Lucky Christmas

Gary Yates, 2012
Rotten Tomatoes audience rating: 14%

We're scraping the bottom of the stocking this time. Notice that that 14% score is an audience rating. As we all know, the audience reviews are usually unrealistically positive, so this is a truly abysmal showing.

This is, of course, a Hallmark original movie. Over the last few years, the Hallmark Channel has become to adults what the Disney Channel once was for children, namely a clearinghouse of inoffensive, inexpensive, incompetent movies produced on the business model of an all-you-can eat buffet: Quantity over quality, drinks are extra, and stay the hell away from the seafood.

Starting around Halloween and continuing until the New Year, Hallmark throws its assembly line into overdrive and produces at least 600 new movies a day, all of them cheesy, family-friendly romantic comedies taking place around Christmas and featuring actors whose names are vaguely familiar. This time out we get Jesse Spano from Saved by the Bell and Lt. Randy Disher from Monk as Holly and Mike.

As always, the female lead is a pretty, likable single mom whose tremendous intelligence and potential are being squelched by her life circumstances. And as always, the male lead is a handsome, likable single man whose foolhardy but non-malicious actions get him into trouble. (I say handsome, but Mike does his best to hide his handsomeness in this film by wearing a hideous House M.D. beard.)

Holly is a chef by trade, but she just can't get together the money she needs to open up a restaurant. Meanwhile, Mike is a highly-educated architect who is stuck doing menial labor in the family business because his uptight brother won't listen to his big ideas. While Holly is lamenting her difficulties with her best friend (a character who never once speaks to anyone else but Holly—is she a ghost?), she fails to realize that Mike is in the same bar with his best friend, the world's biggest chowderhead.

Mike has taken one too many of his sister's snake-oil cold pills, so he passes out at the bar, and his idiot friend has to drive him home. Since the friend's car has been booted by the police for unpaid parking tickets, he decides to "borrow" another car, which just so happens to be Holly's. Now, the idiot friend has no intention of keeping the car, but once he discovers a lottery ticket in the glove compartment, he ropes Mike into a harebrained extortion scheme. Needless to say, the scheme requires Mike to pretend to fall in love with Holly, and now you can see the shape this mess is taking.

You can probably fill in the rest of the blanks for yourself. It involves Holly's horrified revelation that their relationship is a sham, Mike's belated realization that he has fallen in love for real, a lot of ineffectual attempts by Mike to make things right, and a huge number of very prominent references to the Pinewood Derby. (You probably wouldn't have guessed that last one, but man, they sure plug that Pinewood Derby for all its worth.)

Mike attempts to return the lottery ticket, but due to a contrived series of oversights, Holly doesn't find it until the last ten minutes of the movie. The lottery ticket has to be turned in at midnight on Christmas Eve, and Holly finds it two hours before the deadline. But just to manufacture some suspense for the big finale, she then spends an hour and 45 minutes driving around the city searching for Mike to reconcile with him before they cash in the ticket. She finds Mike with just minutes to spare, and then stands and talks to him for an eternity while the clock ticks down. For crying out loud, there's suspense, and then there's just bad writing.

The final shot of the movie is Holly and Max walking into City Hall to redeem the ticket just as the clock strikes twelve. There's a school of thought that holds that leaving a story's outcome to the audience's imagination makes it more satisfying. I have some sympathy for that perspective, but with a movie this bad I don't think it's worth the bother. If they really want to take that strategy, why not just end the movie right after the opening credits?

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Yeah, this is a really bad movie. But 14% from the viewers? That's just appalling.

Unbelievably, but this thing managed to be

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TMoC:

1. The lottery is your secret to a happy life.
Actually, as the state lottery commission informs us, "lottery games are based on chance, and should [not] be played[.]"

2. The Pinewood Derby is an alternate secret to a happy life.
When George Costanza was a Cub Scout, he got stuck on Webelos for three years because he kept losing the Pinewood Derby. Happy Festivus!

The Grinch

Ron Howard, 2000
Rotten Tomatoes score: 53%

I saw this movie in theaters the winter of 2000, and the theatrical poster was the one you see to the left of this paragraph. The title was The Grinch. Then, when the movie came out on video, the title had been expanded to Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas!. (And that exclamation point is part of the title; I did not type that sentence with any enthusiasm.)

Apart from being an unwieldy mouthful, this train wreck of a title disingenuously implies that the film is a close adaptation of the Dr. Seuss children's book of 1957. I will continue to refer to the Jim Carrey movie as The Grinch, so as to forestall any confusion with the 1966 cartoon, which has exactly the same title.

Another point on the title before moving on: No version of this story is called "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas." So stop calling it that.

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This is a difficult movie to review. The book and the cartoon are so nearly perfect that it was risky to even attempt a live-action adaptation.

After all, the story derives its charm from its simplicity: The Grinch is a misanthropic creature who, for no reason at all, hates Christmas and begrudges the people of Whoville their happiness. So senselessly curmudgeonly is the Grinch that he goes to absurd lengths to deprive the Whos of their Christmas presents, thinking he can make them as miserable as he is, but he is redeemed in the end by the revelation that simple companionship is what makes the Whos happy.

Even filling a 26-minute cartoon required a lot of extra material, but fortunately it all took the form of songs and cartoon set-pieces; not a word was added to the story. But you just can't go from 26 minutes to 104 minutes without massively changing the plot. So rather than the inoffensive non-speaking plot devices we're familiar with, the Whos are now an irritating bunch of busybodies and bad neighbors who make the Grinch look like the hero. (I guess he's supposed to be the hero, but why does that mean the Whos have to be so obnoxious?)

As for the Grinch, he's given an unnecessary backstory to explain why he's such a grouch. (His heart is two sizes too small—isn't that enough of an explanation?) Cindy Lou Who has been aged, soap-opera style, from "not more than two" to about six, and her part has expanded as well. Since she's the only really sympathetic character in the movie, this is a welcome change, but her role is limited to having the Wide-Eyed Innocence of a Child and trying to persuade the townspeople that the Grinch is not all bad. (But he is all bad! That's the whole point!)

But I think I'm being unfair. Nothing could have lived up to the original Grinch, so it's only right to evaluate the movie for what it is.

And for what it is, it's all right. Jim Carrey of course steals every scene, and he's exactly what a live-action Grinch should be. He spends about half the movie talking to himself, and these scenes are my favorite because the Whos aren't there. The voice he does sounds similar to Boris Karloff in the cartoon, and just look at him—he looks exactly like the Grinch. (They actually won an Oscar for this make-up, but why do the Whos have tiny rat-noses? Aren't they bugs?)

They did a reasonably good job of making the movie look like a Dr. Seuss book, though not quite as well as in the Nickelodeon show The Wubbulous World of Dr. Seuss. It certainly has a stylized look, but I could have done without all the intense red and purple lighting; all the nighttime scenes look like they take place in front of a bar in a bad part of town. The music is good, including some new songs, but the best number remains "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch," this time sung by the Grinch himself, which is clever and very in-character.

Well, I've been pretty critical of The Grinch, and I was going to say it was overrated, but then at the last minute my icy cold heart grew three sizes. So I guess it's

...but not by much.

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The True Meaning of Christmas is:

1. The joy of Christmas is the company of your fellow rat-nosed bug people.
It will come without packages, boxes, or bags, but according to this movie it will be like pulling teeth towards the end.

2. Just watch the cartoon.
I have to admit, it still gets to me when the Grinch hears a sound rising over the snow...

I'm sorry, I just... talk amongst yourselves.

The Nightmare Before Christmas

Henry Selick, 1993
Rotten Tomatoes score: 94%

I've occasionally encountered controversy about whether this is a Halloween movie or a Christmas movie. It's true that it came out around Halloween, but that's only one week earlier than most Christmas movies. And yes, it's a scary, but don't forget that Tim Burton also made two other scary Christmas movies around the same time.

Anyway, this is a pointless argument. It's clearly both Halloween- and Christmas-themed, so it makes the list. After all, it does have the word "Christmas" in the title.

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As the movie begins, the narrator explains that all our favorite holidays are somehow created by the denizens of fantasy towns, accessible by a bunch of warp zones hidden in the woods. Who knew?

The people of Halloween Town (not the unforgivably long Disney Channel movie series, but a different Halloween Town) spend 364 days out of every year planning a scary festival for October 31. In charge of the excitement is Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King, adored by the townsfolk but secretly dissatisfied with his life. The only person who understands him is Sally, a Frankenstein created by some guy who looks like a duck.

While wandering aimlessly through the woods, Jack stumbles across the entrance to Christmas Town. In a musical number that will be familiar from the Coming Attractions you fast-forwarded through on every VHS tape you ever owned in the 90s, Jack wonders at the jolly world he has entered. He returns home with a few souvenirs in the hopes of persuading his fellow Halloween Town citizens that there is more to life than ghosts and goblins.

Jack becomes determined to bring Christmas home, so he enlists the help of some obnoxious children to kidnap Santa Claus (who Jack believes to be a giant lobster), and persuades Sally against her better judgment to make him a Santa outfit. On Christmas Eve, the kids return from their caper with Santa Claus in tow, and he is by far the scariest-looking thing in the movie. I can't quite put my finger on it, but there's something in his gigantic, inhumanly-proportioned body, his stiff wiry white beard, and his sandpaper voice that my eight-year-old self found really disturbing. Seeing it again today, I can confirm that he is as hideous as ever.

Just look at him:

And he's not wearing any pants, either.

On their own initiative, and apparently believing that they're doing Santa a favor, the kids deliver him into the lair of a homicidal gambler called Oogie Boogie, who is really just a bunch of bugs in a burlap sack.

Meanwhile, Jack has disguised himself as Santa and set off to deliver scary, often deadly presents to the children of the world—that is, the real world, although it too is populated by creepy-looking stop-motion characters. The real world doesn't take kindly to Jack's antics, so they shoot him down with anti-aircraft artillery, apparently killing him.

Back in scary world, Sally has entered the bogeyman's lair to free Santa, only to find herself captured alongside him. Finally, Jack returns, having survived his encounter with the Real World Military. (Actually, Jack said at the beginning of the movie that he was already dead, so why did anyone think he had been killed?) Jack disables Oogie Boogie by pulling a loose thread on his burlap skin, releasing the vermin inside. (As Oogie Boogie disintegrates into a swarm of insects, his voice cries out "My bugs!" What's going on here? The burlap skin has been removed, so the bugs are all that's left. Who is crying out? Isn't he made of bugs? That would be like if a person died and cried out, "My cells!" Okay, forget it.)

Jack and Sally realize that they love each other, and the movie's over.

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I was surprised to discover that this movie was not directed by Tim Burton. His name is placed so prominently on every piece of promotional artwork, I had always assumed he was an auteur. But no: Burton wrote the three-page poem on which this was based. I'm going to go out on a limb and assume it was a super-weird poem.

Really, the man of the hour is Danny Elfman, who wrote the music and lyrics, and who provided Jack Skellington's singing voice. (It's common in cartoon musicals for the speaking and singing voices to be done by different people, and usually the speaking voice is treated as the "real" voice, with the singer just jumping in for the songs. But here, Jack spends most of the movie singing, so Elfman really is the star of the show.)

Since the plot makes no sense, you really are watching just to enjoy the way everything looks and sounds. But that's not a bad thing—it looks and sounds great.

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Here's the True Meaning of Christmas and/or Halloween:

1. Life is better when you celebrate multiple holidays.
I'd hate to live in Washington's Birthday (traditional) Town. That must get old.

2. Santa Claus can be horrifying.
Remember that episode of Full House where Nicky and Alex were afraid of Santa Claus? (Or were they just afraid of Joey Gladstone dressed as Santa Claus? Because that I could understand.)

Frosty the Snowman

Rankin/Bass, 1969
Rotten Tomatoes score: 60%

How strange that Rotten Tomatoes has critics' reviews for this thing. Previous "TV specials" on my list have always had to do without official scores, but this phoned-in 30-minute cartoon gets the full treatment.

Well, maybe "full treatment" is an overstatement—there are a total of five reviews, and only two are from sources I've heard of. Anyway, it's a number, so I'll just go with it.

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The song "Frosty the Snow Man" was written for and recorded by Gene Autry in 1950, in a conscious attempt to follow up on Autry's previous hit "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer." Many years later, after Rankin/Bass had struck gold with their Rudolph movie, they decided to give Frosty a try too.

It seems that their goal with Frosty the Snowman was to recapture the spirit of Rudolph, but to put absolutely no thought, effort, or money into it whatsoever. Rudolph's stop-motion animation looks charmingly old-fashioned; Frosty looks a notch or two above Clutch Cargo. Rather than stop-motion, they went in for traditional hand-drawn animation, but it's the corner-cutting, Xerox-heavy animation style that was all the rage in cheaply-produced Hanna-Barbera cartoons.

(Have you ever wondered why Fred Flintstone and George Jetson have five o'clock shadows all the time, or why Yogi Bear wears a tie? It's because the animators needed clear boundary lines between their body parts, so that they would only have to animate the bare minimum, then paste it into a still image of the rest of the body. Try talking without moving any part of your face except your mouth; it's not as easy as Fred makes it look.)

As with all Rankin/Bass movies, this one is hosted by a celebrity narrator, depicted on-screen as an animated representation of himself. Frosty has Jimmy "Schnozzola" Durante, who also sings the title song. (Isn't it weird when you hear some actor sing for the first time, and you think, "Wow, I never knew he had such a good voice"? This is not one of those times.) The rest of the cast consists of a lot of famous people I'm not familiar with.

As you would expect, the movie starts with the premise of the song: A bunch of kids build a snowman out of "Christmas snow," and when they place an old silk hat on his head, he comes to life. But did you ever wonder where the "old silk hat" came from? Well hold onto your seats—it came from a self-described "evil magician" named Professor Hinkle, who threw the hat away after a failed performance in the children's elementary school classroom. I bet you didn't expect that. Now, once Hinkle discovers that his hat is really magic, he decides to steal it back, even though he knows this will snuff out the life of an animate being.

Meanwhile, Frosty and the kids have another situation on their hands. The temperature is starting to rise, and Frosty is afraid he will melt unless he takes a train to the North Pole immediately. (Frosty doesn't know how to count to ten or what a traffic light is, but he has an instinctive understanding of thermometers and the location of the North Pole.) He decides to stow away on a refrigerated boxcar, and he invites one of the human children to come along for the ride. Karen is apparently the stupidest 10-year-old alive, as she believes she can make it to the North Pole and back before bedtime. What's more, Professor Hinkle is also aboard, scheming to take back his hat at the first opportunity.

As the freezer car rambles on northward, the inherent tragedy of his life dawns on Frosty. He realizes that the cold that sustains his life is slowly inflicting hypothermia on Karen, so he takes her out of the freezing boxcar and into the freezing wilderness. Frosty's rabbit pal Hocus Pocus hops off to fetch Santa Claus for help, while Frosty carries Karen to a conveniently-located heated greenhouse. But wouldn't you know it, Professor Hinkle has been waiting in the wings for such an opportunity, so he locks Frosty in the greenhouse to melt. This is quite a crisis, but luckily we're down to the last few minutes of the movie, so Santa immediately shows up, brings Frosty back to life, reprimands Professor Hinkle, and takes Karen home.

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Remarkably, there have been a number of Frosty sequels. The first one, in 1976, had Andy Griffith as the narrator, and in 1979, Frosty teamed up with Rudolph in a two-hour stop-motion extravaganza. John Goodman took over the role of Frosty for a 1992 pseudo-sequel, and yet another one was released direct-to-DVD in 2005, with Burt Reynolds (!) narrating.

I've never seen any of these sequels, but I read on Wikipedia that the 1992 version removed all references to Frosty's corncob pipe. Honestly, are they really concerned that Frosty might turn children on to pipe-smoking?

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Once again, the True Meaning of Christmas:

1. It's wrong for small children to board freight trains bound for the North Pole, accompanied only by snowmen.
Just kidding. This is never addressed.

2. Once you've thrown away a piece of headgear in frustration, you forfeit every conceivable right in it.
Jimmy Durante tells us this in no uncertain terms in the first five minutes of the show.

3. Christmas snow can never disappear completely.
This is how Santa explains his resurrection of Frosty in the finale. So is the snow magic, or is it the hat? And why exactly is "Frosty the Snowman" considered a Christmas song? It's really just a cold-weather song.

Die Hard 2: Die Harder (edited for content)

Renny Harlin, 1990
Rotten Tomatoes score: 66%

Even though this came out on the Fourth of July, it is set at Christmas time (for what reason I can't say), so it makes the list. Now, I know what you're thinking—1988's Die Hard 1 is also set at Christmas, so why use a sequel?

I have three reasons: First, because I remember it better; Second, because I like it better; and Third, because of this:

And this:

So just to be clear, I am reviewing the TBS edited-for-television version of Die Hard 2, which recounts the thrilling tale of John McClane, a tough-as-nails cop who never swears, but replaces all profanity by bizarre euphemisms, and lapses into a freakish caricature of his normal voice every time he does so.

The story begins one year after the events of Die Hard 1, in a parallel universe where 1990 was the next year after 1988. John McClane is visiting Our Nation's Capital, and we meet him on a snowy day at Dulles Airport awaiting the arrival of his wife (Bonnie Bedelia). Unfortunately, before the flight can land, McClane gets into a violent altercation with a couple of shady characters. He believes the thugs are part of something bigger and more dangerous, but the airport's police captain, Dennis Franz, is obligated by the plot to belittle McClane and dismiss his well-founded suspicions. (I wonder which sets off the metal detector first: the lead in his [head], or the [junk] in his brains?)

It turns out that the crooks are working for Colonel Stuart, whose evil plan is to intercept the incoming military plane extraditing a tin-pot dictator and drug lord named Esperanza from the (fictional) Latin American country of Val Verde into the (real) North American country of the United States. If you saw the first Die Hard, you were probably expecting this dictator business to be a cover for a more mundane heist scheme, but no, they really are trying to free this guy.

Of course, if Dennis Franz had moved his fat [feet] when John McClane told him to, they could have nipped Stuart's plan in the bud; instead, they find themselves hip-deep in [snow] when the bad guys cut off air-traffic communications and power, leaving all incoming planes stuck circling over Dulles. McClane realizes that his wife is on one of the planes these guy's are [foolin'] with, so he decides to take on the bad guys with or without Dennis's help. Before long he's up to his [neck] in terrorists again.

When the villains wreck a plane to prove they mean business, even Dennis can't deny the seriousness of the situation, so he calls in an Army Special Forces team to save the day. McClane suspects the Special Forces leader Major Grant of being a [rascal], but Grant assures McClane he's "your kind of [rascal]." But after a snowmobile shootout, McClane realizes that the Special Forces team has gone rogue, and their weapons are loaded with blanks. He decides to prove this to Dennis Franz in the most discreet way possible, by firing away at him with a blank-loaded machine gun in the presence of a roomful of cops.

Meanwhile, in one of the planes circling the airport, Bonnie Bedelia has been fulfilling her contractual sequel obligation by trading angry dialogue with Dick Thornburg, the tabloid reporter whose yellow journalism endangered the McClane family last year. It turns out the [stupid arrogant psychopath] is at it again, transmitting from the airplane lavatory and panicking the travelers snowed in at the airport. Bonnie stops his obnoxious but non-violent meddling by shooting him with a tazer, which seems like an outrageously gratuitous act of violence, but then again this is a movie where a guy is about to get sucked into a jet engine.

Back on the ground, McClane has just minutes to stop Colonel Stuart and Major Grant from spiriting Esperanza away in a commandeered 747. McClane jumps from a helicopter onto the wing of the plane, where he does battle with Grant and Stuart in turn. I won't give away how Grant dies (because I just gave it away in the previous paragraph), but during the fight with Stuart, McClane opens the fuel hatch before falling from the wing. He lights the leaking fuel ablaze, and the plane explodes. In case this was not a sufficiently cartoony ending, the stranded planes now use the wreckage to visualize the runway and land safely.

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I said earlier that I liked this movie better than Die Hard 1, but honestly I think that's just because I don't remember the first one that well. This one is (even) more over-the-top than its predecessor, which I like, but on the other hand, it reduces Sergeant Carl Winslow's role to a brief cameo, and the principal from The Breakfast Club doesn't even make an appearance.

But in spite of those egregious lapses of judgment, this movie is

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Now it's what you've all been waiting for, the True Meaning of Christmas, according to Die Hard 2: Die Harder:

1. It's important for spouses to spend time rescuing each other from violent death.
Yeah, that's kind of a reach. Sorry.

2. Danger never takes a holiday.
But you knew that when you became an invincible action-movie protagonist.

3. Sequels can be worth watching, as long as they have at least one scene with Carl Winslow.
Did you know that both Die Hard and Die Hard 2 are based on books, but the books have nothing to do with each other? Carl Winslow's not in either of them.

We're Back: A Dinosaur's Story

Dick Zondag, Ralph Zondag, Phil Nibbelink, and Simon Wells, 1993
Rotten Tomatoes score: 33%

Roll back the rock to the dawn of time.

This movie came out in 1993, which might first make you suspect Steven Spielberg's Amblimation studio wanted to cash in on the Jurassic Park craze. I was going to make a comment to that effect, but then I read the Wikipedia article, which contains an in-depth (albeit unsourced) discussion of the movie's production. Apparently it was conceived in 1989, four years before Jurassic Park came out. It just goes to show how you shouldn't assume these things—it wasn't cashing in on Jurassic Park at all; it was cashing in on The Land Before Time.

But 1993 was also the middle of the Disney animation renaissance, when animated movies featuring celebrity voices were all the rage. So Amblimation dutifully signed up every available celebrity in sight, including such puzzling choices as Julia Child and Walter Cronkite. Wikipedia contains another (unsourced) report about how John Malkovich was signed to play the villain but left due to creative differences. On the plus side, we do get the incomparable John Goodman as a Tyrannosaurus rex.

Rex, as he calls himself, appears in a pointlessly tacked-on prologue, in which he begins to regale a small bluebird with his life story. Sixty-five million years ago, Rex was a savage beast roaming the earth, until one day he met a little Great-Gazoo-looking alien (voice of Jay Leno). Jay brings Rex aboard his spacecraft and feeds him a mouthful of "Brain Grain," a breakfast cereal that turns wild animals into talking cartoon animals. It turns out Mr. Leno works for Captain Neweyes (voice of Walter Cronkite), a wise and benevolent entrepreneur from the far future. Having struck it rich selling his magical cereal, Neweyes has decided to build a time machine and a "wish radio" to serve mankind.

And what does Captain Neweyes do with his ability to read the wishes of the world's children? Does he use his futuristic technology to travel through the centuries rescuing billions from famine and violent death? Well, maybe that's next on his to-do list, but for now he's dealing with the great humanitarian project of bringing a bunch of talking dinosaurs to the children of the 1990s. Arriving in Manhattan on Thanksgiving Day 1993, Rex and his dino-buddies meet an artful dodger named Louie (voice of someone called Joey Shea) and a neglected rich girl named Cecilia (voice of Lisa Simpson). The dinosaurs make their debut in the Macy's Parade, performing an obligatory musical number and causing minor havoc.

Louie and Cecilia decide to run away and join the circus, but unfortunately the circus is run by Captain Neweyes' inexplicably evil brother Professor Screweyes (voice of not John Malkovich). The professor does not really seem to have an academic appointment, but he does really have a screw for an eye, which gives him mind-control powers. (A screw? Apart from making his name rhyme with his brother's, is there any reason why his eye is a screw?) Screweyes started his "eccentric circus" to frighten children, and he has a "fright radio" to help him. After ordering Louie and Cecilia to get lost, he then abruptly changes his mind, forces them to sign a contract in blood, and—wow, this lighthearted children's movie has taken a dark turn. Screweyes doesn't really want the children in his circus; he's just using them as leverage to get the dinosaurs on board.

Screweyes has a bottle of alka-seltzers that turn the dinosaurs back into mindless brutes, and now that he has his real stars, he releases the children from their contract. The kids are looked after by Stubbs the clown (voice of Martin Short), who reluctantly tells them what has become of Rex and the gang. Screweyes astounds his audience with the ferocious beasts, but Rex breaks free of his mind control and attacks Screweyes. It's up to Louie and Cecilia to use the Power of Friendship to transform the dinosaurs back to their jolly cartoon selves. For some reason this works, and Professor Screweyes, left alone with his fears, gets attacked by a flock of crows and vanishes, leaving only his screw eye behind. It's way, way more disturbing than it needs to be, and I have no idea what they were thinking.

(Here's a link to the scene. You don't have to watch the rest of the movie. I assure you it is totally out of place.)

Perhaps because this was such an inauspicious note to go out on, we now learn that the dinosaurs have gone to the museum of natural history, where curator Dr. Bleeb (voice of Julia Child) has expected them. The dinosaurs will pose as statues and only reveal their true nature to children, which certainly raises a lot of questions, but let's just leave it at that.

I'm at a loss as to how I should call this one. The story is a jumbled mess (probably a result of trying to stretch a 32-page picture book into a feature film), but the animation isn't bad, and the musical score is excellent. One last virtue that's worth mentioning is the mercifully short run time of 73 minutes; I wish more movies would embrace the less-is-more philosophy.

Okay, I've made my decision:

Richie Rich

Donald Petrie, 1994
Rotten Tomatoes score: 25%

This is the story of a little boy who possessed enormous wealth and worldwide renown, who had things that other children could only dream of, but whose fortune and fame prevented him from having a normal childhood. Then, when he was 14 years old, he starred in the movie Richie Rich.

Macaulay Culkin was without a doubt the biggest child star of the 90s, but by 1994 he was no longer the junior hit-maker he had been in his Home Alone days. In that year, he appeared in Getting Even with Dad, The Pagemaster, and this. For his efforts, he was nominated for the Golden Raspberry Award.

Now, I've never seen Getting Even with Dad, but it looks awful; and as for The Pagemaster, the less said the better. But I am at a loss to explain the antipathy toward this Harvey Comics adaptation. Granted, I as a nine-year-old boy was exactly the target audience. And looking back on it 20 years later, I can't help comparing it to Richie Rich's Christmas Wish, a comparison that would make Howard the Duck look like Citizen Kane.

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Richie Rich is the richest boy in the world. According to one of the alternate posters, he has 17 billion dollars, but I'm not sure how they figured that. (In the movie, Richie's father is said to be worth $70 billion, so maybe whoever wrote the poster just misheard the dialogue.) But numbers aren't important—suffice it to say that Richie is cartoon-rich. He lives in a stately mansion (actually the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, N.C.); he is waited on by an English valet (Jonathan Hyde) who wears a wingtip collar and waistcoat to exercise; there's a McDonald's franchise in his house and a family portrait carved into the face of a mountain out back; and his father employs an in-house science team that cranks out a steady stream of impossible inventions, for no apparent business purpose.

But all is not well. For one thing, Richie's life of privilege is also one of responsibility, and he is so busy he has no time to be a kid. A perhaps even more serious problem is that the Rich Enterprises CFO, Laurence Van Dough (John Larroquette), is planning to murder the entire Rich family and take over their company. (Do you ever wonder what went wrong in your childhood that deprived you of the opportunity to outwit lamebrain criminals?) His plan nearly succeeds, as he plants a bomb in Dad's private plane just before the family flies off to meet the Queen. But at the last minute, Richie decides to stay behind and hang out with normal kids; meanwhile, Mom and Dad manage to escape the deadly explosion and strike out in a life raft.

Van Dough's efforts to loot the company are stymied by Richie, who asserts his rights and runs the company in his parents' stead. (Richie tells Van Dough that his father has never fired anyone, which is hard to believe, but what do I know about business?) Meanwhile, Van Dough frames Richie's trusted friend and valet Cadbury for the murders, so it's up to Richie and his normal-kid friends to bust him out and take down the real bad guys. Fortunately for the ragtag band of kids, they have super-scientist Keenbean (Mike McShane) on their side, providing them with a robot bee and a corrosive so powerful it eats through everything except the tube it's kept in.

Conveniently, Van Dough's evil plan has shifted from killing Mom and Dad Rich to kidnapping them. The in-story explanation is that Van Dough needs them to open the Rich family vault, but it also has the salutary effect of sparing us an additional act where Richie rescues the parents. The final boss fight against Van Dough takes place on the face of Mount Richmore, which allows for some high-spirited action scenes. (It reminds me of the finale of North by Northwest, but I don't know how intentional that was.) Anyway, they defeat Van Dough, proving once again that fabulous wealth can triumph over villainy.

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The Meteor Man

Robert Townsend, 1993
Rotten Tomatoes score: 29%

In my Disney Channel honorable mentions page, I began my review of Up, Up, and Away thusly:

Hollywood continues its systematic campaign to neglect the genius of Robert Townsend with this desperately underrated superhero movie.

It didn't occur to me when I wrote that sentence that it would apply with equal force to The Meteor Man, one of the highlights of my eighth year of life. My friends and I used to invent millions of superheroes. We would draw pictures of them, list all their super-powers, and of course, explain how they became superheroes. These explanations typically involved radiation, lightning, "chemicals," or other lethal hazards, and some sort of object or animal to furnish a basis for the requisite super-costume and super-logo.

This was a movie after my own heart, featuring a hero with a laundry list of extraordinary powers, all supplied by what should have been an extremely fatal injury.

Before I describe the plot, I want to acknowledge that Robert Guillaume, Don Cheadle, Marla Gibbs (from The Jeffersons), Ghost Dad, Wallace Shawn ("Inconceivable!"), Chris Tucker (uncredited), Sinbad (the comedian not the sailor), Frank Gorshin (the Riddler from the Adam West Batman), Luther Vandross, Eddie Griffin, and thousands and thousands of other famous actors appeared in this film.

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Jefferson "Jeff" Reed (Robert Townsend) is a substitute teacher at an inner-city elementary school in Washington, D.C. He is kind-hearted and intelligent, but his co-workers and neighbors regard him as a nebbish and a wimp. Jeff's neighborhood has recently been staked out by the Golden Lords, a crack-dealing organization that seems less like a street gang and more like SPECTRE. They bleach their hair blond and wear gold vests and ties, they recruit five-year-old children into their ranks, and their evil leader Simon Caine has a pet tiger.

Jeff would just as soon ignore the Golden Lords and hope they go away, but things change one night when he gets struck by a magic green intergalactic super-meteor from outer space. At first critically injured by the meteor, Jeff miraculously recovers within hours. What's more, he now has a litany of super-powers that would put Clark Kent to shame—in addition to super-strength, hyper-speed, the gift of flight, X-ray vision, heat vision, and freezing breath, Jeff also has psychokinesis, healing powers, rain-making powers, and the ability to talk to dogs.

With some persuading from his neighbors, Jeff agrees to use his powers to rid Washington, D.C., of the Golden Lords once and for all. While he's at it, he brings peace between the Crips and the Bloods, and uses his meteorological talents to grow county-fair-style gigantic produce in the middle of a slum. But Simon's supplier, a drug lord named Mr. Byers, is annoyed at Jeff's interloping and offers two million dollars to any Golden Lord who can bring him the head of the Meteor Man.

But how could the Golden Lords possibly kill Jeff? He has every super-power in the book, and unlike Superman, green space-rocks only make him more powerful. Well, as it happens, Jeff's powers gradually fade away, and when Simon comes a-calling, he has to face him with no more than his new-found courage.

At least, he does until Bill Cosby shows up, playing a drifter who has been carrying around a fragment of the super-meteor in a coffee can. When Jeff and Simon are both exposed to the fragment, a super-duel ensues, and Jeff finally sends the Golden Lords packing—and with the help of the reformed Crips and Bloods, he pulls the plug on the evil Mr. Byers' crack empire.

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I think this is a great movie, but I have to acknowledge its shortcomings, particularly the pervading sense that the story isn't quite finished. I read the novelization of this movie, and I was disappointed (and perplexed) to discover that many crucial scenes had evidently been cut somewhere between the screenplay and the finished product. So, I guess if you really want the whole story, you should read the book. Or read the 6-issue Marvel comic mini-series.

Really, gang, you ought to read more. There are so many movies that have children's books based on them, including eight pages of full-color stills from the movie. Expand your horizons.

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Not Quite Human

Steven Hilliard Stern, 1987
Rotten Tomatoes audience rating: 36%

As this was a TV movie, Rotten Tomatoes gives me only an audience rating. I don't know what kind of grouches gave it such a low rating, but they were clearly never children.

Frankly, I wonder how many people even remember this. I saw it on VHS in the early 90s, then promptly forgot about it for 20 years until someone uploaded it to YouTube. Now anyone can enjoy the antics of Alan Thicke, Bug from Uncle Buck, and Teen Witch, united together in one star-studded blockbuster.

If you ever wondered what the dad from Growing Pains would have been like if he were a genius inventor, but otherwise had exactly the same bland, generic personality, this movie has your answer. His name is Dr. Jonas Carson, and he has finally completed his life's work: Chip, a walking, talking teenage android with perfect artificial intelligence (Jay Underwood). Chip is a cheerful and gregarious robot, but he's not quite human—he is oblivious to subtlety and idiomatic speech. For some reason a lot of androids seem to have that problem in the movies.

Carson's daughter Becky (Robin Lively) thinks her robo-brother is cool, but she is frustrated by his intrusion into her social life. For no conceivable reason, Carson decides that the world must believe that Chip is a real boy, so the family packs up and moves to a new town, where Carson gets a job as a science teacher. Little does he realize, his former employer Vogel (a misanthropic war buff and toy manufacturer who hates the Carsons) wants to kidnap Chip and sell his designs to the Russians, or something.

(All this sounds like the kind of story a 10-year-old kid would make up for a comic book drawn on loose-leaf paper, where every plot element is just whatever first comes to mind. What could a scientist do for a day job? Be a science teacher! Who would want to steal an android? A guy who makes army toys! What reason could they have for keeping the robot a secret? Who cares?)

The storyline about Vogel and his henchman trying to kidnap Chip is put on the back burner while Chip and Becky struggle to get along in their new school. All the other high school characters function purely as plot devices, with few coherent personality traits. Sasha Mitchell from Step by Step plays a dream-hunk who haphazardly vacillates between affection and indifference toward Becky. Chip (programmed to protect humans) rescues a dweeby guy from a bully, but the dweeb immediately turns his back on Chip as soon as the plot calls for an interpersonal conflict. The best-realized secondary character is Erin, a girl who is charmed by Chip's robotic quirkiness and inability to understand slang.

When the crooks finally show up to steal Chip, the plot clumsily switches gears while Becky and Carson try to rescue him. The bad guys need a secret password to reprogram Chip, so they trap Becky and her dad in a junkyard and threaten to activate Chip's self-destruct mechanism unless Carson discloses it. The password turns out to be "CARSON" (I guess "PASSWORD1" was too many characters), but Chip cleverly escapes reprogramming by trapping one of the villains in a box.

But Chip has only moments to act, because the van imprisoning Carson and Becky has been thrown into a car-crusher at the junkyard! Keep in mind, the criminals did not put the van in the crusher; some junkyard employee just so happened to wander along and decide to crush this particular van at this exact moment. Anyway, Chip saves the day, and the family is free to go about their unnecessary ruse of passing off an android as a high school student.

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I was surprised to learn that Not Quite Human was originally a book series by Seth McEvoy. There were six books, all published between 1985 and 1986. I thought only Goosebump books could be speed-written at that rate.

This was followed by two sequels: Not Quite Human II, in which Chip goes to college and meets a female not-quite-human; and Still Not Quite Human, featuring a robotic Alan Thicke. (There's a joke to be made here at Alan Thicke's expense, but I'm going to take the high road. The man wrote the Diff'rent Strokes theme song; let's show some respect.)

Overall, you get no less and no more than you expect from a made-for-TV family comedy. Jay Underwood does an excellent job of portraying what you intuitively expect a teenage robot to act like, and I'm sure today's kids would find him amusing.

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Honey, I Shrunk the Kids

Joe Johnston, 1989
Rotten Tomatoes score: 75%

Wayne Szalinski (Rick Moranis) has just perfected the world's most astonishing invention: A laser beam that destroys apples. Little does anyone expect, all it takes is an errant baseball to convert this industrial marvel into a shrinking ray.

As Szalinski explains to his skeptical corporate benefactors, all atoms are mostly empty space. His device uses magic to reduce that empty space, shrinking objects to minuscule size. Now, you might think that this would increase the density of matter to that of a neutron star, so that a quarter-inch-tall teenager would still weigh over 100 pounds, but that just shows how little you understand about science.

The Szalinskis seem to be having some sort of thinly established family problems due to Wayne's obsessive habits. His wife Diane is fed up with him, and his kids, Amy and Nick, are stuck managing the household on the weekends. Meanwhile, their next-door neighbors, the Thompsons have their own irrelevant problems. Big Russ Thompson can't relate to his elder son, Russ Junior, who has no interest in sports or fly-fishing.

When young Ron Thompson hits a grand-slam through the Szalinskis' attic window, Russ Junior drags him over to apologize to Nick and Amy and to offer to pay for the repairs. Ron insists on retrieving his baseball, so all four kids ascend to the attic just in time to get accidentally zapped by the shrinking ray. Moments later, Wayne Szalinski returns home from a meeting, frustrated by the cool reception his project has received. He expresses his annoyance by aggressively sweeping window fragments (and, unwittingly, the shrunken children) off the attic floor and into a lawn bag. (This scene makes no sense, but it was necessary to put the kids in a garbage bag so as to move them into the yard, where they can encounter more cinematic hazards.)

It takes Szalinski half the movie to realize he has shrunk the kids, whereupon he embarks on a series of spectacularly futile attempts to find them in the yard. He doesn't want to step on them, so he chooses to stumble around the yard on stilts looking at the grass through a magnifying lens. When this fails, he creates a preposterous contraption to suspend him a foot above the ground, using the television as a counterweight.

Meanwhile, the kids have their microscopic hands full. Amy falls into a trickle of water from a sprinkler, and Russ has to use movie first aid to resuscitate her. Nick gets picked up by a bee and has an allergic reaction to pollen, even though the pollen grains are visibly much too large to fit into his nose. They encounter an ant, which immediately kills them all and takes them back to its nest to be fed to larvae. No, actually the ant allows them to ride on its back. Then it protects them from a scorpion, nobly sacrificing its ant life in the process.

(A scorpion? Where is this movie taking place? Why wasn't it a spider?)

Eventually, the writers realized it was taking too long to get the kids into the house, so the Szalinskis' dog Quark arrives as a canis ex machina to carry them indoors. They make it to the breakfast table, where Nick falls into Wayne's bowl of Cheerios, and Wayne notices him in the nick of time. (I saw the trailer for this movie on TV when I was four years old, and this scene scared the bejesus out of me. I was certain that little bastard was going to get eaten.) Anyway, once Wayne discovers the kids, it doesn't take long for him to return them to normal size.

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This was a good kids' movie. We kids loved it at the time, and it still holds up for me. It's funny to see movies from the late 80s and early 90s that still use old-fashioned special effects, realizing that five years later they would be long gone from the movies. They look pretty good, particularly in the ant vs. scorpion sequence.

There were two sequels to this. The first was Honey, I Blew Up the Kid, which deserves the prize for the most misleading title in movie history. (For those not in the know, no child explodes in the movie; he just gets bigger. We were all disappointed.) Later, there was a made-for-TV sequel, Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves, where the adults are the shrunken ones. I may get around to these some day.

Oh, one other thing. This movie was filmed in Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, Vancouver, and Mexico City. Considering that nearly every scene takes place either in the house or on a special-effects sound stage, this multiplicity of locations puzzles me.

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Liar Liar

Tom Shadyac, 1997
Rotten Tomatoes score: 83%

This movie was made to answer a burning question: What if Jim Carrey starred in another movie? Would it make 300 million dollars?

The answer, of course, was yes.

Secondarily, the movie asked another question: What would life be like if you couldn't tell a lie? To answer that question, the movie introduces us to Jim Carrey as Fletcher Reede, a cynical and unethical lawyer who Doesn't Spend Enough Time with His Son. His ex-wife Audrey (Maura Tierney) is at her wits' end with Fletcher's flakiness and dishonesty, and she wants to move away to Boston with her fiancé Jerry (Cary Elwes) and take young Max (not portrayed by Alex D. Linz) along.

On Max's fifth birthday, after Fletcher breaks yet another promise to visit, Max makes a wish that for 24 hours Fletcher will be incapable of lying. Remarkably, the wish comes true, but fortunately Fletcher retains his ability to mug to the camera and say wacky catchphrases. But if Fletcher is forced to speak the truth, how will he go about his job of unscrupulously flouting sundry rules of professional responsibility?

After a series of increasingly zany setbacks, Fletcher discovers a convenient technicality that enables his client to win her case without lying. In the process, he discovers the true meaning of fatherhood, and resolves to stop Audrey and Max from moving to Boston. He exploits the laxity of pre-9/11 airport security to hijack a mobile stairway and drive it down a runway at the takeoff speed of a 737. (Those were the good old days, huh?) This extreme deviant behavior is exactly what was needed to convince Audrey that Fletcher can be a decent father, so she decides to stay in L.A.

This is a great example of a movie that starts with a clever premise and then actually makes it work. The strategy seems to have been to stick Jim Carrey into every situation where a normal person would feel compelled to lie: A one-night stand, a traffic stop, a meeting with your boss, a phone call from your mother, and of course, identifying the color of a pen. These scenes are funny, and the movie wisely avoids doing much else. I shudder to think what might have been if they had made the kid anything other than the plot device he is. Because the jokes work well, the moral character development scenes are easy to swallow. (And the line "I hold myself in contempt" is a very enjoyable play on words.)

Finally, also deserving of mention is the fact that this is one of many movies that has forced poor Cary Elwes to struggle with an American accent. Why couldn't Jerry have been English?

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Mrs. Doubtfire

Chris Columbus, 1993
Rotten Tomatoes score: 71%

With the recent announcement of an upcoming Mrs. Doubtfire sequel, I figured it was time to consider the original. This hilarious romp is the tale of two dangerously unfit parents: A father whose delusions and obsessions drive him to spy on his ex-wife and children in disguise, and a mother so stupid she doesn't realize that the 6-foot-tall sexagenarian nanny in her midst looks and sounds exactly like Robin Williams.

Sally Field plays Miranda Hillard, a mother of three in San Francisco who is fed up with her lout of a husband, Daniel. As the movie begins, Daniel is fired from his job of pointlessly re-dubbing all the dialogue in 1940s-era cartoons. Soon enough, his marriage falls apart too, because Miranda is tired of his unreliability and his habit of throwing goat-themed parties for the kids. Daniel fares poorly in the divorce after the family court correctly perceives his spectacular incompetence as a father (and as a functioning adult in society). Miranda ends up with full custody of the children, unless and until Daniel can get his act together and land a new job.

So Daniel does what anybody would do in his situation—he disguises himself as an elderly Englishwoman named Mrs. Doutfire and takes a job as Miranda's housekeeper. (The sequence where Daniel's brother, Harvey Fierstein, helps him create his cross-dressing persona was totally lost on me as an 8-year-old, but I have grown to appreciate it.) It would be unfair to characterize this disguise as transparent, but Miranda and her kids must be close to Lois Lane levels of obliviousness not to recognize the man they've lived with for years underneath the wig and make-up.

Somehow Daniel manages to find enough time away from his day job to work as a gofer at a local TV station. He performs a manic, paleontologically inaccurate stand-up routine about dinosaurs, which the station owner happens to overhear. Confusing "children" with "your parents in the 70s," Mr. Lundy decides Daniel would be perfect to host a children's TV show, so he arranges a dinner meeting. Meanwhile, Miranda has developed a relationship with James Bond, much to Daniel's chagrin, and they have invited Mrs. Doubtfire to a family dinner at exactly the same restaurant at exactly the same time.

This leads to a Fred Flintstone escapade where Daniel has to repeatedly change back and forth from his hundreds of pounds of Mrs. Doubtfire make-up into the tasteful red real estate agent's blazer he's wearing to impress his boss. He suffers two wardrobe malfunctions: First, he goes to Mr. Lundy's table dressed as Mrs. Doubtfire, and when questioned, he explains that this is the character he will be playing on the children's show. Second, he has to use the Heimlich maneuver to rescue Pierce Brosnan from choking, and in the process loses his mask and wig.

Now that the awful truth is out, Miranda is furious at first. But eventually she realizes that her children are better off if they can spend time with their father now and then, so the two of them come to an arrangement. The movie ends with Mrs. Doubtfire appearing on a Mister Rogers style TV show, giving reassurance to a young letter-writer whose parents are divorced.

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This movie reminds me of two other movies about divorced parents, The Santa Clause and Liar, Liar. All three are great, and all of them had a lot of material that went over my head the first time around. Of the three, the only one where the parents get back together in the end is Liar, Liar. I think that's a cop-out ending, but on the other hand that movie was less sappy than Mrs. Doubtfire. I'm not sure which is better. I guess that one's next.

Ghost Rider

Mark Steven Johnson, 2007
Rotten Tomatoes score: 27%

This Marvel superhero movie was released in February 2007, which was the first sign that it would not be a smash-hit. Superhero movies are the epitome of the summer blockbuster, so releasing one in late winter would seem to indicate a lack of faith in its blockbusting capabilities. And sure enough, Ghost Rider did not measure up to the Spider-Man and X-Men movies that went before it.

But you know, this movie is not awful. It's okay. And that's not such a small accomplishment in my book.

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The story revolves around Johnny Blaze, a stunt motorcyclist in the tradition of Evel Knievel and Homer Simpson, who sells his soul to the devil to save his sick father's life. The devil (called Mephistopheles and played by Peter Fonda) cures Johnny's father, but then causes him to die in an accident the next day. Johnny is angry, but Mephistopheles insists that he has upheld his end of the agreement, and that he will one day come a-calling on Johnny's soul.

(Why does the devil always do things like this? He's not going to get any decent word-of-mouth at this rate.)

Years later, we meet Johnny as an adult. I'm assuming there was a deleted scene where the devil removes Johnny's face and replaces it with Nicolas Cage, like in Face/Off; otherwise I'm at a loss to explain why he looks absolutely nothing like he did in the prologue.

His best bud, Donal Logue (who I always find really likable, but I can't put my finger on why), is at his wits' end with Johnny's outlandishly dangerous stunts. Johnny knows that Mephistopheles' unholy power prevents him from dying before he fulfills his end of their bargain, so he recklessly undertakes bike stunts that would make Super Dave Osborne blush. At one such extravaganza, he finds himself face-to-face with his high school sweetheart Roxanne (Eva Mendes).

Unfortunately, their efforts to rekindle their romance are stymied by the arrival of Mephistopheles' evil son Blackheart upon the earth. Blackheart is a being so dangerous that even the devil himself wants him stopped. Apparently, Blackheart wants to collect on a hundred-year-old contract that will give him the power of a thousand damned souls. It's pretty serious.

Mephistopheles commands Johnny to do battle against Blackheart by becoming the Ghost Rider, a fire skeleton monster that rides a magic motorcycle. The Ghost Rider has the power to turn people's eyes into brimstone or something, although I'm not sure why he wants to. He also has a fiery chain that he uses to kill Blackheart's evil angel friends.

When Blackheart murders Donal and kidnaps Roxanne, Ghost Rider seeks help from Sam Elliott, playing exactly the same role as in The Big Lebowski. Sam Elliott disappears after completing his four minutes of screen time, and Johnny rather unspectacularly kills Blackheart and saves the day. Having discharged his contractual duties, Johnny chooses to remain the Ghost Rider to fight for right.

Like I said before, this movie is all right. It isn't good, but it's easy to sit through, and what more can you really ask for?

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All right, look.

There is a sequel to this movie. It's called Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance. Rotten Tomatoes gives it an 18%. Please, please, please do not see this movie. It is awful. It is absolutely dreadful. I detest this movie.

It was directed by an entity known as "Neveldine/Taylor" and Nic Cage returns to the role. No other cast members return. As a matter of fact, calling it a "sequel" is misleading, since it in no way follows the plot of the first movie. What plot there is is incomprehensible. The characters' actions bear no correspondence to human behavior, and the dialogue consists of a series of random, meaningless sentences in the English language. If the movie had been in Hungarian, I don't think I would have noticed the difference. There are scenes where Nicolas Cage just stares at the camera and makes funny faces while riding his motorcycle, with no context or explanation.

This is an unspeakable monstrosity of a movie.

A character that seems to be the villain is played by Ciaran Hinds. The prevailing hypothesis is that this is Mephistopheles from the first movie, but he is inexplicably referred to as "Roarke." Although Johnny Blaze had embraced his Ghost Rider persona in the previous movie, he is now desperate to be rid of it. Equally unexplained is the fact that Johnny now becomes the Ghost Rider when he is angry. The only conceivable way to account for this is that the writers confused Ghost Rider with the Incredible Hulk, and no one ever realized the mistake. (Indeed, it would astonish me if the screenplay was ever read by anyone before production began.)

I hate this movie.

Here, just watch this scene. This may make you laugh. It makes me weep. That's because I have seen the movie, and I can report that everything else in it is even worse.

I realize that my over-the-top condemnation of Spirit of Vengeance may make some foolish reader decide to see it, on the theory of "How bad could it really be?" and/or "If it's this awful, I've got to see it." I assure you, you will regret it. (Remember who's saying this, now—how terrible does a movie have to be before I hate it?)

I refuse to include a graphic labeling this movie as over- or underrated. It is beneath contempt. Let us never speak of it again.

Angels in the Endzone

Gary Nadeau, 1997
Rotten Tomatoes audience rating: 28%

This is a made-for-TV sequel to Angels in the Outfield, and I think the simplest way to summarize this movie's plot is to point out the ways it differs from its forerunner:

1. Angels in the Outfield was about a baseball team called the Angels. Angels in the Endzone is about a football team called the Angels.

2. Angels in the Outfield was about professional athletes. This is about high school athletes.

3. Angels in the Outfield revolved around a kid who had been abandoned by his father. Angels in the Endzone is about two kids whose father is dead.

4. Angels in the Outfield was good.

Beyond that, you can just import all of your knowledge of the plot of the previous movie into the entry for this one. But if you'd like a little bit more information, read on.

Jesse (Matthew Lawrence) and Kevin (the kid from Richie Rich's Christmas Wish) are two brothers who have a perfect relationship with their father. He loves them, he teaches them to play football, and in general he spends copious amounts of Time with His Children. In fact, their relationship is so perfect, that the only conceivable conclusion is that this character is going to die in the first act.

And so he does, sending Jesse into a deep depression. He quits the (jaw-droppingly incompetent) high school football team before their first game, he becomes distant from his family, and he ditches class to hang out with the bad kids. These lowlifes make their living betting against the home team, taking advantage of the school-spirited freshmen who are naive enough to think the Angels have a prayer of winning.

About three quarters of the way through the movie, they graduate from book-making to robbing a gas station. They've dragged Jesse along for the ride, and for a few minutes we're led to believe he's been implicated in the crime, but no—his mom and the police immediately accept his (true) version of events, and nothing comes of it. I mention this not because it's interesting, but because it's a good example of the amount of thought that seems to have gone into the story.

As for the other brother, Kevin, his role is limited entirely to replicating Joseph Gordon-Levitt's character from the first movie. Jesse tells the boy that their family will never be okay until the day the Westfield Angels win the state championship. This, of course, parallels a similar line delivered by the deadbeat dad in Outfield. In that movie, young JoGo misunderstood his dad's sarcasm and prayed for the Angels to win the Pennant, but here, it's not really clear what Kevin thinks. I don't think he really believes that his family's well-being is connected to the football championship, but he prays for the team to win. It's almost as if he's aware that what he's doing is required by the plot.

Just like in the first movie, the real angels take to the field to perform obviously impossible feats, but no one in the stands is the wiser. (At one point, the football flies literally the entire length of the field under its own power, and no one seems to question how this is possible.) Somehow the divine manipulation of sporting events seems even more inappropriate when it's a bunch of teenagers the angels are cheating against. Then there is the obligatory subplot about how the adults think Kevin is hallucinating (including an appalling scene where a school counselor puts the moves on Kevin's widowed mother).

All the while, Jesse refuses to rejoin his team, because football brings up painful memories of his father. Finally, the coach has a heart-to-heart with Jesse and reminds him that his father was proud of his talent and would want him to continue playing The Game of Football. So Jesse agrees to play the championship game, which he wins without the help of the angels.

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I guess this is all right for a made-for-TV movie. The guy who plays the coach gives a workmanlike performance, and the mom isn't bad. There is also an assistant coach who seems to be channeling Harold from the Red Green Show; I could have done without him. The main brothers are fine.

One other thing: For a movie about divine beings, Angels in the Outfield didn't really have much religious content. This one seems to have more of a Calvinist attitude. There's a scene where Jesse blames himself for his father's accident, and his mother—rather than just reminding Jesse that he wasn't responsible—insists that nothing could have prevented his death. It's a pretty jarringly fatalistic comment, and the movie just leaves it at that. Maybe the kid from Seventh Heaven had a subconscious effect on the writers.

Ernest Rides Again

John Cherry, 1993
Rotten Tomatoes score: 14%

It was difficult to find a poster for this movie. Most of the images I found were too small to be usable, so I resorted to this strange confetti-themed option. This seems to have been the theatrical poster, and it mentions the short subject "Mr. Bill Goes to Washington," which was screened together with Ernest Rides Again and also appeared on the VHS.

The other images were all DVD covers, and most of them included a blurb from the Boston Globe declaring this "The best of the series." Now, I don't think I'm out of line if I consider myself an authority on Ernest, and I can't imagine anyone thinking this was the best Ernest movie. This was the first one produced without the backing of Disney, and it certainly shows. Even the poster is half-assed—just look at the stock close-up of Ernest they used. He never even wears that white thermal Henley shirt in the movie (or in any other movie, for that matter). And I don't recall any confetti being involved in the plot.

Speaking of the plot, we now find Ernest working as custodian at a Virginia college, where he amuses himself by pretending to be Indiana Jones and palling around with a history professor named Dr. Melon. Melon likes Ernest, but he is put off by Ernest's monumental childishness. Melon's colleagues think the good doctor is a crank, obsessed with a half-baked theory that the real Crown Jewels of England are hidden in a Revolutionary War cannon called Goliath.

Now get ready for this, because this is going to stun you: The theory is true, and the cannon is located near the college. And they find it. The rest of the movie is largely taken up by a series of chase sequences, as Ernest and Dr. Melon try to protect the cannon and the jewels from a sinister looter named Glencliff. This mostly involves the cannon rolling down the highway at high speed, but somehow making all the turns and staying safely on the road. Unbeknownst to our heroes, MI-6 has also taken an interest, and some secret agents join the chase.

Dr. Melon has surmised based on various historical sources that the Crown Jewels are in the barrel of the cannon, but Ernest eventually discovers them in a powder barrel beside the cannon. He places the crown on his head, whereupon Glencliff captures him. The crown is stuck so tightly to Ernest's head that Glencliff tries to remove it with a cranial saw; unfortunately, the saw fails to make a scratch on Ernest's skull. ("Good thing it hit the hard end," Ernest explains.)

The secret agents close in and save Ernest, but since the crown cannot be removed from his head, they declare that he must now serve as King of England. Ernest doesn't care for the idea ("I'd have to learn the language!"), and luckily the crown slips off during a "what's that on your shirt" prank.

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As I indicated above, this is far from the best in the series. In fact, it was the last to be released theatrically; beginning with Ernest Goes to School, the rest would be released direct to VHS, which, frankly, was for the best. I remember renting these things from Blockbuster on weekends in elementary school and watching them repeatedly. Clearly, that's what they were made for, and there was no sense releasing them to an unappreciative public full of fuddy-duddy adults.

This was also Linda Kasch's first of three appearances in an Ernest movie, this time as Dr. Melon's overbearing wife Nan. She is accompanied in most of her scenes by two ineffectual door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesmen who have the irritating habit of finishing each other's sentences. These roles cry out to be played by Gailard Sartain and Bill Byrge from the Disney installments, but alas, that comedy duo would never return.

But there's one other thing this movie has, and that's the best song in the world, the Ballad of Ernest P. Worrell: listen for yourself.

Bushwhacked

Greg Beeman, 1995
Rotten Tomatoes score: 11%

The Wikipedia article for Bushwhacked explains that it has an 11% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but we're then reassured that the audience rating is 37%. So don't be misled by the abysmally low score; slightly more than one-third of audience members enjoyed it.

Basically, this is yet another exemplar of that venerable 1990s genre, the "crook gets mistaken for a kids' role model, then has to become a genuine role model in spite of himself" film. In that genre, I think this one ranks somewhere between Mr. Headmistress with Harland Williams and the excellent Principal Takes a Holiday with Kevin Nealon.

The crook this time around is Daniel Stern, and within the first 15 minutes he finds himself impersonating a "Ranger Scout" leader on an overnight camping trip in the mountains of northern California. The only problem is that Stern's character, Max Grabelski, isn't actually a crook. He's a slacker and a slob, but he is in fact innocent of the crime he's being pursued for. That's a big misstep—this kind of story works better when the protagonist is a non-threatening but genuinely culpable person; that way there's room for him to become a mensch. Since Max was never a scoundrel to begin with, his reformation doesn't have any real significance.

Instead, Max is merely suspected of murder. The few scenes that get us to this point are a totally confusing jumble. Max works for "Freedom Express," a courier service, and he has been involved in some vaguely sketchy business involving deliveries (with a fat tip for Max) to various locations at exactly 10 p.m. On one such delivery, he finds a house on fire, and the FBI shows up just in time to think Max is the arsonist. Then they discover an unrecognizable dead body with the teeth of millionaire Reinhart Bragden.

Instead of making any effort to resolve the situation, Max becomes a fugitive from justice. Here he crosses paths with a Ragtag Band of Kids who are embarking on their first overnight scouting event. They're expecting to be led by veteran scoutmaster Jack Erickson (R. Lee Erm—oh, no, sorry. This isn't R. Lee Ermey; it's Brad Sullivan). Max steals pseudo-R.Lee's hummer to elude the police, and before we know it he's been mistaken for the real deal.

The rest of the movie is mostly a lot of wacky wilderness adventures in the vein of The Great Outdoors. Max encounters a grizzly bear and faints, impressing the kids with his ability to "play dead." While collecting pine cones to build a fire, Max picks up a beehive. (He suffers no visible stings, but the dialogue inexplicably suggests that the scouts rescued him from anaphylaxis.) Max teaches the boys how to relieve themselves over the edge of a cliff. All the while, the kids are unaware that an FBI agent and the real scoutmaster Erickson are in pursuit.

When they finally do catch up, it turns out that the FBI guy has been in on the frame-up all along. He's been hired by Reinhart Bragden, who faked his own death for some reason, and now they're trying to kill Max. So now, for the final act of the movie, the kids decide to rally behind Max to stop the bad guys. This involves a huge number of death-defying cliffhanging stunts, which were actually pretty exciting to watch, with the exception of a gag where Max stretches himself across a crevice to act as a human bridge. This scene is so cartoony that it makes the other stunts seem less daring, since cartoons are never in real danger.

What's left to talk about? Obviously Max comes through in the end, and he wins the respect of the kids and the real scoutmaster.

This is a movie I missed as a kid. Now that I've seen it, I don't see why people didn't like it. I already mentioned the biggest problem, which is that Daniel Stern was too decent to begin with, so he didn't have a chance to go from bad to good. Other than that, I think its big problem was the PG-13 rating. They fixed that problem by removing the movie's one F-bomb for the DVD release, so now 28-year-old kids like me can enjoy it.

Mr. Nanny

Michael Gottlieb, 1993
Rotten Tomatoes score: 7%

This movie stars Terry "Hollywood" "Hulk" Hogan as an over-the-hill pro wrestler who takes a job as a bodyguard to earn some extra cash. If you replace "bodyguard" with "actor" in that last sentence, the universe will collapse in on itself.

The Hulkster plays Sean Armstrong, who spends his days fishing and being tormented by disturbingly brutal flashbacks to his wrassling days. His best friend and former manager, Sherman Hemsley (I don't remember or care what this character's actual name was), has taken to managing a security company, and he needs Sean's help. Sherman has a new client, a wealthy computer engineer named Mason who has invented a device to control ICBMs or something, and for some reason only Sean is capable of protecting him.

What Sean doesn't expect is that the job also requires him to babysit Mason's sadistic hellspawn children. (He probably also didn't expect Mason to be played by the stammering public defender from My Cousin Vinny.) These children miss their deceased mother and have a strained relationship with their father, which causes them to act out by playing Home Alone style deathtrap pranks on all of their babysitters, including Sean. At one point, the dialogue seems to suggest that they are genuinely trying to murder him, but of course Hulk Hogan is indestructible, so it doesn't work.

Hollywood finally manages to straighten out all the family's problems by shouting a lot and uttering some very inspiring speeches about values. But after Mason reconciles with his children, he is called away on a business trip that turns out to be a plot on his life. His head of security has been hired by a sinister megalomaniac with a metal cranium and the inauspicious name of Thanatos, who wants to kill Mason and take the top-secret missile-launching microchip for himself.

At about this same point, Sean is joined by Sherman Hemsley, who recounts to the little children the story of how he was shot while protecting Sean from a gangster who tried to fix Wrestle-Mania. What an unbelievable coincidence that the gangster was none other than Thanatos, who apparently runs the gamut from bookmaking to international terrorism. We learn that Thanatos got his chrome-dome after falling from a rooftop during his fight with Sean and Sherman.

Somehow or other, the heroes learn that Mason has been kidnapped by Thanatos, so the movie suddenly shifts gears from goofy slapstick comedy to goofy action thriller. Sean and the kids find Thanatos's evil lair, the Hulkster kicks every ass in sight, and the plucky kids use one of their booby-traps to electrocute Thanatos and launch him 500 feet into the air. His metal plate skull falls back down to earth, so I think it's an inescapable conclusion that two children have just killed a mobster in a PG-rated movie. Sherman Hemsley finds it hilarious: "He really blew his top!"

I saw this movie when I was eight or nine, and I remember being surprised at how much of an action movie it was. Based on the trailers, I definitely wasn't expecting anyone's skull to fall off. But what's most disturbing, looking back on it, is the kids. They far surpass Kevin McCallister in terms of juvenile psychopathy.

And another thing—apart from the scene that was in every trailer, where Hulk Hogan wears a tutu, very little was done with the premise of a pro wrestler playing nanny to little kids.

This is a bad movie.