Home Alone

Chris Columbus, 1990
Rotten Tomatoes score: 54%

The Home Alone series has become one of the classics of my generation, taking its place alongside Saved by the Bell, The Mighty Ducks, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It's one of those movies that I've seen so many times I don't even really watch it anymore; I just put it on and then let it play.

In the first movie, the McCallister family--including mom and dad, Buzz and the other siblings, freeloading Uncle Frank and his brood, and of course little Kevin--are all planning to spend Christmas in Paris. Kevin doesn't care for the idea, and he raises Cain while the family rushes around packing for the big trip.

The next morning, due to their unconscionable carelessness, the family members all leave Kevin behind when they hurry off to the airport. They don't realize this act of mind-boggling irresponsibility until they're airborne for France. Meanwhile, Kevin believes that he has wished his family out of existence, and celebrates his freedom by doing all the things kids would do if no one were around to stop them: He eats ice cream for lunch and watches a violent movie ("Merry Christmas, ya filthy animal"); he sleds down the stairs, and somehow swerves out the front door instead of slamming face-first into the wall; and he helps himself to the master bedroom, including his dad's shaving kit ("AAAAHH").

Kevin soon realizes that with his family permanently phased out of existence, he'll have to fend for himself. So he braves the gloomy basement to do the laundry, and he even makes a trip to the store to do some shopping. But when he encounters his reclusive, scary-looking neighbor (who is rumored to be a killer) at the store, he runs off with an un-paid-for toothbrush. In Kevin's mind, this makes him an outlaw, so he rushes home and hides.

The family, having landed at CDG airport, calls the police and the neighbors to check in on Kevin. What bad luck that every single solitary person in Chicago is out of town on vacation, and the police department's response is to send one cop to the house to knock for 30 seconds and then leave. Since Kevin still believes the cops are out to bust him for the toothbrush heist, he refuses to answer.

Around this point we meet the Wet Bandits, a couple of petty crooks named Harry and Marv, who make their living burglarizing suburban homes at Christmas time. How they pay the bills from January to November is not addressed. The Wet Bandits have their sights set on the McCallister home, and so desirable is this target that they decide to break in even after they realize that Kevin is still there.

The sequence with the burglars is all most people remember about this movie, but it actually takes up only about 20 minutes of the final act. This slapstick-fest really cracked me up as a kid, but the older I get, the more it makes me cringe. It's mostly pretty cartoony, but watching live-action actors do these pratfalls gets uncomfortable sometimes. Anyway, the little jerk defeats the crooks and they get arrested.

He's reunited with his mother, who has spent the last two days flying back from Paris, and then thumbing a ride with John Candy and his polka band from Scranton to Chicago. What a relief! Surely such adventures are once-in-a-lifetime experiences that will never recur.

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HOME ALONE 2: Lost in New York
Chris Columbus, 1992
Rotten Tomatoes score: 24%

Two years later, another movie was released, which painstakingly (you might say slavishly) re-created every major plot point from the first Home Alone, but this time it takes place in New York.

Yes, the McCallisters, who are given to bouts of felony child neglect, are taking off for Miami this holiday season. Thanks to a mishap at O'Hare, Kevin boards a flight to New York instead. This was pre-9/11, back when airlines freely let unaccompanied minors board a plane two seconds before all-call, with no boarding pass. Remember those days?

When Kevin lands in New York, he perpetrates credit card fraud with the help of a TalkBoy tape-recorder and checks into the Plaza Hotel, where Tim Curry and Rob Schneider grow suspicious of him. His worthless family is alerted to Kevin's location thanks to a credit-card trace that ferrets out the little identity thief.

He spends a while in the Big Apple before he discovers that, in a staggering, astronomical coincidence, Harry and Marv have arrived in New York on exactly the same day, intending to knock over a toy store and steal thousands of dollars of charity cash. So, since they're in New York at the same time, of course they meet Kevin--you know, because New York is such a small city, and it's easy for people to run into each other when they both happen to be there on the same day.

Kevin learns of the Wet Bandits' dastardly scheme and sets out to stop them. He does this by barricading himself into a relative's unoccupied brownstone, which conveniently is undergoing renovation, so Kevin has plenty of gadgets and tools around to build his complicated, expensive booby-traps.

The stunts are even more outrageous in this movie, but mercifully they're done in a sillier, more Looney Tunes fashion. Still, some of them are just absurd, like the "X-ray" effect when Marv gets electro-shocked. It's supposed to look like a goofy cartoon effect, but it doesn't work at all, and it's just really creepy. Also, the fact that Kevin is no longer a cute little kid makes him seem downright sadistic most of the time. I was rooting for the crooks.

The McCallisters show up in New York and castigate Tim Curry for scaring the kid into running away from the hotel. You know, I understand that they're angry, and the hotel staff didn't handle the situation very well, but wow, it takes a lot of nerve to blame a hotel concierge for endangering your son after you've just gotten on a plane without the little bastard for the second straight Christmas.

Kevin and his family are happily reunited again, but in my imagination, there's another act where Kevin's parents rot in prison with Harry and Marv. I think the only even remotely likable characters in this movie are Mr. Duncan from the toy store and the creepy pigeon lady.

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Now, there was a Home Alone 3, but it featured a totally different family. I haven't seen this movie, so I won't go into detail about it, but opinions are split as to whether it was better or worse than the second one.

What I have seen is Home Alone 4: Taking Back the House, and it was despicable. This time, Kevin and the McCallisters are back, but not one cast member has returned. Everyone is younger, even though this movie was made ten years after the New York one. Harry is totally absent, and Marv is now played by French Stewart. (I think if Daniel Stern turns down a role, it's generally time to rethink the project.) Marv is accompanied by his wife, Vera, and they're trying to kidnap some rich kid who's staying with Kevin's new step-mom. Never watch this movie, under any circumstances, but if you happen to tune in at the right time, have a look at the hilarious scene where Kevin floods the step-mom's entire mansion.

Recently I was made aware that, this year, there is a Home Alone 5. I don't have the strength to watch it.

I know I've been pretty negative, but I promise I don't hate these movies. I hate the McCallisters, yes, but I enjoy the movies enough to watch them every year. Still, since they're all pretty fondly remembered (the critics' reviews notwithstanding), so I think it's safe to say that they're

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1. It's wrong for parents to fly thousands of miles away from their unsupervised child two years in a row.
If they don't, that hellion will cause havoc in two major U.S. cities.

2. If you're an adult criminal in a children's movie, you stand no chance against a 10-year-old.
I always thought there should be a sequel where the (now elderly) burglars hit an adult Kevin with paint cans.

Fred Claus

David Dobkin, 2007
Rotten Tomatoes score: 21%

Santa Claus has been portrayed by countless actors over the years. Some have played him as a goofy old fellow, some as a wise and benevolent grandfather-figure, some as a mysterious supernatural entity, some as a combination of all those. Sometimes Santa is funny, as with Tim Allen; sometimes he's jolly, as in Santa Claus: The Movie.

But let me tell you, if there's one actor in the world who was born to play Jolly Old St. Nick, surely it's anybody but Paul Giamatti.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The movie opens with a totally unnecessary flashback to the birth of St. Nicholas. As it turns out, he wasn't the Bishop of Myra, as you might have read on Wikipedia. No, he was an insufferable little kid born in some ambiguously Northern European country in the Middle Ages, and he had an older brother, Frederick. Fred resented his brother, because their unbearable mother so shamelessly favoritized young Nick. As the movie explains to us, Nick's later canonization rendered him and his entire family immortal, so the story resumes hundreds of years later, where Fred has grown up to be Vince Vaughn.

Now, I liked this movie, and I have plenty of good things to say about it, but this prologue was a huge mistake. The movie does its best to let us forget that Vince Vaughn is supposed to be a centuries-old immortal, since he's really just playing himself. His performance is far and away the best part of the movie, but every once in a while you remember the premise, and it just doesn't work. If they wanted to make a movie about Santa's brother, why not just use the tried-and-true storyline of having the brother become the new Santa in modern times? That way we wouldn't have to reconcile the two notions that, on the one hand, Fred Claus has lived through hundreds of years on at least two continents, and on the other hand, he's Vince Vaughn.

Also, don't you have to die before you can become a saint? Never mind.

So Vince (I mean Fred) is working in Chicago as a fast-talking, sarcastic, terminally disingenuous repo man. He has a girlfriend who cares for him but dislikes his lifestyle and his flakiness. He also has a bad habit of getting into debt, and he now needs $50,000 for a (seemingly shady) business venture. After passing himself off as a charity bell-ringer in part of his latest con job, he finds himself in the big house with one phone call and only one person who can bail him out: dear old brother Nick.

And now we meet Paul Giamatti. He looks, speaks, and acts as jaundiced and flappable as he does in every other movie, but this time he's Santa Claus. This is another aspect of the movie that just doesn't fit. The character is likable enough, but it's impossible to buy into the idea that this guy is Kris Kringle.

Anyway, Nick's shrill, unpleasant wife Annette tells her husband to leave Fred in the cooler, but Nick's generosity shines through, and he agrees not only to bail Fred out, but to hire his prodigal brother to work in the family business for a few weeks. Fred is reluctant, but Nick offers to pay him the fifty grand he so desperately needs, so he agrees.

Fred's job at the North Pole (which enjoys 12 hours of sunlight a day and a mild snowy climate during the dead of winter) is to assign children to the naughty or nice list. He doesn't like the job, but he puts up with it. Meanwhile, Nick has received a visit from a Mr. Northcutt (Kevin Spacey), a bureaucrat who is hell-bent on closing down Santa's North Pole workshop. Mr. Northcutt refers to "the Board," but no one in the movie ever mentions what Board this is, or how on earth it could have the authority to fire Santa Claus.

Mr. Northcutt takes advantage of the sibling rivalry between the brothers Claus, eventually persuading Fred to throw a spanner into the works by marking every child "nice." Livid, Nick tells Fred that he cannot possibly make enough toys to meet the burden this imposes on him, but Fred doesn't care. Nick throws his back out during the ensuing snowball fight, and Fred takes his check and his sleigh-ride home.

In the movie's iconic scene (if anything in this movie can be called iconic), Fred attends a "Siblings Anonymous" meeting, where Frank Stallone, Stephen Baldwin, and Roger Clinton give him some perspective on how to deal with living in the shadow of a famous brother. (Oddly, the group members don't believe Fred when he says his brother is Santa Claus. Is it not common knowledge in this world that Santa has an immortal, wisecracking brother?)

Fred learns his lesson and spends the 50 Gs on a last-minute flight back to the North Pole. (We see him making a phone call and offering $50,000 cash to get to the North Pole within a day. Somehow I think it would take a little more than that.) He talks the elves into resuming Christmas production, but with Nick recuperating in bed, Fred will--surprise, surprise--have to make the deliveries himself.

I think you can probably fill in the blanks as to what happens for the remainder of the movie. Overall, it's a pretty ludicrous story, but if you like Vince Vaughn and his mile-a-minute schtick, you'll enjoy it. Certainly it could have done without the prologue, and I have no idea what they were thinking with the Kevin Spacey subplot, but overall, it's definitely

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1. It's wrong for brothers not to spend time with one another.
Hey, we haven't had that one yet!

2. Naughty children always deserve a second chance.
Oh, I guess I forgot to discuss the part of the movie where this comes up. It has to do with an orphan kid that Vince Vaughn takes care of. Well, you get the idea.

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

Larry Roemer and Kizo Nagashima, 1964
Rotten Tomatoes score: 92%

"Do you recall the most famous reindeer of all?" That's sort of a weird question. How famous could he be if the song has to ask whether you remember him?

Rudolph was originally created in 1939 in a book by Robert L. May, commissioned by the now defunct department store chain Montgomery Ward. Apparently the store had been giving away children's books at Christmas time, and this was the least expensive way to do it. Over 70 years later, people are still telling and re-telling this tale of an zoologically implausible bioluminescent Rangifer tarandus.

Of course, if you've ever looked at a picture of an actual reindeer (caribou, as we North Americans say), you've surely noticed that it doesn't have a little black button nose like a cat; it has a big, broad muzzle like a horse. But in all illustrations of this story, you'll always see the reindeer depicted as little, sprightly Bambi-like animals with black noses. Presumably they just couldn't figure out how to make this

look shiny and red.

Anyway, following the runaway popularity of the book, a cartoon was produced by Max Fleischer. I just watched this cartoon for the first time--it's about five minutes long--and it is certainly different from the Rankin-Bass version everyone remembers. Wikipedia tells me it is a more faithful adaptation of the book, but having never read the book I can't confirm or deny that.

In this cartoon, Rudolph is a young reindeer who moves and behaves like a deer (albeit a talking deer), but he also lives in a house, sleeps in a bed, and has a mother who inexplicably wears clothes. (In fact, she dresses a lot like Alice from the Brady Bunch.) On that fateful "foggy Christmas Eve," Santa is delivering presents to Rudolph's house when he discovers the little fellow's shiny nose, and the rest is history.

I guess the Rudolph story is one where, if you grow up with it, you fail to appreciate how absurd it is. Why in the world would a reindeer have a glowing nose? The title calls him a "red-nosed reindeer," and of course the song lyrics say it is a "very shiny nose," but it's more than shiny--it actually produces light, like a firefly. I know it's a fantasy story, but there's fantasy and then there's just weird. You're just supposed to take for granted that "red-nosed" means "having a 500-watt headlight for a nose."

But the entry that I'm really supposed to be reviewing is the stop-motion classic originally broadcast in 1964. This deviates quite a lot from the original story, but judging from the Max Fleischer cartoon, I'd say it was an improvement. In this version, Rudolph is already a part of Santa's entourage from the beginning, but he runs away after being taunted by his peers. He is eventually joined in his wanderings by two companions: Hermey, an elf who wants to quit the family business and go into dentistry, despite lacking a D.D.S. degree; and Yukon Cornelius, the blustering treasure hunter with the disturbing habit of licking the tip of his pick-ax. (In the originally-aired version, we eventually find out that Cornelius is digging for peppermint, but the altered version that's usually broadcast cuts this scene, and we're left perplexed.)

Rudolph also has a friend in Clarice, a young doe who is willing to see through his curious appearance and appreciates him as a person. Clarice never grows antlers, the movie again seeming to confuse reindeer with white-tails.

My favorite character is the fearsome Abominable Snow Monster (Yukon Cornelius calls it "the Bumble"). In an upsetting scene near the end, Hermey pulls all of its teeth out without administering novocaine. The creature is then driven over a cliff, but we're relieved to discover later on that it is unharmed ("Bumbles bounce," Cornelius reassures us). The toothless giant is now gentle and kind, subsisting, we can only imagine, on a diet of Jell-O and applesauce.

The Island of Misfit Toys is another creative addition to the story. The best Misfit Toy is the Charlie-in-the-Box, unappreciated because his name isn't Jack. (On the other hand, who over the age of two plays with a jack-in-the-box? I mean the toy, not the burger joint.)

This movie is enjoyable enough to continue watching once a year. It features some memorable songs and a snowman that looks exactly like what Burl Ives would look like if he had been transformed into a snowman. (That just goes to show that it is possible to make a snowman look like a real person, in spite of Jack Frost's failure to do so.) At any rate, since it is so popular, it clearly is

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1. It's wrong for reindeer parents not to spend time with their reindeer children.
Rudolph's dad has the same voice as J. Jonah Jameson from the old Spider-Man cartoon.

2. It's okay to be different.
Especially if the thing that makes you different eventually becomes convenient for your boss.

3. Dentistry is a praiseworthy profession.
Dental hygiene is important, and dentists are uniquely capable of fending off wild animals.

The Muppet Christmas Carol

Brian Henson, 1992
Rotten Tomatoes score: 69%

I love this movie.

A Christmas Carol is justly regarded as the mother of all Christmas classics, and it's been made into hundreds of millions of movie versions. So how could you improve on it? Simple. You put the Muppets in it.

This movie is a pretty straightforward adaptation of the book. Allegedly it's one of the more faithful film versions, but I'm not really an expert. It does take a lot of scenes and dialogue directly out of the book. Of course, one significant difference is that Bob Cratchit is a frog in this version.

Michael Caine, as Scrooge, is the only human being in most scenes, but it's surprising how little you notice that. Of course, it's a long-standing Muppet tradition that the human actors interact with the Muppets, but it is sort of puzzling if you ever take the time to wonder why Victorian London is filled with anthropomorphic pigs and cats and... whatever Gonzo is. (Actually, the Great Gonzo plays Charles Dickens, who appears from time to time to narrate the scene. He's accompanied by Rizzo the Rat, who was Gonzo's sidekick throughout the 90s. They're two of my favorite characters, but I have to admit, they don't add much to this movie.)

Most of the role assignments are obvious. As I alluded to above, Kermit plays Bob Cratchit, and so of course Miss Piggy plays Emily Cratchit. Robin the Frog, who occasionally appeared on the show as Kermit's nephew, is Tiny Tim, and the other Cratchit children are indistinguishable pig and frog Muppets. (It's kind of weird that Kermit and Miss Piggy's daughters are pigs and their sons are frogs, but on the other hand, what else were they supposed to do?) Mr. Fezziwig's name was changed to Fozziwig just so Fozzie Bear could play him, and Sam Eagle even makes an appearance as Scrooge's old schoolmaster.

The Ghosts of Christmas are all original characters designed specially for this movie. I liked the Ghost of Christmas Present, who is just a guy in a costume with a huge Muppet head. But the real show-stealers, as always, are Statler and Waldorf. They play the Marley brothers (Jacob Marley has a brother in this version, in order to give both Statler and Waldorf a part). They heckle Scrooge in addition to haunting him, and they bring the house down with the movie's best number, "Marley and Marley."

The other songs are also excellent, including an ensemble song introducing Scrooge, and a memorable song by the Ghost of Christmas Present that by all rights deserves to be as overplayed as "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" or that horrible song by Wham. Even Scrooge gets to sing, which was a first for Michael Caine.

This was the first Muppet adaptation of a classic work of literature. Sadly, they only made one other like it, the equally outstanding Muppet Treasure Island. I think they should have continued. There are so many other literary standards. I'd like to see Muppet Back to the Future.

Anyway, this movie was well-received, but 69% is nowhere near good enough. Even if the score had been 100%, I'd still say this one is

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1. It's never too late to turn your life around.
But if you're a wicked miser in a partnership with another wicked miser, make sure you're the last to die, so your dead partner's ghost can show up to warn you.

2. Every story is better with Statler and Waldorf.
See what they think of this review.

Santa Claus: The Movie

Jeannot Swarcz, 1985
Rotten Tomatoes score: 18%

This is a weird movie. It's one of those "origin of Santa Claus" movies, much like Santa Claus Is Coming to Town, but the origin story it proposes is even weirder than that one. Also, in an apparent effort to make the story more relatable, it fast-forwards to the present day about halfway through the movie. I'm not sure that was necessary, but it sort of works. The presence of the Salkinds, the minds behind the Superman series, is obvious in this larger-than-life fantasy.

We first meet Claus (he doesn't obtain the title "Santa" until later) as a benevolent old fellow in an ambiguous far-northern region in an ambiguous medieval century. He makes it his business to shuttle between snow-blanketed villages in the dead of winter delivering gifts to children. One year, he bites off more than he can chew and becomes stranded in a snowstorm. He, his wife Anya, and his reindeer seem to be goners, but they are rescued by a team of diminutive creatures called "Vendegum" (or something), who just refer to themselves as elves.

The elves, including Dudley Moore as Patch, tell Claus that his arrival has been foretold from the dawn of time, and welcome him to their invisible village. Dudley Moore makes a bunch of terrible puns using the word "elf" for "self" (for example, he has a lot of "elf-confidence"), and Claus and Anya get comfortable. They don't really seem to care that the elves have prophesied their coming, and it doesn't bother them that they are going to have to remain here forever. Literally forever, too, because the elves have made them immortal.

Let me come right out and say that the movie's visuals are definitely its strong suit. Everything looks natural, right down to the touch of grey in Claus's whiskers to make you believe they're growing out of his face and not glued on in his dressing room. The movie depicts the North Pole as a harsh environment and the village almost as a bunker against the cold, which is of course realistic, but it's pretty rare in Santa Claus movies. They even seem to acknowledge the existence of polar night.

Unfortunately, I can't be so kind to the plot. There is a bizarre, almost creepy, scene where Burgess Meredith shows up, with two elves carrying his flowing white beard, and anoints Claus as "Santa." This scene seems to go on forever, and I have no idea what purpose it serves. Burgess tells Claus about his toy-delivering mission and his super-powers, but frankly this was a strange way to get that exposition out of the way.

From there, we see a few clips of Santa's doings over the centuries, and in short order we're in the present day. The passage of 600 years seems to have left little mark on the North Pole, where the elves still manufacture hideous primary-colored wooden toys that would probably interest an antique collector more than a 20th-century child. However, Patch has a plan to modernize the workshop by inventing a machine for mass-production. Santa is delighted by its ability to churn out tacky, all-wood tricycles in seconds.

Meanwhile, in New York, two completely uninteresting children are interacting. Homeless, leather-jacketed loner Joe enjoys staring through the windows of a swanky home where rich but lonely Cornelia lives. Joe also likes to stare through the plate-glass window of a local McDonald's, where the diners' food is photographed with almost pornographic focus. I know this is supposed to show how hard-up and hungry Joe is, but it really just looks like a McDonald's commercial. As for Cornelia, her parents are either dead or out of the country, and her only relation is an absent, apparently uncaring uncle.

Santa meets Joe on Christmas Eve while he's in town. Joe has never asked for a Christmas gift because he's "too proud," but Santa takes him along for a sleigh ride and then abandons him in Cornelia's house for the night! What the hell is he thinking?! Why doesn't Santa arrange for this poor kid to be adopted or something?

Shortly after Christmas, the ugly wooden tricycles fall apart, due to Patch's slipshod production methods. In disgrace, Patch flees the North Pole. Also guilty of distributing defective children's toys is a man named B.Z., played by John Lithgow. B.Z. dresses like a 1930s mobster, smokes a cigar in every scene, and openly expresses his desire to rip off children by selling them shoddy, dangerous Christmas toys. This includes a panda doll stuffed with broken glass and razor blades. It's probably the funniest scene in the movie, but it kind of seems plagiarized from that old SNL sketch with Dan Aykroyd.

B.Z. meets Patch, who wants to work with a successful toymaker to prove his worth to Santa. B.Z. agrees to Patch's plan to distribute toys for free, hoping to salvage his company's good name. The toy they choose to manufacture is actually a lollipop that contains the same magic substance that causes Santa's reindeer to fly. This is a big hit the next Christmas, and Santa is depressed to learn that Patch is working for this ludicrous villain caricature.

B.Z. decides to create a new Christmas in March to sell a new line of magic flight-inducing candy. He asks Patch to make the candy more powerful this time, and though reluctant, Patch does it. Somewhere along the line, we discover that B.Z. is Cornelia's heartless uncle, and Cornelia and Joe eavesdrop on a conversation between B.Z. and his assistant, who explains that the magic candy explodes when exposed to heat. B.Z. discovers Joe spying on him and locks the kid up in the toy factory basement. I'm not sure if he intends to kill him or what, but wow, this guy is a real jerk.

Patch comes to Joe's rescue, and a little trinket Joe received from Santa makes Patch believe that Santa still cares about him. At the same moment, Santa has received a letter from Cornelia (letters to Santa are transmitted instantaneously in this movie), and he rides to the rescue with the six of his reindeer who don't have the flu. (The flu? Like the "reindeer flu" from 'Twas the Night? Surely it must be coincidental, because that movie never ripped off anything, least of all The Santa Clause...)

Patch and Joe use a flying-candy-powered car Patch has invented to fly to the North Pole, while Santa and Cornelia catch up to them in the sleigh, worried that the exploding magic candy will destroy the flying car and its passengers. Santa performs some dangerous aerial maneuver that seems to turn them around backwards, but somehow actually speeds them up to rescue Patch and Joe from the exploding car. Santa brings the two kids back to the North Pole. He and Anya decide to adopt Joe (without going through the proper legal channels) and they let Cornelia stay the rest of the year.

What about Cornelia's evil uncle, you ask? Well, not to worry. B.Z. ate some of the magic candy to escape the police (who had discovered his crimes), and it caused him to fly away into outer space. And that's the last scene in the movie. The very last thing you see before the credits is John Lithgow flying into the vacuum of space. Merry Christmas, everyone!

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I don't really know what to do with this one. It's definitely the most over-the-top Christmas fantasy movie I can think of, but I kind of liked it. I can't call it great, and I can't really even call it particularly good, but I am comfortable calling it

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1. Santa loves all children.
At any rate, he loves all two of the children in this movie.

2. Never play with toys that are filled with broken glass.
You'd be surprised how many kids forget that.

3. Crime doesn't pay.
Those who don't heed this lesson will wind up in the infinite darkness of outer space. In a kids' movie.

'Twas the Night

Nick Castle, 2001
Rotten Tomatoes score: N/A

Yet again I have to substitute audience reviews for a proper Rotten Tomatoes score. Even the audience was harsh on this one; they gave it 38%.

On Christmas Eve, ambiguously North American teenager Danny Wrigley (Josh Zuckerman) realizes that he has waited too long to do any Christmas shopping. Desperate for some cash to make a few last-minute purchases, he begs first his parents (Torri Higginson and Barclay Hope) and then his younger sister (Brenda Grate), who for some reason enjoys reading quantum physics textbooks in her spare time. The only one who comes through for him is his kid brother (Rhys Williams), whom he scams into buying some worthless junk from his room.

Mom and Dad are furious that Danny would take advantage of the boy, comparing him to Dad's good-for-nothing brother, Uncle Nick. Danny idolizes Uncle Nick, but his parents consider him a bad role model.

And now we meet Uncle Nick (Bryan Cranston from Malcolm in the Middle and later Breaking Bad), who is in the midst of a con game gone sour. Two nerds and their hulk-like enforcer have tied Nick to a chair and demanded that he pay back the money he owes them. Ever the trickster, Nick escapes his imprisonment and flees in a Santa costume.

Shortly thereafter, he arrives at his brother's home on Christmas Eve. The kids regard Nick as a welcome surprise guest, but Dad is less pleased: "The Spanish weren't expecting the Inquisition, but that didn't stop Torquemada." (Is this a Monty Python reference, or just a medieval history reference?) Conveniently for the plot, Mom and Dad get called away to the hospital (apparently they're both doctors) to treat an outbreak of "reindeer flu." (Is that similar to swine flu? It sounds kind of serious.)

Before they leave, the parents hustle all the kids to bed, even Danny, who is none too happy about it. Later, Nick sets to work looking for a way to solve his liquidity problem, but his creditors have hacked into his laptop using some sort of program that seems to work like a one-way webcam so they can taunt and threaten him, while also tracking his location. He responds by click-and-dragging a virus icon onto the streaming video window. This disables not only their tracking software but also "every other working computer within 50 miles." I guess it's one of those airborne computer viruses, because it even disables Santa's computer-controlled sleigh.

Santa Claus lands on the roof, startling Danny and Uncle Nick. Time and space within the house come to a standstill, courtesy of Santa's phenomenal cosmic powers, and St. Nick drops down the chimney. Yes, according to this movie, Santa is able to make his deliveries undetected because he carries a little device that can freeze time, and it also causes objects to shrink for good measure. Unfortunately, the gizmo malfunctions and Danny and Uncle Nick catch Kris Kringle in the act. Alarmed, Santa stumbles, bangs his head against the mantle, suffers a severe concussion, and--

No, he doesn't die. Uncle Nick assures us that Santa is just unconscious, so it's nothing at all like The Santa Clause. Once Uncle Nick discovers the remarkable powers of Santa's gizmos and gadgets, he decides that he and Danny should take over for Santa for the rest of the night. Nick, of course, hopes to turn this into some kind of scam, which Scott Calvin from The Santa Clause would never have done, so you know it's different.

The ersatz Clauses begin their mission, with Uncle Nick snagging a few valuables from each house they hit. He starts with a silver candlestick--what an old-school crook. Danny discovers that Santa's computer lists him as "naughty", and in one of the movie's genuinely funny jokes, he wonders if this is why he got a "Best of 70s Disco" CD for Christmas last year. Nick persuades Danny that Santa is an unfair grouch, and that they should take advantage of their position to do things their way.

Meanwhile, Santa comes to when the brother and sister rouse him, and he panics on the realization that Uncle Nick has jacked his sleigh. For some reason, solving this problem will require them to go to a computer store, which conveniently is open in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve. One of the stupidest moments in the movie occurs when Santa gets jumped, en route, by a street gang and manages to defeat them by tickling them aggressively.

Uncle Nick persuades Danny that they should stop off at a high-society banquet, ostensibly to Robin-Hood the feast and give it to the homeless. In reality, Nick just wants to pilfer the guests' jewelry. Danny catches him in the act and insists that they return home to hand the sleigh off to the real Santa. Nick pockets the magic device and runs off on his own, while Danny flies the sleigh home. The sister attempts to fix the sleigh's damaged control system--apparently her quantum physics book had a chapter on computer maintenance--but she fails.

While plotting his next move, Uncle Nick learns that the three crooks from before are in town and heading for the Wrigley house. Santa tries to defend the household with his moronic tickle-fu, but his Jedi mind tricks don't work on these guys; only money. Luckily, Uncle Nick shows up and uses the shrinking device to intimidate the villains into leaving.

Uncle Nick does his second good deed in life by donating his laptop to be Santa's new onboard computer. Santa mutters something about reconsidering his black and white conception of morality and flies off to return Nick's stolen merchandise and finish his Christmas deliveries. The next morning, Uncle Nick discovers that Santa has left him a present, having decided that Uncle Nick isn't so irredeemable after all.

So everything is back to normal. Uncle Nick only took Santa's job for one night and now he's back to normal, so this is nothing whatsoever like The Santa Clause.

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I'm not sure what to say about this one. It's okay. Bryan Cranston gives a decent performance, and it's easy enough to sit through. It's definitely not a good movie, and I think I may have detected a very slight similarity to some other Christmas movie, but I can't put my finger on it. Anyway, 38% seems too low, so this movie is just a little bit

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1. Not even an inveterate con man is completely beyond saving.
When you least expect it, he may have a totally unmotivated change of heart.

2. When you take over for Santa Claus, it's okay to do it just once, rather than transforming into the new Santa Claus.
I'm not sure how relevant this will be for most people, but there it is.

To Grandmother's House We Go

Jeff Franklin, 1992
Rotten Tomtatoes score: N/A

Once again Rotten Tomatoes has not managed to find any reviews of this TV movie. However, the Viewer Rating feature on that site reveals that site visitors have rated it a 60%. Now that is some Christmas charity.

This movie stars the Olsen Twins, and it was made around the beginning of their rise to popularity. If you're as much of a loser as me, you may have realized that Jeff Franklin, who directed this effort, was also the executive producer of Full House. And I'm sure anyone who watched it remembers that Bob Saget and Lori Loughlin show up in a cameo at the end, so it reeks of a Full House side-project.

Now I love Full House. I grew up with it, and like many people of my generation, I still enjoy heckling old episodes of it when they come on Teen Nick. But somehow this dreck has just not retained the same nostalgia for me. It's bad. The Olsen Twins are very annoying (which is not really their fault, since they're just kids and clearly not old or precocious enough to be carrying a movie on their own), and without Uncle Jesse and Joey to liven the mood by acting like idiots, it's hard to sit through.

It tells the holiday tale of a single mom named Rhonda (Cynthia Geary) and her twin girls (their names are Sarah and Julie, but let's dispense with that charade and just call them the Olsen Twins). Rhonda works long hours at a mini-mart to support her children, and she is constantly "romanced" by an ineffectual suitor, Eddie (J. Eddie Peck). Eddie is a compulsive lotto player, a driver for FPD, a pastiche of FedEx and UPS, and also the world's last surviving Roy Rogers fan. We see a news report early on discussing the unsolved case of the "FPD Bandit," who has been holding up delivery trucks. Gee, I wonder if that's going to come into play later in the movie!

Rhonda hasn't had the heart to tell her obnoxious children that she is working Christmas this year. One day, before Rhonda goes to work, the girls overhear her telling her friend (their babysitter for the day) that they are "a handful" and are making her life stressful. Yeah, no kidding. I've been watching for fifteen minutes and I've had about all I can take of them.

So the Olsen Twins decide they'll hightail it to Grandma's house. They sneak aboard a city bus, where a kindly old lady (who shows no concern about two five-year-old kids on a bus by themselves) tells them they've got about three hours' travel to go. Luckily for them, Eddie (whom they remember from when he made a delivery to their house) has parked his truck nearby, and they stow away as he drives off. He eventually discovers them and uses their birth date to choose his lotto numbers.

Rhonda, suitably distraught that her children are unaccounted for, has called the police. A bumbling detective played by Stuart Margolin (whom I remember as Angel Martin from The Rockford Files) assures her that he will "absolutely" find the children. That's a lot of confidence. Anyway, the search is called off when Eddie calls in to let Rhonda know that the children are safe. For some reason, Eddie is in such an all-fired hurry to finish his route that he schleps the kids along on his remaining deliveries, instead of returning them home immediately.

Once Eddie arrives at Rhonda's house with the Olsen Twins, he is bludgeoned by Rhea Perlman (no kidding, the one from Cheers) and her oafish husband Jerry Van Dyke (no kidding, Dick Van Dyke's brother, the guy from Coach), who steal his truck. They are at first upset that the girls are in the truck, but Rhea Perlman decides they should ransom the children. Somehow that involves driving the kids out to Grandma's house in a motor home, which is convenient for the title of the movie.

Eddie comes to on the sidewalk and reports the incident to Rhonda and the same cop from before. He also discovers that his lotto ticket, which an Olsen Twin is still carrying, has won the jackpot. Wow, what a mess this plot is turning into.

So they get a ransom call asking for $10,000, and what do they do? They steal $10,000 worth of merchandise from FPD and hock it. Rhonda insists on writing down all the things they stole so that they can buy everything back and forward it to its intended recipients. Meanwhile, in the kidnappers' motor home, Jerry Van Dyke seems to have no interest in committing any crimes, and prefers to bond with the children. I guess it's Stockholm Syndrome or something.

Rhonda and Eddie meet up with the kidnappers at some Christmas fair. As they're handing off the cash to Rhea Perlman, Jerry Van Dyke is busy losing track of the kids. This is the third time they've been lost track of! Are these Houdini's children, or is every adult in this movie as negligent as the McCallisters? (Sorry, sorry, we'll get to that one.)

The girls have somehow stolen a horse-drawn buggy from the fair, and it's up to cowboy wannabe Eddie to ride to the rescue. The scene drags on for a very long time, but he manages to stop the girls' runaway carriage just before it goes over a conveniently-located cliff. And guess where they somehow end up: Grandma's house. Why? How? Who cares?

But it's still not over! Now the cop comes back, tells Rhonda and Eddie that he knows they stole $10,000 worth of stuff from FPD, and arrests them on suspicion of that and all the other recent FPD-related crimes. But Jerry Van Dyke confesses to the previous FPD Bandit crimes, and he and Rhea Perlman get arrested instead. (Rhonda and Eddie are still guilty of a felony--why does the cop let them go? Again, who cares?) So the cop helps them race back into town in time to claim their lottery winnings.

The lotto hosts are, as I alluded to above, Bob Saget and Lori Loughlin. Bob Saget is clearly mailing this performance in, and it's actually pretty hilarious. Definitely the highlight of the movie. So they take their winnings, buy back the stolen merchandise and deliver it to its rightful owners, and live happily ever after.

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I know I've sprung to the defense of some lousy movies before, but this time I just can't. It's watchable, yes, especially if you're watching it with friends so you can talk over it and heckle the movie. And since Rotten Tomatoes didn't give this a score, it's hard to say what people think of it. Sixty percent for a viewer rating really just means that enough people liked it to stuff the ballot box. But you know, even that's too much. It's

Sorry.

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And the True Meaning of Christmas, according to this movie:

1. It's important for adults to be at least vaguely aware of the location of children in their care.
That's setting the bar pretty low, but that's the lesson I got.

2. Comically inept criminals aren't so bad deep down.
Especially when they're played by popular sitcom alumni.

Santa Claus is Coming to Town

Jules Bass and Arthur Rankin, Jr., 1970
Rotten Tomatoes score: N/A

This is, of course, one of the famous Rankin-Bass stop-motion productions that air every Christmas even to this day. Apparently this doesn't count as a "movie," since everyone refers to it as a "TV special," and Rotten Tomatoes doesn't list it. I have to admit, I fail to see the difference between a movie and a "special," so this is going on the list.

Anyway, whether it's a movie or a special, this one isn't as popular as Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, but it's pretty memorable. Fred Astaire lends his voice as the narrator, a mailman named S.D. Kluger, who enjoys violating federal law by opening and reading children's letters to Santa. The letters inspire him to tell the story of Kris Kringle (Mickey Rooney), the boy who would grow up to become Santa Claus.

Kris Kringle, we learn, was a foundling deposited on the doorstep of Burgermeister Meisterburger, the ill-tempered, curmudgeonly, sour-tongued, bitter old crank who serves as mayor of a northerly hamlet called Sombertown. He orders the tiny babe whisked away to the orphan asylum, but a 250-mile-per-hour wind kicks up and carries the child and his cradle away to the mountain of the Whispering Wind.

A diminutive fellow with an irritating Alvin and the Chipmunks style voice discovers the child and welcomes him into his home. It's a home filled with other diminutive fellows with irritating voices, called the Kringles, and their matriarch, Tante Kringle. Tante K (Joan Gardner) is the one who does most of the talking for the family, and by the grace of God she does not have an irritating voice.

The Kringles are toymakers by trade, but they are unable to share their creations with the kids of Sombertown, because a mean and despicable creature called the Winter Warlock keeps them in the grip of fear. However, once Kris grows up into a young man (whereupon he announces, "I'm a man now," lest we miss that subtlety), he braves the mountain and delivers a sackful of gifts to the children of Sombertown, whose lives are otherwise whiled away washing filthy stockings in a public fountain.

Kris Kringle's way of ingratiating himself to the children reminds us that this movie was made in the days before America's Most Wanted, when a gregarious adult who gives gifts to strangers' children could still be portrayed in a positive light. The Burgermeister fails to see the fun in it, though, since a toy-related accident has driven him into an anti-toy rage. He orders that anyone caught with a toy should be imprisoned without due process of law in a dungeon. The local schoolteacher Miss Jessica (Robie Lester) takes a liking to Kris, but expresses concern that the Burgermeister may visit his horrible wrath on Kris and the children. Luckily, Kris manages to flee the Burgermeister, but the old grouch is on notice now.

On his way home, Kris encounters the Winter Warlock, who blusters angrily for about five seconds before doing a total 180 and becoming a good guy. The movie's best song follows ("Put One Foot in Front of the Other"), and Winter promises to lend Kris a magical hand when he needs it. Immediately making good on that offer, Winter teleports Kris back to Sombertown where Miss Jessica awaits him. The Burgermeister has destroyed the toys, but Kris cleverly decides to hide replacements in the children's stockings while they dry over the hearth at night.

The ruse doesn't last long, and the Burgermeister eventually imprisons Kris and Winter in the dungeon. Winter's magic seems to have faded away along with his monstrous destructive cruelty, but fortunately he still has some magic corn that makes reindeer fly. What a lucky break. The reindeer help our heroes escape from their prison and report the Burgermeister's human rights violations to the United Nations.

The Kringle clan decide that they can no longer remain in the environs of Sombertown, for fear of persecution, so they make the journey to the North Pole. (As always in Christmas movies, the North Pole is located on a landmass that doesn't exist in real life. Maybe it's the Magnetic North Pole.) Kris decides he should alter his appearance, so he grows the beard pictured above in an effort to disguise himself as Abraham Lincoln.

There the Kringles (and Jessica, who marries Kris) spend the rest of their days, delivering toys to children once a year. Kris and Jessica really let themselves go, it seems, as they are morbidly obese in the epilogue. Thus, the movie devotes its final five minutes to the just-so story of Santa's origins that we've been promised all along.

It's hard to evaluate this movie, since I don't have a Rotten Tomatoes benchmark. But I think, in general, it's justifiably well-received and therefore

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1. Some things in a child's life are more important than washing stockings.
Still, sock-washing remains a priority for most children nowadays.

2. Going from bad to good's as easy as taking your first step.
And for reasons obscure to me, once you've gone from bad to good, you will experience actual difficulty in walking for the remainder of your musical number.

Ernest Saves Christmas

John Cherry, 1988
Rotten Tomatoes score: 38%

It's hard to find a more fitting Christmas icon than Ernest P. Worrell.

Actually, it's pretty weird that they decided to have Ernest meet Santa Claus in his second star turn in a feature film. Up to this point, the biggest excitement Ernest had seen on the silver screen was a trip to summer camp with a bunch of juvenile delinquents, and now here he was, not only meeting Saint Nick but saving Christmas.

Saving it from what? you may ask. Well, it seems that Santa Claus (Douglas Seale, who voiced the Sultan in Aladdin) is getting a little old for his job and needs a replacement. Of course, Santa claims to be over a hundred years old, so one would assume he's immortal. I guess he's not all that immortal, and eventually he starts to wear out.

Anyway, according to the Santological doctrine of this movie, the only way to become the new Santa Claus is for the current Santa to grab you by the hand and channel his divine supernatural essence into your body. Santa has traveled to Orlando to meet his chosen successor, and you've got one guess who he's picked.

No, it's not Ernest, although that would have been great. It's Joe Carruthers (Oliver Clark), an aging children's TV host. Joe is attempting to give his career a shot in the arm by starring in an extraordinarily tacky holiday-themed horror movie. Needless to say, Santa is none too happy about this, but Joe refuses to take the poor old man seriously, especially since Santa has lost his magic bag.

The bag has fallen into the bumbling hands of Ernest P. Worrell, who has retired from his summer camp job and acquired an Orlando hack license. He loses his job after giving Santa a free lift in his taxi, and once he finds the magic bag Santa left behind, he realizes to his amazement that Santa is the real deal. Meanwhile, Ernest has also befriended a teenage runaway named Harmony Starr (Noelle Parker), who is skeptical of Santa's story.

(In Christmas movies, people are often skeptical of Santa's existence even when confronted with clear and convincing evidence: In this case, Harmony discovers that Santa's bag contains an unlimited quantity of some paranormal substance that assumes the shape of any object one wishes for. Nevertheless, she thinks he's a fake.)

Eventually, Harmony lets her mischievous impulses get the better of her and she attempts to skip town with Santa's bag. With Christmas Eve drawing to a close, Santa and Ernest still have to retrieve the bag, pick up Santa's sleigh and reindeer from the airport, and persuade Joe to take up the mantle before time runs out and the Magic of Christmas fades away (which for some reason is going to happen at exactly 7 pm).

In the end, of course, Joe comes around and accepts his new calling. Harmony returns the bag and reveals that she's called home to let her parents know she's alive and well and will be coming home soon. And Ernest pilots the sleigh to meet the new Santa, arriving in the St. Nick of time.

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This is my second-favorite Ernest movie. It's pretty absurd, but the production values are still moderately high, and the story is delightfully idiotic. Douglas Seale's avuncular St. Nick is much more appealing than most big-screen Santas. I think the English accent helps, but overall he plays the role as a human character, not a cartoon. He plays a wise and kindly Santa who shows genuine affection to others, rather than department-store schmaltz. I also give the movie tremendous credit for never once showing him in the standard red suit, and for not forcing him to do that moronic "ho ho ho" that movie Santas always struggle with.

I realize the irony of my praising the depth of a character portrayed in a movie sequel starring a TV advertising icon, but that's just one more reason this movie is

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And the lessons are:

1. It's wrong for children not to spend time with their parents.
They flipped it around this time! Very clever.

2. The world needs more old people with hearts of gold.
Or else who will become Santa Claus when Joe's time is up? ...Oh, wait, this was 1988, so I guess that means Joe was the guy who took a spill off Tim Allen's roof in 1994...

Jack Frost

Troy Miller, 1998
Rotten Tomatoes score: 20%

I have to confess, I couldn't find this movie to re-watch it, so my recollections are supplemented by plot summaries and reviews I found online. Hopefully that won't impermissibly bias my evaluation. At any rate, remember not to confuse this movie with the horror movie of the same title, released two years earlier to even worse reviews (Rotten Tomatoes gives it an 8%).

Michael Keaton stars as Jack Frost, an improbably named musician who--say it with me now--doesn't spend enough time with his son (Joseph Cross). This son is named Charlie, but don't confuse him with Charlie Calvin from The Santa Clause. This Charlie's father is not going to become Santa; he's going to become a snowman. That's totally different.

Shortly before Christmas, Jack gives his son an old keepsake harmonica that he jokingly claims has the magic power to summon Jack through time and space. Don't confuse this with the snow-globe that Scott Calvin gives his Charlie in The Santa Clause. A snow-globe is totally different from a harmonica.

Jack's band has finally garnered some industry attention (and after hearing their rousing cover of "Frosty the Snowman" during the cold-open, it's no wonder!), but Charlie and Jack's wife Gabby (Kelly Preston) are frustrated with the dearth of free time Jack has left over to spend with them. Busy in the studio, Jack fails to show up to Charlie's hockey game; but the final straw is Jack's last-minute decision to abandon the family vacation on Christmas so he can trek up a dangerous mountain road with his band to attend an audition.

Halfway up the perilous, snow-covered peak, Jack comes to his senses and decides to go back to his family. Unfortunately, a blizzard has set in, and Jack has some sort of weather-related accident. (It's hard to tell exactly what happens, but whatever it is, it kills him.)

We now jump one year into the future, where we see that Charlie has not aged a single day. He even has the same uninspired mid-90s bowl haircut. Don't confuse this with Charlie Calvin's uninspired bowl cut from The Santa Clause, which also stayed exactly the same over the course of a year.

Charlie has apparently spent the past year understandably depressed over the loss of his dad. He has quit the hockey team and become a loner. One day close to Christmas, Charlie and Gabby build a snowman that is supposed to represent the late Jack, but it really just looks like a snowman. Late that night, Charlie finds his father's "magic" harmonica and plays it. Astonishingly, the harmonica really is magic: It causes Jack's disembodied soul to return to this earth and haunt the Living, using the generic snowman as a vessel.

Charlie sees the animate snowman from his bedroom window, but he doubts his senses and goes to sleep. The next morning, he discovers that the snowman really is alive, and it explains to him that it is in fact his dearly departed dad. When Charlie's schoolmates bully him in a snowball fight, Jack uses his incredible snowman powers to pelt them with hundreds of snowballs. Jack and Charlie then board a toboggan and lead the miscreants on a downhill chase. It results in what appear to be rather serious injuries to several of them, but we're not supposed to be concerned.

Reunited with his boy, Jack takes the opportunity to spend some belated quality time together. He even gives Charlie a hockey lesson, which pays off when Charlie re-joins the team. But eventually, the weather turns warmer, and Jack realizes that his snowy avatar will soon be reduced to water. (Couldn't they just put the water in a big bucket and let Jack talk through that? Why is Jack's soul only allowed to possess a snowman? In And You Thought Your Parents Were Weird, TV's Alan Thicke dies and returns to earth as a robot. Would that not work for Jack?)

One of the erstwhile bullies sympathizes with Charlie and Jack's plight--he is quite unfazed by the life-altering realization that Jack has become a snowman--and helps Charlie bring Jack up the mountain, where permafrost will keep him safe forever. Jack telephones home, reveals himself to Gabby, and implores her to drive up the mountain to meet him.

She does so, but at this point, Jack reveals that, inexplicably, he now has to return to the Great Beyond. (Why did they waste their time taking him up the mountain if he's getting out of Dodge anyway?) Rather than melting, the snowman disappears in a cloud of dust (or snow, I guess). Jack momentarily becomes an apparition of his former body, and then vanishes.

In the epilogue, Charlie has readjusted to life without his father, whose memory he now treasures. Gabby has married Jack's former bandmate (Mark Addy from The Full Monty), and they all get on with their lives.

Well, now comes the part where I have to decide whether this is an Underrated Movie. I have to admit it's kind of crappy, but what the heck, it's Christmas:

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And the True Meaning of Christmas is:

1. It's wrong for fathers not to spend time with their kids.
Remember, no matter how much of a wild success your Christmas carol cover-band is, your family is more important.

2. Our loved ones will always survive in our fond memories of them.
Only occasionally will they survive in the form of snow.

Jingle All the Way

Brian Levant, 1996
Rotten Tomatoes score: 15%

Surely nothing has given former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger greater pride than his performance in this holiday favorite. The critics despised it, but it seems viewers found it only mildly contemptible.

His Honor plays Howard Langston, a Twin Cities businessman who--surprise, surprise--doesn't spend enough time with his son. After breaking promise after promise, Howard assures the boy that this once, he won't break his word--he swears he'll get his kid a Turbo-Man action figure for Christmas this year. The problem is, it's Christmas Eve and workaholic Howard still hasn't found time to make the purchase.

Turbo-Man seems to be a parody of the hordes of Power Ranger knock-offs that were all the rage at the time. Of course, the gimmick of a panicked parent scouring stores to find a coveted toy has been a perennial cliché dating back at least to the Cabbage Patch Kids craze of 1983.

What follows is a ludicrous jaunt that leads Howard all over the place in a desperate search for Turbo-Man. Along the way, he meets the only other dad in the world who is still without a Turbo-Man for his kid: a postman played by Sinbad. The two begin as allies, but almost immediately find themselves turned rivals, competing to get first dibs on an action figure, should one turn up.

Their plans are repeatedly thwarted by a curmudgeonly cop played by Robert Conrad, a radio host played by Martin Mull, and even Howard's philandering neighbor, Phil Hartman.

This movie seems to have taken some of its "comedic" inspiration from Home Alone, as so many PG movies did at the time. We get lots of nonsensical slapstick scenes, including one where Robert Conrad opens a mail-bomb, and in the next shot, his face is covered in soot like Yosemite Sam, but he appears uninjured. It's pretty ridiculous.

Eventually, Howard somehow finds himself disguised as Turbo-Man himself, waving to throngs of adoring fans from his float in a Christmas parade. Finally his ship has come in, as he has the opportunity to deliver a special-edition Turbo-Man figure to a lucky kid from the audience. Naturally he chooses his son, but before son can forgive prodigal dad, who should arrive but Sinbad, dressed to the nines in the costume of Dementor, arch-nemesis of Turbo-Man!

Dementor--I mean Sinbad (...actually, the character's real name is Myron)--undertakes to steal the doll from the kid, and before you know it, the poor eight-year-old sucker is dangling from a Christmas tree decoration 60 feet above the ground. Fortunately, Howard's costume is complete with a jet-pack the likes of which I imagine NASA would love to get its hands on.

Thus, Howard plucks his boy from the gaping maw of grisly death, and the movie comes to an upbeat conclusion. Turbo-Man dramatically reveals his true identity to his wife and son--you might have thought his out-of-place Austrian accent would have given him away--and Sinbad is arrested for attempted murder.

Oh, and the little kid has learned a valuable lesson too, so he gives his beloved Turbo-Man doll to Sinbad, who we can only assume will mail it to his own child from St. Cloud Correctional.

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So what are the moral lessons of this happy tale?

1. It's wrong for fathers not to spend time with their kids.
I told you it wasn't over.

2. It's not toys that bring children happiness.
Well, actually it is. But what brings them even more happiness is seeing their dad dressed up as a giant toy.

Stay tuned for more of the True Meaning of Christmas every day this month.

The Santa Clause

John Pasquin, 1994
Rotten Tomatoes score: 82%

Well, since it's December, I'm going to attempt to give this blog some actual content by posting a review of a holiday-themed movie every day. And for the benefit of my (hypothetical) readership, I will explain to you what valuable lessons each movie teaches us about the True Meaning of Christmas.

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And what better place to start than with The Santa Clause? It's a classic of my youth that, apparently, most people actually enjoyed.

This joyful holiday film weaves the tale of the unmourned death of an omnipotent being.

Tim Allen plays Scott Calvin, a toy company executive who has a successful career, but little else going for him: His ex-wife Laura (Wendy Crewson) is now married to a dweeby but decent psychiatrist (Judge Reinhold); and he rarely gets to see his young son Charlie (Eric Lloyd). While Charlie is visiting for Christmas Eve, Scott sees what he believes is a burglar on his roof and startles him. The "burglar" is of course St. Nick, who slips off the roof, falls twenty-five feet to the ground, and immediately dies of massive internal injuries.

(Apparently, in the original script, Scott took Santa out with a shotgun. But once Disney got involved, they insisted that this be re-tooled. Tim Allen was disappointed, but what we're left with is still a pretty edgy piece of gallows humor for a family movie.)

Luckily, since this is a kids' movie, we don't actually see his corpse. As soon as he dies, Santa's body simply vanishes--evidently he is translated into the hereafter like an Old Testament prophet. Utterly undaunted by this disturbing scene, Scott discovers a little note from Santa lying on the ground, urging him to put on Santa's clothes. Scott does so, and he and Charlie proceed to fill in for Kris Kringle and complete his deliveries for the night.

Santa's reindeer then lead Scott and Charlie back to the North Pole, where a team of childlike elves, led by Bernard (David Krumholtz, one of our most underrated actors), tell Scott that--pursuant to a deliberately deceptive contract--he has agreed to become "the Big Guy" permanently.

This doesn't sit too well with either Scott or anyone else once he and Charlie return home and tell the tale. Scott continues to remain skeptical that any of these astounding events actually occurred, and psychiatrist Neil believes it's all a bizarre folie à deux, but Charlie embraces it wholeheartedly. Scott finally comes around when he experiences severe weight gain and grows a full white beard that regenerates instantaneously every time he shaves. At the same time, he experiences tremendous personality changes, adopting a much greater level of benevolence (and omniscience), while not quite shedding his acerbic wit.

Laura and Neil grow increasingly disconcerted, believing that Scott is altering his appearance on purpose in order to indulge Charlie's delusions. (Why Scott doesn't resolve the matter by demonstrating his miraculous beard-growing powers will forever remain a holiday mystery.) Ultimately, Scott loses custody of Charlie, but luckily it's late November by this point and Bernard has returned to enforce Scott's contract. He and Scott feloniously abduct Charlie and go back to the North Pole in time for the holiday rush.

An elfin version of Q tricks Scott out with the latest gadgets, including a high-tech sleigh and a fire-retardant suit. Scott expresses genuine concern that he might fall to his death off a roof, but the elves have other priorities.

On Christmas Eve, the cops are out in force looking for Scott, and they arrest him as soon as he arrives in town. An iconic and hilarious sequence follows, where a policeman grills Scott about his true identity, and Scott rattles off half a dozen monikers for Santa Claus, inexplicably including "Topo Gigio" (actually the name of a mouse from an Italian stop-motion cartoon).

The North Pole dispatches a squadron of jetpack-wearing elves, commanded by the most irritating child this side of Full House. They break Scott out of jail, and he returns Charlie to Laura and Neil, who finally accept that Scott really is Santa Claus. (Neil is slow to catch on, even after he watches Bernard de-materialize in front of his eyes.)

Charlie is sad to see his father go, but Scott gives him a snow-globe that has the uncouth power to summon Scott through space and time whenever Charlie needs a visit.

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One of the most bizarre things about this movie, like a lot of family Christmas comedies, is the adults' discussion of how they lost faith in Santa. It's a strange idea--after all, Laura and Neil must have noticed the way presents that they know they didn't buy somehow appear under the tree every Christmas morning. To speak only for myself, I learned the truth about Santa Claus when my parents flat-out told me--I didn't gradually sink into apostasy the way this movie's adults seem to do.

My question is, who exactly relates to this? As far as I know, children who are young enough to believe in Santa are oblivious to the fact that their parents have stopped believing. (They must be, since it's their parents who tell them about Santa to start with.) Anyway, this is a minor complaint, but it has always struck me as weird.

I loved this movie when I saw it as a kid, and it holds up just as well for me today. However, everyone else actually seems to agree with me for once, so I can happily report that this movie is

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Now, as promised, let's see what lessons this movie teaches us about the True Meaning of Christmas:

1. It is wrong for fathers not to spend time with their children
This is a popular one, as you'll see over the next couple of days. It's actually very difficult to think of any family Christmas movie that doesn't employ this theme.

2. Divorce is hard on children, and parents should endeavor to make it easier for them
This is not too common for Christmas movies, but for family movies in general, it's pretty typical. But this movie reminds us that supernatural adventures can ease the transition for kids and parents alike.

3. Santa Claus actually exists
Not much to say about this one.

So that's the meaning of Christmas. ...Or is it? We'll learn more tomorrow.

Paul Blart: Mall Cop

Steve Carr, 2009
Rotten Tomatoes score: 33%

I really like Kevin James, and I always imagine that in real life he is exactly like his character in this movie. I like nice-guy heroes. Paul is neither preachy and saccharine nor nasty and sarcastic; he's just a genuinely decent guy. I think the negative response to this movie is probably in response to its silliness, but I'm not sure what else anybody expected from a movie called Paul Blart: Mall Cop.

This movie follows in the grand tradition begun by Die Hard in 1988 and continued in every subsequent action movie, action movie parody, and TV series. But in this case, instead of Bruce Willis, we get Kevin James as an overweight shopping mall security guard. (Or if you prefer, "security officer." There's actually a huge debate brewing in the industry about what the proper terminology is; I'm sure you've heard about it.)

Paul is a hopelessly dedicated shlemazel, the only person in the world who could take this job seriously. Though fat, he's remarkably athletic, but unfortunately his hypoglycemia has prevented him from passing the physical fitness exam to become a New Jersey state trooper. According to this movie's portrayal, hypoglycemia causes you to pass out instantaneously (and start snoring like a cartoon), with no prior warning signs, any time your blood sugar gets low.

For the first 20 minutes or so, we watch Paul go about his life and business in the days leading up to Black Friday. He shares his home with his mother and step-daughter (his ex-wife abandoned them both), and at work he endures the cruel heckling of an egomaniacal pen salesman while pining over Amy (Jayma Mays), who sells wigs at a mall kiosk. Amy is friendly to him, but Paul seems to put the kibosh on their relationship when he embarrasses himself after drinking what he thought was lemonade, but was really a margarita, at a gathering of mall employees at American Joe's.

On Black Friday he gets his chance to redeem himself. A team of criminals takes over the mall in the hopes of stealing credit card information from the stores' computers, and--à la Die Hard--they fail to realize that Paul is still inside the mall. For most of the movie, he proceeds to pick off the crooks one by one while closing in on the bank where the hostages, including Amy and Paul's daughter, are held.

The action scenes are funny and progressively absurd. For some reason, the bad guys move about the mall by some kind of bizarre Parkour, which is fun to watch but really weird. The dialogue repeatedly assures us that Paul never seriously injures the bad guys, so it's all in good fun, even though there is a preposterous scene where Paul causes tens of thousands of dollars of damage to the Rainforest Café. Anyway, these scenes are pretty funny, and in short order Paul has saved the day and won Amy's heart.

Family comedies seem to be hard to make, since they have to be nice and inoffensive, but then they run the risk of being sappy or lame. Well this movie is definitely lame, but it embraces that and makes it work. It never once resorts to gross-out jokes, and the cheesy feel-good plot comes across as innocent and genuine, not forced or cloying.

I recommend this movie with a slice of pie and peanut butter. It is sorely and severely

Ernest Goes to Camp

John Cherry, 1987
Rotten Tomatoes score: 62%

I figured, if I'm going to talk about movies that I like that apparently everyone else hates, there's no more obvious place to start than the Ernest series. Certainly it still has its fans (mostly people who, like me, grew up with this character), but the majority of the public seems to have found Ernest irritating from day one.

Ernest P. Worrell was created by Carden & Cherry, a Nashville advertising firm. Jim Varney portrayed the affable redneck in countless local ads all over the U.S. during the 1980s, where Ernest hawked everything from Mello Yello to First Federal Savings. The commercials always featured Ernest talking to his unseen neighbor Vern, mugging to the camera and extolling the virtues of whatever product he was plugging. Usually the commercial would end with Ernest clumsily causing some sort of property damage or Vern angrily ousting Ernest from his home.

It seems bizarre in retrospect that a character created for local TV ads, not even attached to any particular product, could have become popular enough to star in a children's Saturday morning series and nine feature films spanning over a decade.

And yet, that's what happened. The movies are usually despised as predictable, shallow, absurd, aimless, very broad, and annoyingly frenetic. All of those descriptors are accurate, but I still find all of these movies entertaining, some much more so than others. A lot of people find Ernest annoying, and I suppose he is, but that doesn't stop him from being likable. He's always been more of a live-action cartoon than a plausible human being, and not just because of his physics-defying pratfalls. Like all the best cartoon characters, Ernest is constantly winking at his audience (sometimes literally) and reminding us not to take anything we're seeing seriously. Knowhutimean?

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Ernest's first big-screen outing, sadly without Vern, came in 1987. In this movie, he's the maintenance man at a boys' summer camp called Camp Kikakee. Ernest loves his job, but his clumsiness gets him into dutch with his boss and makes him the butt of practical jokes at the hands of the campers. All Ernest really wants is to become a counselor and impress the camp's nurse, Ms. St. Cloud, daughter of the Native American chief (Iron Eyes Cody) who owns the camp.

Ernest finally gets his break when a rag-tag bunch of boys enroll at Camp Kikakee as part of a rehab program for juvenile delinquents. Having run their snide, uncaring counselor ragged, the boys are in need of new adult supervision, and Ernest is the person for the job. Predictably, Ernest is the only person at camp willing to give the troubled youths a chance, and gradually they come to respect and admire him.

The real trouble starts when a corrupt mining mogul named Sherman Krader, ably portrayed by John Vernon as an impossibly heartless crook (I don't recall him smiling in any of his scenes), enlists Ernest's unwitting help in swindling Chief St. Cloud into selling him the camp. (We're told the land under the camp is rich in "petrocite," a non-existent but apparently priceless mineral.)

The final act of the movie is no less predictable. Ernest and the kids team up with the camp's wacky mess hall chefs, and all together they bombard the construction crew with disgusting camp food, parachuting snapping turtles, and explosives (clearly marked "smoke bombs," lest we should worry for anyone's safety). In an over-the-top climactic stand-off, Krader arrives with a rifle in tow and proceeds to fire point-blank at Ernest. Fortunately, the spirit of the great Kikakee Warrior has entered Ernest's body, and the bullets can't harm him. (I'm not kidding; this is really how the movie ends.)

So the mining company slinks off in shame, Nurse St. Cloud having obtained a court order for their removal, and we can only assume Sherman Krader goes to prison for attempted murder. Ernest keeps his job as a counselor, the no-longer-troubled youngsters remain at camp, and everyone is happy. The end.

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In comparison to the other Ernest movies, this one is unusual. On the positive side, the production values are probably higher for this movie than for any of its sequels (and that's not saying a lot). It's shot in 2.39 widescreen and everything looks colorful and well-photographed. There are some explosions in the climactic scene that look conspicuously expensive.

The soundtrack isn't bad, but it definitely dates itself with a lot of late-80s style movie music, including a song called "Brave Hearts" that could have been ripped right out of the Karate Kid soundtrack. A pleasant surprise is the song "Gee, I'm Glad It's Raining," sung in-character by Jim Varney. It's a melancholy acoustic number that stands up quite well on its own, but it's shoved a little awkwardly into the movie. (This isn't a musical--Why is Ernest singing?)

The Ernest formula is present right from Go: Ernest is struggling with a lowly job, hoping for a promotion and pining for a woman who seems out of his league; he wins the hearts of a group of initially hostile companions; and he ultimately triumphs in a spectacular way, leaving him modestly better off than he started.

Nevertheless, this one doesn't quite have the feel of the rest of the series. It's significantly less zany; I'll leave to you whether that's good or bad. Compared to the storied life he would lead for the next decade, saving a kids' camp is a pretty humdrum adventure. (On the other hand, channeling an ancient warrior spirit and becoming invulnerable to bullets is fairly exciting.) The slapstick is also much less cartoonish, although there are a few over-the-top pratfalls. In fact, it's a little bit jarring to see Ernest in the infirmary after a fist-fight with the mining company's goliath foreman.

(This kind of slapstick haphazardness always bothers me. It's like in The Lion King, where the little bird is no worse for wear after being sat on by a rhino, and then minutes later Mufasa is killed by a stampede. Cartoon violence is fine, but it sits uneasily in the same movie with serious violence that actually leaves a mark.)

No complaints about the supporting cast. The kids all get the job done, especially Hakeem Abdulsamad as Ernest's young confidant Moose, and they scrupulously avoid the all-too-common wisecracking obnoxiousness of this era. As I said above, John Vernon plays his character as a frightening psychopath, without even a hint of audience sympathy, but it works. Gailard Sartain and Daniel Butler are amusing as the camp's off-kilter cooks, desperately trying to perfect an inedible recipe they call "eggs erroneous."

The only thing that disappoints me in this movie is that Ernest himself isn't allowed to do enough. He's basically in "lovable doofus" mode the entire movie, with some naively confident boasting thrown in, but the full Bugs Bunny-esque range of wackiness would have to wait for another movie.

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