! Right in the face, too, where he stands in his celestial palace watching down on Earth, with his most trusted child slaves/servants/helpers, and Merlin (yes, that Merlin).
There's a couple of other children on Earth who Pitch is especially intent on tempting (eww...) but will not be so easily persuaded (yes, Lucifer wanted him to turn all the children of the world, but Pitch has a limit of five at a time, I guess). There's Billy (Antonio Diaz Conde hijo), the son of wealthy parents who rarely send time with him, so he has dreams about opening presents on Christmas morning to find his parent inside them. The other, and primary focus of the film, is Lupita (Lupita Quezadas), a dreadfully somber little girl who wants a doll more than anything, but her family can barely afford dirt. Pitch is intent on getting Lupita to steal a doll, but to the narrator's relief, is consistently unsuccessful.
As Santa prepares to go on his annual journey to Earth to deliver presents to the children of the world who have been good (i.e. not the poor, who are always naughty in the Santa story, expect Lupita, who Santa will have to deliver to because there are cameras watching), his spectacularly creepy mechanical flying reindeer are wound up and he goes about his rounds, with Mexico City being the only place of importance.
Throughout the night, Pitch attempts to ruin everything for Santa, convincing the naughty three brothers to stay up and try to capture Santa, stealing Santa's magic sleep inducing dust and his magic flower that turns him invisible, but Santa, that clever guy, consistently prevails. Lupita gets a doll, Billy's parents give him the time of day and Pitch gets doused with a fire hose (and presumably is tortured with chocolate ice cream in Hell). The end.
Sounds good, huh? No it doesn't, and no, it's not.
SANTA CLAUS (FANTASY/CHILDREN, 1959)Directed by Rene Cardona (U.S. Dubbing by K. Gordon Murray)
Starring Jose Elias Moreno, Jose Luis Aguirre, Lupita Quezadas
Not Rated (G-level, Nothing Likely to Offend)
Naughty or Nice?: Nice
Religious or Secular?: Quite a Bit of Both
Cynical or Sentimental?: Very Sentimental
Holiday Relations: Christmas is Integral to the Plot
OVERALL: 0 out of 4
If you know anything at all about this strange holiday confection from South of the Border, it's probably that this is that one Santa movie that also has Satan in it. You've probably seen it listed somewhere on Netflix or listed with terrible Christmas movies. It's the one with Santa Claus on it, and a bright red guy with a goatee and horns, with fire all around. That is the movie we're talking about here.
You can no longer see the film in its entirety, as it was slightly edited from its original release in Mexico when it played in the United States, and all the available formats for the film are transferred from those theatrical prints that have since aged and worn something terrible. Honestly though, the film required some editing anyway. If you do watch it, it's very much recommended that you either watch it via the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode from Season 5, or with your own movie-riffing buddies. This is a terrible movie.
Set on a Christmas Eve, Santa Claus (Jose Elias Moreno) is hard at work keeping tabs on his child slaves as they build toys for Santa from all around the world. No, okay, so the movie doesn't actually acknowledge these children as slaves, but they seem to fill what is typically the role of Santa's elves, and in a surprisingly extended stretch of time, Santa plays an organ (occasionally with disturbing enthusiasm), which brings up video images of all his children "helpers" from around the world. To get that ball rolling, we see Santa's little helpers in Africa, who sing and dance with drums, painted faces and bones in their hair. Nice. That's the most blatantly racist moment, but then there's also the belly dancing little girls of "The Orient" and a wide
 |
| It's Satan O' Clock- Do you know where your children are? |
SANTA CLAUS is full of unnecessarily extended moments like Santa's organ-playing, and like that the bizarre ballet that is occurring simultaneously down in the depths of Hell (keep in mind that these were the 1950s, and most people were still of the persuasion that Hell was full of homosexuals). Down in Hell, we meet Pitch (Jose Luis Aguirre), the film's villain who, like the rest of his satanic pals frolicking happily in Hell, has bright crimson skin, horns, a black goatee, and wears pantaloons with tights. In case you didn't catch on, he's about as evil as evil gets. He's not the boss in Hell though; that would be Lucifer, who is heard from offscreen as he orders Pitch to travel to Earth and finally turn all the world's children to evil and against Santa Claus. If Pitch fails, Lucifer warns, he will be forced to eat nothing but chocolate ice cream! So Pitch travels up to Earth and appears out of nowhere beside three brothers looking through a Christmas shop window, and whispers in their ears to throw a rock through the window. The result is one of the film's best moments, when the rock shatters the window and hits... Santa Claus! Right in the face, too, where he stands in his celestial palace watching down on Earth, with his most trusted child slaves/servants/helpers, and Merlin (yes, that Merlin).
There's a couple of other children on Earth who Pitch is especially intent on tempting (eww...) but will not be so easily persuaded (yes, Lucifer wanted him to turn all the children of the world, but Pitch has a limit of five at a time, I guess). There's Billy (Antonio Diaz Conde hijo), the son of wealthy parents who rarely send time with him, so he has dreams about opening presents on Christmas morning to find his parent inside them. The other, and primary focus of the film, is Lupita (Lupita Quezadas), a dreadfully somber little girl who wants a doll more than anything, but her family can barely afford dirt. Pitch is intent on getting Lupita to steal a doll, but to the narrator's relief, is consistently unsuccessful.
 |
| Mechanical Reindeer: The true villains of the movie. |
Throughout the night, Pitch attempts to ruin everything for Santa, convincing the naughty three brothers to stay up and try to capture Santa, stealing Santa's magic sleep inducing dust and his magic flower that turns him invisible, but Santa, that clever guy, consistently prevails. Lupita gets a doll, Billy's parents give him the time of day and Pitch gets doused with a fire hose (and presumably is tortured with chocolate ice cream in Hell). The end.
Sounds good, huh? No it doesn't, and no, it's not.
Thursday, December 5, 2013
25 Days: BAD SANTA
Not everyone enjoys the holidays, but luckily, Hollywood is full of Jews perfectly willing to provide the anit-Christmas movies to vent our frustrations through. No, but seriously...
BAD SANTA (COMEDY/CRIME, 2003)
Directed by Terry Zwigoff
Starring Billy Bob Thornton, Tony Cox, Bernie Mac, John Ritter, Lauren Graham, Bret Kelly, Lauren Thom, Cloris Leachman
R for pervasive language, strong sexual content and some violence.
Naughty or Nice?: Very, Very Naughty
Religious or Secular?: Mostly Secular, With Some Religion
Cynical or Sentimental?: Very Cynical
Holiday Relations: Christmas is Integral to the Plot
OVERALL: 3 out of 4
Willie T. Stokes is one of the nastiest, most disgusting, most morally reprehensible characters ever committed to film. At a different shopping mall each year, Willie (Billy Bob Thornton) and his 92-pound accomplice Marcus (Tony Cox) take up jobs as Santa Claus and his Little Helper, respectively, so that come Christmas Eve, they can shut down the security system and loot the safes of all of their holiday loot. Unfortunately, Willie is dreadfully undisciplined, and only getting worse, but Marcus is dependent on Willie for his skill in cracking safes. As Santa Claus, Willie is little short of a traumatic experience for the children who sit on his lap, frequently holding a bottle of alcohol, with much more besides in his system, swearing, speaking vulgarly and crossly, and prone to urinate all over himself whilst sitting in the Santa throne. This year, Willie and Marcus take up shop in a mall in Phoenix, Arizona, managed by the prudish Mr. Bob Chipeska (John Ritter, in his last live-action film role), who quickly regrets hiring the pair when he hears Willie swearing and making inappropriate remarks, and even more so when he overhears him "fornicating" with a woman in the dressing rooms, but Marcus threatens to sue for discrimination if their fired, so Chipeska assigns his head of security, Gin (Bernie Mac) to keep tabs on the pair. Meanwhile, Willie is approached by an obese and spectacularly naive boy (Brett Kelly) who seems to think that Willie is the real Santa, and who later saves Willie from being raped in the mall parking lot. The kid takes Willie to his house, where he lets Willie know that there are no parents home, and it turns out that the kid lives in a luxurious mansion with only his senile grandmother (Cloris Leachman) for company, so Willie decides to stick around.
The plot is kind of a mishmash going in a dozen different directions, like a circus of depravity and criminality, occasionally colliding with the naive. It's a comedy both in the contemporary sense and in the manner of the Greek theatre, based in satire through dramatic irony, and the protagonist learns nothing from his experiences. Not really, anyway. Willie comes to care for the kid in a loose sense, and beats up some bullies who've been picking on the kid, an experience which he shares poetically: "I beat the shit out of some kids today. But it was for a
purpose. It made me feel good about myself. It was like I did something
constructive with my life or something, I dunno, like I accomplished
something."
The kid is heartbreakingly funny, as the film's most sympathetic character, and in the running for most pathetic (honestly, there's a few very strong contenders though), as a lonely and none-too-bright fat kid who's desperate enough to invite an alcoholic Santa to live with him while his dad is in prison. It's this sort of thing though that makes BAD SANTA a bit of a difficult watch at times, because the lines between what's funny and what is just mean and nasty are consistently blurred. Because of this, not to mention the continuous profanity and crudity, it's clearly not for everyone; but when you're dealing with something so overtly sentimentalized and revered as Christmas, it is refreshing to see it torn to pieces and used as toilet paper by what has been aptly described as MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET's evil twin.
BAD SANTA (COMEDY/CRIME, 2003)Directed by Terry Zwigoff
Starring Billy Bob Thornton, Tony Cox, Bernie Mac, John Ritter, Lauren Graham, Bret Kelly, Lauren Thom, Cloris Leachman
R for pervasive language, strong sexual content and some violence.
Naughty or Nice?: Very, Very Naughty
Religious or Secular?: Mostly Secular, With Some Religion
Cynical or Sentimental?: Very Cynical
Holiday Relations: Christmas is Integral to the Plot
OVERALL: 3 out of 4
Willie T. Stokes is one of the nastiest, most disgusting, most morally reprehensible characters ever committed to film. At a different shopping mall each year, Willie (Billy Bob Thornton) and his 92-pound accomplice Marcus (Tony Cox) take up jobs as Santa Claus and his Little Helper, respectively, so that come Christmas Eve, they can shut down the security system and loot the safes of all of their holiday loot. Unfortunately, Willie is dreadfully undisciplined, and only getting worse, but Marcus is dependent on Willie for his skill in cracking safes. As Santa Claus, Willie is little short of a traumatic experience for the children who sit on his lap, frequently holding a bottle of alcohol, with much more besides in his system, swearing, speaking vulgarly and crossly, and prone to urinate all over himself whilst sitting in the Santa throne. This year, Willie and Marcus take up shop in a mall in Phoenix, Arizona, managed by the prudish Mr. Bob Chipeska (John Ritter, in his last live-action film role), who quickly regrets hiring the pair when he hears Willie swearing and making inappropriate remarks, and even more so when he overhears him "fornicating" with a woman in the dressing rooms, but Marcus threatens to sue for discrimination if their fired, so Chipeska assigns his head of security, Gin (Bernie Mac) to keep tabs on the pair. Meanwhile, Willie is approached by an obese and spectacularly naive boy (Brett Kelly) who seems to think that Willie is the real Santa, and who later saves Willie from being raped in the mall parking lot. The kid takes Willie to his house, where he lets Willie know that there are no parents home, and it turns out that the kid lives in a luxurious mansion with only his senile grandmother (Cloris Leachman) for company, so Willie decides to stick around.
 |
| Yup. |
The kid is heartbreakingly funny, as the film's most sympathetic character, and in the running for most pathetic (honestly, there's a few very strong contenders though), as a lonely and none-too-bright fat kid who's desperate enough to invite an alcoholic Santa to live with him while his dad is in prison. It's this sort of thing though that makes BAD SANTA a bit of a difficult watch at times, because the lines between what's funny and what is just mean and nasty are consistently blurred. Because of this, not to mention the continuous profanity and crudity, it's clearly not for everyone; but when you're dealing with something so overtly sentimentalized and revered as Christmas, it is refreshing to see it torn to pieces and used as toilet paper by what has been aptly described as MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET's evil twin.
Wednesday, December 4, 2013
25 Days: THE POLAR EXPRESS
Sentimentality is part of a grand tradition in Christmas movies, for better or worse (but as we've shown and will show, that often gives way to "anti-sentimentality"), but there's at least a couple movies that have been known to take even that much too far... and people seem to like it:
THE POLAR EXPRESS (FANTASY/ANIMATED, 2004)
Directed by Robert Zemeckis
Starring Tom Hanks, Nona Gaye, Peter Scolari, Eddie Deezen, Leslie Zemeckis, Michael Jeter, Daryl Sabara (voice only), Jimmy Bennett (voice only)
G
Naughty or Nice?: Generally Nice
Religious or Secular?: Secular
Cynical or Sentimental?: Extremely Sentimental
Holiday Relations: Christmas is Integral to the Plot
OVERALL: 2 out of 4
THE POLAR EXPRESS turned out to be a really significant landmark in filmmaking, although perhaps not in the positive sense that its makers had hoped for. It was through THE POLAR EXPRESS that the limitations of hyper-realistic computer animation became apparent and the term "uncanny valley," originally coined in the 1970s in the robotics field, came into regular usage for film. The term, uncanny valley, refers to the area between artificial humanity that is highly stylized (i.e. anthropomorphized non-human characters, two-dimensional images) and what is actually "human." That area in between, the uncanny valley, is where something is "almost human," something that looks as human as possible without actually being human, and the human emotional response is negative, like looking at a dead body moving around. This is THE POLAR EXPRESS' great legacy to date, as it is the textbook example of this unflattering phenomenon, and yet, while I do not like the film, it isn't so much for the uncanny valley, although it doesn't help.
Adapting the 32 page-long, illustration-heavy children's book of the same name by Chris Van Allsburg, the screenplay by director Robert Zemeckis and William Broyles, Jr. (the latter having written Zemeckis' previous film, CAST AWAY) follows an unnamed child (identified as "Hero Boy" in the credits; performance by Tom Hanks, voiced by Daryl Sabara) who may have reached the extent of his belief in Santa Claus one unspecified 1950s Christmas Eve when a steam locomotive roars to a stop outside his house. Hosted by a cantankerous conductor (performance & voice by Hanks), the train is The Polar Express, a magic train tasked with rounding up a specific selection of deserving and/or "at risk" children for a trip to the North Pole on Christmas Eve, to send Santa (performance & voice by Hanks, again) off and for one to receive the "First Gift of Christmas." Along the way, the lead boy befriends a faithful girl (performance & voice by Nona Gaye) for whom the words "Are you sure?" are like "Klaatu Barada Nikto" to Gort, an impoverished and hopelessly depressed wanker-boy named Billy (performance by Peter Scolari, voice by Jimmy Bennett), and a loud-mouthed know-it-all (performance & voice by Eddie Deezen), just in case this movie's disdain for logic isn't clear enough already. To had another character to Hanks' collection, there's also a hobo ghost, "The King of the North Pole," who lives on the train and shows up occasionally to save the main character's ass then act creepy.
Like the book, the film intends to get by mostly on its visuals, but whenever those visuals are the characters, the effect is negative. When the film distracts itself almost entirely from the meager plot is when the film is most entertaining, with some spectacular "fly-through" shots that must be amazing in 3D screenings, such as a loose ticket carried away by the wind and then passed along by animals and elements, and the "subjective roller-coaster" shots from the front view of speeding vehicles.
The fact is though, that for many audiences, especially young families and/or Christmas die-hards, THE POLAR EXPRESS just may be the ideal Christmas movie. It's family-friendly, and any single ounce of cynicism is quickly trounced under heaping disapproval. It is one of the schmaltziest major Christmas movies ever made. Santa is real, the poor boy gets his Christmas present (and friends!), and the doubter learns to believe again... for the rest of his life!
For just about anyone who's ever had anything short of a perfect holiday (i.e. gone Christmas shopping) though, it is a little hard to stomach. I mean, besides the characters looking creepy, and frequently acting creepy, it's almost insultingly sentimental, with out any respect for intelligence. I know it's a "children's movie," but that hardly makes a good excuse for a movie that brazenly ridicules logic and critical thought, primarily embodied in the so-called "Know-It-All Kid," who's about as close to an antagonist as the film gets. Even if that's honestly not a problem for you, for some reason, there's a creepy train hobo who speaks in macabre riddles, and the elves all speak with East Coast accents and look like what any other movie might call goblins. It's just kind of a yucky movie.
But if you love it, don't let me ruin it for you; just please don't assume me a Grinch for disliking it. Assume me a Grinch for not liking Christmas.
Directed by Robert Zemeckis
Starring Tom Hanks, Nona Gaye, Peter Scolari, Eddie Deezen, Leslie Zemeckis, Michael Jeter, Daryl Sabara (voice only), Jimmy Bennett (voice only)
G
Naughty or Nice?: Generally Nice
Religious or Secular?: Secular
Cynical or Sentimental?: Extremely Sentimental
Holiday Relations: Christmas is Integral to the Plot
OVERALL: 2 out of 4
THE POLAR EXPRESS turned out to be a really significant landmark in filmmaking, although perhaps not in the positive sense that its makers had hoped for. It was through THE POLAR EXPRESS that the limitations of hyper-realistic computer animation became apparent and the term "uncanny valley," originally coined in the 1970s in the robotics field, came into regular usage for film. The term, uncanny valley, refers to the area between artificial humanity that is highly stylized (i.e. anthropomorphized non-human characters, two-dimensional images) and what is actually "human." That area in between, the uncanny valley, is where something is "almost human," something that looks as human as possible without actually being human, and the human emotional response is negative, like looking at a dead body moving around. This is THE POLAR EXPRESS' great legacy to date, as it is the textbook example of this unflattering phenomenon, and yet, while I do not like the film, it isn't so much for the uncanny valley, although it doesn't help.
Adapting the 32 page-long, illustration-heavy children's book of the same name by Chris Van Allsburg, the screenplay by director Robert Zemeckis and William Broyles, Jr. (the latter having written Zemeckis' previous film, CAST AWAY) follows an unnamed child (identified as "Hero Boy" in the credits; performance by Tom Hanks, voiced by Daryl Sabara) who may have reached the extent of his belief in Santa Claus one unspecified 1950s Christmas Eve when a steam locomotive roars to a stop outside his house. Hosted by a cantankerous conductor (performance & voice by Hanks), the train is The Polar Express, a magic train tasked with rounding up a specific selection of deserving and/or "at risk" children for a trip to the North Pole on Christmas Eve, to send Santa (performance & voice by Hanks, again) off and for one to receive the "First Gift of Christmas." Along the way, the lead boy befriends a faithful girl (performance & voice by Nona Gaye) for whom the words "Are you sure?" are like "Klaatu Barada Nikto" to Gort, an impoverished and hopelessly depressed wanker-boy named Billy (performance by Peter Scolari, voice by Jimmy Bennett), and a loud-mouthed know-it-all (performance & voice by Eddie Deezen), just in case this movie's disdain for logic isn't clear enough already. To had another character to Hanks' collection, there's also a hobo ghost, "The King of the North Pole," who lives on the train and shows up occasionally to save the main character's ass then act creepy.
Like the book, the film intends to get by mostly on its visuals, but whenever those visuals are the characters, the effect is negative. When the film distracts itself almost entirely from the meager plot is when the film is most entertaining, with some spectacular "fly-through" shots that must be amazing in 3D screenings, such as a loose ticket carried away by the wind and then passed along by animals and elements, and the "subjective roller-coaster" shots from the front view of speeding vehicles.
The fact is though, that for many audiences, especially young families and/or Christmas die-hards, THE POLAR EXPRESS just may be the ideal Christmas movie. It's family-friendly, and any single ounce of cynicism is quickly trounced under heaping disapproval. It is one of the schmaltziest major Christmas movies ever made. Santa is real, the poor boy gets his Christmas present (and friends!), and the doubter learns to believe again... for the rest of his life!
For just about anyone who's ever had anything short of a perfect holiday (i.e. gone Christmas shopping) though, it is a little hard to stomach. I mean, besides the characters looking creepy, and frequently acting creepy, it's almost insultingly sentimental, with out any respect for intelligence. I know it's a "children's movie," but that hardly makes a good excuse for a movie that brazenly ridicules logic and critical thought, primarily embodied in the so-called "Know-It-All Kid," who's about as close to an antagonist as the film gets. Even if that's honestly not a problem for you, for some reason, there's a creepy train hobo who speaks in macabre riddles, and the elves all speak with East Coast accents and look like what any other movie might call goblins. It's just kind of a yucky movie.
But if you love it, don't let me ruin it for you; just please don't assume me a Grinch for disliking it. Assume me a Grinch for not liking Christmas.
Tuesday, December 3, 2013
25 Days: GREMLINS
Sometimes, the sweetness and jubilation overload of the season, combined with the recklessness of consumerism gives way to the spiteful darker aspects of the holiday, but it's usually best to deal with that side of things in secure environment of an anti-Christmas classic:GREMLINS (COMEDY/HORROR, 1984)
Directed by Joe Dante
Starring Zach Gilligan, Phoebe Cates, Hoyt Axton, Frances Lee McCain, Dick Miller, Corey Feldman, Polly Holliday
PG for unspecified reasons (contains PG-13-level creature menace and mayhem throughout, and some frightening images, thematic elements and smoking).
Naughty or Nice?: Naughty
Religious or Secular?: Secular
Cynical or Sentimental?: Sentimental
Holiday Relations: Heavily atmospheric Christmas plot elements, but not essential.
OVERALL: 3 out of 4
During WWII, a new form of folklore developed as a product of the machine age. In order to account for the unexplained (or unclaimed) mechanical mishaps that accompanied the new machinery of war, most especially aircraft, the notion of "gremlins" was started by the British Royal Air Force and gradually spread around the Allied armed forces. These gremlins were mischievous little imps who inhabited and sometimes sabotaged aircraft. The creatures became part of popular culture in children's author Roald Dahl's first published book, The Gremlins, in which the gremlins are persuaded by an RAF pilot to join forces against the Nazis. The illustrated children's book was picked and published by the Walt Disney Company to adapt into and promote a film version, which was developed but never came to fruition. By the time a movie called GREMLINS actually did come to the screen, it was nothing like Disney had planned. Actually, it had nothing to do with the Disney version whatsoever (although the director had read the book), but it's an interesting bit of gremlin trivia.
GREMLINS was a spec script (a script written without initial payment for the purpose of being sold to a studio, as opposed to a commissioned script) written by Chris Columbus (who would later go on to be known for directing blockbusters such as HOME ALONE and HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER'S STONE) for the purpose of displaying his writing talent to studios so he could receive commissioned projects, but when Hollywood mogul Steven Spielberg read GREMLINS, he quickly bought it up, declaring it one of the most original things he'd come across in years. Spielberg tapped Joe Dante, a director he'd worked with before on THE TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE, to direct the film, with Spielberg producing.
Unlike THE POLTERGEIST, released two years earlier in 1982, which many people have suspected that Spielberg had held as strong or stronger an influence as producer on the film than Tobe Hooper, the director, Dante is clearly the pervading influence in GREMLINS.
The film, if you haven't seen it, revolves around a magical creatures called the Mogwai, furry little semi-intelligent creatures unknown to the modern world, one of which amateur inventor Rand Peltzer discovers in a hidden-away shop in Chinatown and buys as a Christmas present for his teenage son Billy. The little Mogwai, named Gizmo, comes with a set of very important instructions though: keep him away from bright light, especially sunlight; do not get him wet; and most important of all, do not feed him after midnight. Naturally, all three rules are broken during the course of the film (duh), first of which being an accident where water is spilled on Gizmo, causing him to multiply as balls of fur explode from his back like popcorn and grow into full-sized Mogwai. These new Mogwai are not nearly as well behaved as Gizmo though, and when they're mistakenly fed after midnight, they transform into green, reptilian monsters who gleefully wreak havoc (including the deadly sort) across the small town on Christmas Eve.
Dante is well recognized for his affection toward B-horror movies and Looney Tunes, and that's what GREMLIN delivers. The result is well summed up in a surprisingly controversial monologue delivered by Phoebe Cates' character, in which she describes her reason for disliking Christmas, being a childhood experience in which her father died while playing Santa (described in gruesome detail). It's a movie that melds the ridiculous, the gruesome, the nasty and the funny with Christmas, and it's not always clear cut as to whether you should be sickened or laughing. I think it's fairly clear that Dante is laughing. Not everyone was in on the joke though, and film critic Leonard Maltin gave a famously scathing review of the film, so when Dante made the sequel six years later, he cast Maltin in a cameo as himself reviewing the first film, then being attacked by gremlins. I think that's fair.
Although the film was a huge hit and well received by most audiences, arguably its most significant part in film history is standing hand in hand with a fellow 1984 Spielberg production, INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM, in spurring on the creation of the PG-13 MPAA rating. While TEMPLE OF DOOM is well recognized for its sacrifice scene involving a torn-out heart, PG-rated GREMLINS horrified parents expecting a Spielberg family film filled with funny little creatures, with gross-out moments like a gremlin exploding inside a microwave and getting shredded in a mixer, as well as brutal deaths such as an old lady rocketed out of a window on her hot-wired elevator chair and a teacher's body found with a hypodermic needle stabbed in the buttock. These things sound exaggerated and ridiculous, and they're meant to be, but I suppose when you're sitting in a movie theater with your kids who are excited to see furry little Gizmo from the previews, it could be a bit much. Less than two months following the film's release, the PG-13 rating was introduced at the suggestion of Spielberg himself, who had had similar problems in the past with his films JAWS and RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK.
GREMLINS is definitely a twisted Christmas movie, and it's easy to understand why some people would simply be sickened by its remorselessness, but it's meant to be read as something of a live-action Looney Tune. Everything is over the top in this caustic black comedy, with Gremlins wielding pistols and smoking multiple cigarettes at a time. It's like a cartoon for grown-ups. One of my favorite bits is the town grinch, Mrs. Deagle (Polly Holliday), who is such an unabashed villain, ruthlessly foreclosing people's homes over Christmas and threatening Billy Peltzer's dog. Her inevitable demise is a bit gnarly, but the comic intentions, however devious, are not in question when you see a body with feet stuck straight up in the air.
It may be the most caustic Christmas comedy with mainstream appeal (BAD SANTA stands somewhat outside of "mainstream"), but it's an amusing and cathartic send-up of the holidays, with a crackerjack sensibility for dark, dark, dark slapstick comedy.
25 Days: JACK FROST (1998)
Today we have another "So-Bad-It's-Good" family Christmas flick, only this time, it's so bad, it's even better. I'm not kidding. This is my new favorite bad Christmas movie!
JACK FROST (FANTASY/COMEDY, 1998)
Directed by Troy Miller
Starring Michael Keaton, Kelly Preston, Joseph Cross, Mark Addy, Taylor Handley
PG for mild language.
Naughty or Nice?: A Bit Naughty, But Mostly Just Dumb
Religious or Secular?: Secular
Cynical and Sentimental?: Deliriously Sentimental, But Not Sappy
Holiday Relations: Christmas is mostly incidental to the plot, but there are Frosty allusions
OVERALL: 1.5 out of 4
JACK FROST is one those magical little family films that is so very creepy and retarded in the most wonderful way possible.
It's the story of the titular dad (Michael Keaton), leading man of the about-to-make-it-big The Jack Frost Band (indeed, his actual name is "Jack Frost"), and his pitiful boy Charlie (Joseph Cross), who live in the fictional town of Medford, Colorado, a picturesque little town nestled in the snowy Rocky Mountains but often looks suspiciously like a sound stage. Jack is a pretty good dad, the sort who comes home in the middle of the night, then wakes his son to build a snowman outside and tries to stick a snow-phallus on it ("Nose? I thought you said hose!"). Unfortunately, Jack is also on the road a lot with his band, and sometimes puts his dreams of rock star glory ahead of watching his son's inept little league hockey team get their butts whooped. One Christmas Day, Jack has the opportunity to finally sign the record deal of his dreams, but halfway there on the mountain road, he changes his mind and realizes that Christmastime is family time. Regrettably, just following this revelation, Jack drives his car off a cliff and dies. One year later, Charlie is a mopey boy living with his widowed mother (Kelly Preston), and occasionally hanging out with his dead dad's old best mate, Mac (Mark Addy). Charlie's quit the hockey team, and no longer takes part in ridiculously violent playground snowball fights; in other words, his whole life is in disarray. But one night, Charlie builds a snowman, which he dresses in his dad's old hat and scarf (that's what people do with their dead dad things, duh), and then blows on his dad's "magic" harmonica. For whatever reason, Jack's spirit is dragged from the netherworld and awakens inside the snowman. Now, all Jack has to do is convince his son that it is indeed him that is possessing this snowman form, and then teach him his trademark hockey move, "The J-Shot," and get him to rejoin the team, so that Jack can finally make up for missing the game a year before.
JACK FROST is ridiculous. It's about a dead rock musican who possesses his kid's snowman so that he can finally go to his kid's hockey game. The film was mostly marketed on the point of the snowman effects, the result of which I'll allow the late-great Roger Ebert to elaborate on:
Even better, it's just a terrible family movie character; the first thing he checks after realizing that he's now a snowman is to see if he still has a penis (he doesn't, and he's dismayed), and later, when he's hit by two snowballs in the snow-chest, forming snow-breasts, he plays with them for a moment before removing them. Nice. We also get the obligatory jokes about his "balls" and big butt, but I suppose I'd complain if those weren't there.
The best thing about the movie is Keaton, who seems gleefully aware of the movie's stupidity and exploits that fact to have fun. Charlie, on the other hand, is an excellent example of the terrible movie child who you hate and don't want a happy ending for, but he gets it anyway, which makes you hate him even more. He so smug and not intelligent by any stretch either. I hate him.
It's shamelessly sentimental, and the ending, which provides a GHOST-esque encore for Keaton's physical presence is so hilariously treacly that you just can't help but love it in a derisive way. I think this movie is aggressively dumb, but if I had children, I'd make them watch it on Christmas Eve every year. Now to wrap things up, here's a few of the best quotes from the movie:
Jack Frost: "You da man!"
Charlie: "You da man!"
Jack Frost: "No, I'm the Snowman!"
Charlie: "But Dad..."
Jack Frost: "But Dad? Did you just call me Butt-Dad? Ya know, that would make you Butt-Boy. Bye, Butt-Family!"
Jack Frost: "I am the Wizard of Blizzard! Now run you little mountain goats!"
Rory the Bully: "Snowdad is better than no dad."
JACK FROST (FANTASY/COMEDY, 1998)Directed by Troy Miller
Starring Michael Keaton, Kelly Preston, Joseph Cross, Mark Addy, Taylor Handley
PG for mild language.
Naughty or Nice?: A Bit Naughty, But Mostly Just Dumb
Religious or Secular?: Secular
Cynical and Sentimental?: Deliriously Sentimental, But Not Sappy
Holiday Relations: Christmas is mostly incidental to the plot, but there are Frosty allusions
OVERALL: 1.5 out of 4
JACK FROST is one those magical little family films that is so very creepy and retarded in the most wonderful way possible.
It's the story of the titular dad (Michael Keaton), leading man of the about-to-make-it-big The Jack Frost Band (indeed, his actual name is "Jack Frost"), and his pitiful boy Charlie (Joseph Cross), who live in the fictional town of Medford, Colorado, a picturesque little town nestled in the snowy Rocky Mountains but often looks suspiciously like a sound stage. Jack is a pretty good dad, the sort who comes home in the middle of the night, then wakes his son to build a snowman outside and tries to stick a snow-phallus on it ("Nose? I thought you said hose!"). Unfortunately, Jack is also on the road a lot with his band, and sometimes puts his dreams of rock star glory ahead of watching his son's inept little league hockey team get their butts whooped. One Christmas Day, Jack has the opportunity to finally sign the record deal of his dreams, but halfway there on the mountain road, he changes his mind and realizes that Christmastime is family time. Regrettably, just following this revelation, Jack drives his car off a cliff and dies. One year later, Charlie is a mopey boy living with his widowed mother (Kelly Preston), and occasionally hanging out with his dead dad's old best mate, Mac (Mark Addy). Charlie's quit the hockey team, and no longer takes part in ridiculously violent playground snowball fights; in other words, his whole life is in disarray. But one night, Charlie builds a snowman, which he dresses in his dad's old hat and scarf (that's what people do with their dead dad things, duh), and then blows on his dad's "magic" harmonica. For whatever reason, Jack's spirit is dragged from the netherworld and awakens inside the snowman. Now, all Jack has to do is convince his son that it is indeed him that is possessing this snowman form, and then teach him his trademark hockey move, "The J-Shot," and get him to rejoin the team, so that Jack can finally make up for missing the game a year before.
JACK FROST is ridiculous. It's about a dead rock musican who possesses his kid's snowman so that he can finally go to his kid's hockey game. The film was mostly marketed on the point of the snowman effects, the result of which I'll allow the late-great Roger Ebert to elaborate on:
"The snowman gave me the creeps. Never have I disliked a movie character more. They say state-of-the-art special effects can create the illusion of anything on the screen, and now we have proof: It's possible for the Jim Henson folks and Industrial Light and Magic to put their heads together and come up with the most repulsive single creature in the history of special effects, and I am not forgetting the Chucky doll or the desert intestine from "Star Wars." To see the snowman is to dislike the snowman. It doesn't look like a snowman, anyway. It looks like a cheap snowman suit. When it moves, it doesn't exactly glide--it walks, but without feet, like it's creeping on its torso. It has anorexic tree limbs for arms, which spin through 360 degrees when it's throwing snowballs. It has a big, wide mouth that moves as if masticating Gummi Bears. And it's this kid's dad."It's one of Ebert's most loathing reviews, and it's great: http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/jack-frost-1998.
Even better, it's just a terrible family movie character; the first thing he checks after realizing that he's now a snowman is to see if he still has a penis (he doesn't, and he's dismayed), and later, when he's hit by two snowballs in the snow-chest, forming snow-breasts, he plays with them for a moment before removing them. Nice. We also get the obligatory jokes about his "balls" and big butt, but I suppose I'd complain if those weren't there.
The best thing about the movie is Keaton, who seems gleefully aware of the movie's stupidity and exploits that fact to have fun. Charlie, on the other hand, is an excellent example of the terrible movie child who you hate and don't want a happy ending for, but he gets it anyway, which makes you hate him even more. He so smug and not intelligent by any stretch either. I hate him.
It's shamelessly sentimental, and the ending, which provides a GHOST-esque encore for Keaton's physical presence is so hilariously treacly that you just can't help but love it in a derisive way. I think this movie is aggressively dumb, but if I had children, I'd make them watch it on Christmas Eve every year. Now to wrap things up, here's a few of the best quotes from the movie:
Jack Frost: "You da man!"
Charlie: "You da man!"
Jack Frost: "No, I'm the Snowman!"
Charlie: "But Dad..."
Jack Frost: "But Dad? Did you just call me Butt-Dad? Ya know, that would make you Butt-Boy. Bye, Butt-Family!"
Jack Frost: "I am the Wizard of Blizzard! Now run you little mountain goats!"
Rory the Bully: "Snowdad is better than no dad."
Sunday, December 1, 2013
25 Days: JINGLE ALL THE WAY
25 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS MOVIES
This December, we'll be posting about Christmas movies daily, taking a look at the classics and neo-classics, the popular and obscure, as well as some Christmas/Holiday movies that you may not associate with the season, but are appropriate nonetheless. Also we have some of the crappier ones...
JINGLE ALL THE WAY (FAMILY-COMEDY, 1996)
Directed by Brian Levant
Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sinbad, Phil Hartman, Rita Wilson, Jake Lloyd, James Belushi
PG for action violence, mild language and some thematic elements.
Naughty or Nice?: Mostly Naughty
Religious or Secular?: Mostly Secular
Cynical or Sentimental?: Very Cynical
Holiday Relations: Christmas is Integral to the Plot
Kicking off our series of Holiday Movies this fine Black Friday-Cyber Monday is JINGLE ALL THE WAY, the would-be satire of seasonal consumerism and greed that is too vapid to prove itself as better than what it would like to be satirizing.
In a strange bit of casting, Arnold Schwarzenegger plays Howard Langston, accomplished mattress salesman and dad of the Minnesota suburbs. Howard loves his family, but his organizational skills are at an uncanny extreme to challenge the unlikeliness of his mattress salesman physique, and his inability to keep his promises and his preoccupation with work are putting a strain on his relationship with his bland but hot wife, Liz (Rita Wilson), and his cloying brat Jamie (Jake Llloyd). The night before Christmas Eve though, Howard realizes that his latest slip-up is the mother of all doozies; he still hasn't bought the hottest-selling toy of all time and the greatest desire of Jamie's Christmas wishes: "A Turbo Man action figure with arms and legs that move and the boomerang shooter and his rock 'n' roller jet pack and the realistic voice activator that says five different phrases including, 'It's Turbo Time!'" As Howard haphazardly navigates the crowds of holiday materialism, he recurringly becomes ally and enemy to Myron Larabee (Sinbad), a loudmouthed, dimwitted postman. And as Howard fights (literally) the crowds to get his hand on a Turbo Man doll/action figure, his delightfully devious neighbor, Ted (Phil Hartman, in his last finished film prior to his death in 1998), is putting all the moves on Liz.
JINGLE ALL THE WAY is not a good movie, but what's really remarkable about it is its astonishingly, even hilariously, poor taste (its taste in humor, in fact, is the only hilarity in the movie). Besides the fact that the entire film involves nasty, morally reprehensible people recklessly pursuing material goods with little to no apology, recompense or apparent benevolence, we also get jokes involving pedophilia and postal bombs. Yes, I realize this is pre-9/11, but even still! Sinbad's character gets out of tight spots by wielding random packages that he claims are explosive, and after seeing one fakeout, we see him pull this trick again with some cops, and after the explosion an officer looks up with a blackened face and blown-back hair like something out of a Tex Avery short. Yeesh.
It is not, however, a film without its moments, most of them involving the late, great Phil Hartman's memorable take on the Christmas movie asshole. As Langston's much-too-friendly neighbor, Ted Maltin is the perfect single dad who does everything right for all the wrong reasons. He plans way ahead of the holidays because he's of the mindset that, "You can never do too much to make a child's Christmas magical." That line alone makes him hateable, but when Howard calls home on Christmas Eve, it's Ted that answers the phone while eating the Christmas cookies Mrs. Langston made just before going upstairs to take a shower ("Do you want me to check?" he asks). Did I mention he has a thing for married women? He's so perfect, and so smug, and so evil and with such awareness that it's hard not to root for him in the midst of all these loud and boring characters. Sinbad basically follows the would-be rule that shouting everything makes everything funny, and Schwarzenegger... well, he's Schwarzenegger.
The ending is truly bizarre, with a big budget, special effects-laden, Power Rangers-style action sequence between the two, but the best action scene is easily seeing Schwarzenegger punching Ted's reindeer "Ted" in the face, a la Conan the Barbarian. There's also a bunch of evil Santas, and Schwarzenegger saying lines like "Put that cookie down! Now!" and "I'm not a pervert!" So even though it isn't much of a family Christmas class, JINGLE ALL THE WAY makes a pretty good midnight movie.
This December, we'll be posting about Christmas movies daily, taking a look at the classics and neo-classics, the popular and obscure, as well as some Christmas/Holiday movies that you may not associate with the season, but are appropriate nonetheless. Also we have some of the crappier ones...
JINGLE ALL THE WAY (FAMILY-COMEDY, 1996)Directed by Brian Levant
Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sinbad, Phil Hartman, Rita Wilson, Jake Lloyd, James Belushi
PG for action violence, mild language and some thematic elements.
Naughty or Nice?: Mostly Naughty
Religious or Secular?: Mostly Secular
Cynical or Sentimental?: Very Cynical
Holiday Relations: Christmas is Integral to the Plot
Kicking off our series of Holiday Movies this fine Black Friday-Cyber Monday is JINGLE ALL THE WAY, the would-be satire of seasonal consumerism and greed that is too vapid to prove itself as better than what it would like to be satirizing.
In a strange bit of casting, Arnold Schwarzenegger plays Howard Langston, accomplished mattress salesman and dad of the Minnesota suburbs. Howard loves his family, but his organizational skills are at an uncanny extreme to challenge the unlikeliness of his mattress salesman physique, and his inability to keep his promises and his preoccupation with work are putting a strain on his relationship with his bland but hot wife, Liz (Rita Wilson), and his cloying brat Jamie (Jake Llloyd). The night before Christmas Eve though, Howard realizes that his latest slip-up is the mother of all doozies; he still hasn't bought the hottest-selling toy of all time and the greatest desire of Jamie's Christmas wishes: "A Turbo Man action figure with arms and legs that move and the boomerang shooter and his rock 'n' roller jet pack and the realistic voice activator that says five different phrases including, 'It's Turbo Time!'" As Howard haphazardly navigates the crowds of holiday materialism, he recurringly becomes ally and enemy to Myron Larabee (Sinbad), a loudmouthed, dimwitted postman. And as Howard fights (literally) the crowds to get his hand on a Turbo Man doll/action figure, his delightfully devious neighbor, Ted (Phil Hartman, in his last finished film prior to his death in 1998), is putting all the moves on Liz.
JINGLE ALL THE WAY is not a good movie, but what's really remarkable about it is its astonishingly, even hilariously, poor taste (its taste in humor, in fact, is the only hilarity in the movie). Besides the fact that the entire film involves nasty, morally reprehensible people recklessly pursuing material goods with little to no apology, recompense or apparent benevolence, we also get jokes involving pedophilia and postal bombs. Yes, I realize this is pre-9/11, but even still! Sinbad's character gets out of tight spots by wielding random packages that he claims are explosive, and after seeing one fakeout, we see him pull this trick again with some cops, and after the explosion an officer looks up with a blackened face and blown-back hair like something out of a Tex Avery short. Yeesh.
It is not, however, a film without its moments, most of them involving the late, great Phil Hartman's memorable take on the Christmas movie asshole. As Langston's much-too-friendly neighbor, Ted Maltin is the perfect single dad who does everything right for all the wrong reasons. He plans way ahead of the holidays because he's of the mindset that, "You can never do too much to make a child's Christmas magical." That line alone makes him hateable, but when Howard calls home on Christmas Eve, it's Ted that answers the phone while eating the Christmas cookies Mrs. Langston made just before going upstairs to take a shower ("Do you want me to check?" he asks). Did I mention he has a thing for married women? He's so perfect, and so smug, and so evil and with such awareness that it's hard not to root for him in the midst of all these loud and boring characters. Sinbad basically follows the would-be rule that shouting everything makes everything funny, and Schwarzenegger... well, he's Schwarzenegger.
The ending is truly bizarre, with a big budget, special effects-laden, Power Rangers-style action sequence between the two, but the best action scene is easily seeing Schwarzenegger punching Ted's reindeer "Ted" in the face, a la Conan the Barbarian. There's also a bunch of evil Santas, and Schwarzenegger saying lines like "Put that cookie down! Now!" and "I'm not a pervert!" So even though it isn't much of a family Christmas class, JINGLE ALL THE WAY makes a pretty good midnight movie.
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