Family Matters Christmas episodes

I was a big fan of Family Matters when I was a kid. Now, "big fan" is one of those terms that has become watered down through overuse, to the point that one can express overpowering disgust for something merely by saying one is not a "big fan" of it. ("I'm not a big fan of Adolf Hitler.")

So I want to be clear: I was a very big fan of Family Matters when I was a kid. I used to record every episode on VHS (not because I missed it when it aired, but because I wanted to be able to watch it repeatedly), and I once set myself the challenge of going more than a day without doing a Steve Urkel impression. I almost made it.

This show might take the cake among sitcoms that jumped the rails of their original premises. Everybody knows how Fonzie jumped over a shark on water skis, but Happy Days more or less stayed true to its roots. Here was a thoroughly conventional, no-frills family sitcom featuring a middle class Chicago family full of people so salt-of-the-earth they gave the Cleavers a run for their money. When Steve Urkel joined the show halfway through the first season, it was no great upheaval at first; there was plenty of room in the cast for a wacky neighbor.

But when Urkel built a fully functional robotic version of himself in season three, there was no denying they were moving in an unusual direction. He would go on to invent so many other impossible devices that, by the eighth season, Carl Winslow would brush off Urkel's time machine as "no big deal." Apart from the sci-fi misadventures, the Winslow family had far more than its share of life-or-death crises. Whether falling through the ice on a frozen lake, defusing a bomb inside the console of a treadmill, hanging for dear life from a defective fire escape, or landing an out-of-control plane, these suburbanites did not want for excitement.

As much as the world loved Urkel, I think Carl was the real reason to keep tuning in. He was hands-down the best TV dad in the business, flawed and occasionally short-tempered but invincibly decent. And he had a hell of a singing voice:

Actually, the whole family sang at the end of most of the Christmas episodes, led by Telma Hopkins as Aunt Rachel, who never passed up a chance at a musical number. I can't find any decent videos, but they were all pretty talented (especially the invisible choir that would join in for the second verse). There were a total of seven Christmas episodes, which makes one for every season except the first and third. I remember some of these better than others, but I'll see if I can't find something to say about them all.

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S2 E13: Have Yourself a Very Winslow Christmas: Richard Correll, 1990
IMDb rating: 7.2 out of 10

This was the episode where Urkel proved the existence of Santa Claus to the doubting Winslow family. When his parents ditch him with Uncle Cecil over Christmas vacation, Steve plans to spend the holidays with the Winslows. But after he breaks Laura's favorite antique Christmas tree ornament, she orders him to stay away. Meanwhile, Carl is stuck jingling all the way to try in vain to find a Freddie Teddy toy for Aunt Rachel's son, Little Richie.

No, no. Little Richie.

Laura eventually forgives Steve and invites him back to the Winslow house for Christmas. He expresses his gratitude by waking the family up at 5:30 a.m. to see what Santa has brought. Little Richie discovers a Freddie Teddy doll that no one can account for. Quod Santae demonstrandum.

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S4 E10: It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Urkel: John Tracy, 1992
IMDb rating: 8 out of 10

When Steve once again breaks something valuable, Laura chews him out and tells him she never wants to speak to him again, and that he can't guilt her out of it by moping and making the live studio audience go "awww." Enter Laura's guardian angel, T.K. Carter from Good Morning, Miss Bliss, who shows her what the world would be like if she and Steve switched places.

This gimmick manages to combine two reliable sitcom standbys: a changing places story and an homage to It's a Wonderful Life. Mostly it's an excuse to let Kelly Shanygne Williams do her impression of Urkel (which is excellent), but it also gave Jaleel White a rare opportunity to talk in his normal voice. Later, he would transmogrify himself into Stefan Urquelle whenever he wanted to do that. After Laura walks a mile in Steve's moccasins, she returns to her normal life with a better understanding of what it's like to have an unrequited pathological obsession with your neighbor. I can't help feeling that the angel is a little hard on Laura in this episode. Steve Urkel is pathetic, but there's a limit to anyone's patience.

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S5 E11: Christmas Is Where the Heart Is: Richard Correll, 1993
IMDb rating: 7.7 out of 10

Finally a Christmas episode that doesn't revolve around breaking precious objects (though I think at least a few things did get broken incidentally along the way). Instead, Carl and Urkel get trapped on a subway during a power outage. That's similar to the Boy Meets World New Year's Eve episode, but even though Steve has to try to brighten the other passengers' spirits, he doesn't call anybody "buckers."

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S6 E11: Miracle on Elm Street: Richard Correll, 1994

IMDb rating: 7.7 out of 10

Eddo Winslow accidentally throws out a favorite old doll of Laura's, and she is devastated. Steve makes things right by wandering around a city dump until he finds it. Meanwhile, after the Winslow adults impress upon Little Richie the importance of doing acts of charity, Richie invites a transient named Ben to spend Christmas with them. Ben reveals to Carl that he is really Santa Claus and has been in search of a family that understands the true meaning of Christmas. Having done so, he goes back to the North Pole. Carl thinks he's delusional, but when a beloved toy from Carl's childhood inexplicably appears under the tree, Carl realizes Ben was for real.

Okay, but why did Santa want to find the perfect family? What did he accomplish? Let's move on.

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S7 E11: Fa La La La Laagghh!: Richard Correll, 1995
IMDb rating: 7.2 out of 10

Why the heck did they give it that title?

By this point, Urkel is living with the Winslows. Carl refuses to let him put up his ridiculously ornate Christmas decorations, but he changes his mind when he hears about a neighborhood house-decorating contest. When Steve's animatronic decorations malfunction, Carl has to resort as dressing up as Santa Claus and sitting with Steve in a sleigh on the roof, eventually causing the roof to collapse. I can remember at least two other episodes where someone fell through the Winslows' roof. Family Matters outdid even Home Improvement when it comes to gratuitous property damage.

Another major staple of the series was food fights, so it's fairly remarkable that Mother Winslow's famous gingerbread cookies, which anchor the B-plot of this episode, do not get thrown at anyone.

And you know, I've always thought Carl Winslow would make a good Santa, and I'm not just saying that because he's overweight.

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S8 E13: It Came Upon a Midnight Clear: Gregg Heschong, 1996
IMDb rating: 6.9 out of 10

Steve and Carl spend this episode lost in the Wisconsin woods while looking for a tree, until Steve's knowledge of astronomy guides them to safety. Back in Chicago, Laura has to choose between her ex-boyfriend and Stefan Urquelle. In case you find this confusing, let me explain that by this point in the series, Steve Urkel's alter-ego Stefan was a separate person, created by Steve's duplicating machine. I hope that's cleared that one up.

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S9 E11: Deck the Malls: Gary Menteer, 1997
IMDb rating: 7.5 out of 10

I'm not sure if I've ever seen this. I definitely don't remember it.

And that's disappointing, because the description of it on Wikipedia specifically mentions Urkel's long-term girlfriend, Myra Boutros Boutros Monkhouse. She was one of many secondary characters I haven't had the opportunity to mention here, which is too bad. Waldo Geraldo Faldo, Lieutenant Murtagh, and school janitor Mr. Looney (that's "Loo-NAY"; it's French) are also worthy of more space than I'm able to devote to them.

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Well, that was exhausting. But I can say unequivocally that this entire series is

Boy Meets World Christmas episodes

This is one of those shows that seems to inspire more nostalgia today than it ever did enthusiasm when it was on. I watched it and liked it, yes, and I'm sure a lot of other people would say the same, but did anybody love this in 1996? It was obviously successful enough to stay on the air for seven years, but the reverence in which it's held today was not in evidence at the time.

Not that it doesn't deserve the accolades. Boy Meets World was an exceptionally good coming-of-age sitcom, up there with Happy Days and The Wonder Years. (It seems to me that most coming-of-age series take place in the past, which probably bears some relationship to the inherent nostalgic appeal I just commented on.)

The series creator Michael Jacobs seems to have made a specialty of this sort of thing. Boy Meets World premiered just a few months after the cancellation of Jacobs' previous show, the soulful and underrated The Torkelsons. Cory Matthews, in his awkward likability and adolescent earnestness, took after Dorothy-Jane Torkelson, and Mr. Feeny was the Ivy League equivalent of the genial, grandfatherly Boarder Hodges, whose subtle wisdom provided the obligatory moral of many an episode.

(I bet the previous paragraph constitutes the most effusive praise ever uttered about The Torkelsons, and you know, I'm satisfied with any superlative I can achieve.)

Boy Meets World took the coming-of-age business very seriously, even going so far as to compress Cory's six-year middle and high school career into four seasons just to make him come of age faster. I think that was a big mistake, especially since the college episodes are so inferior to the high school seasons. (And yes, I know some people hold the preposterous opinion that the college episodes are the best of the series.)

At the same time, the characters all went through major personality changes: Cory went from troublemaker to insecure teenager to 90-year-old college student; Topanga went from latter-day flower child to all-American girl next door to sanctimonious buttinsky; Shawn went from airhead to tiresomely sensitive soul; Eric went from girl-crazy to dream-hunk to blithering manchild; younger sister Morgan transformed into a different actress; and Mr. Turner, Mr. Williams and Minkus just disappeared. The only constant was George Feeny, who dispensed words of wisdom year in and year out.

But I'm supposed to be talking about the holiday-themed episodes. There were several of these, and I'll cover all the ones I can think of.

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S1 E10: Santa's Little Helper: David Trainer, 1993
IMDb rating: 8.4 out of 10

I couldn't tell you how they came up with the title for this episode, unless they were just thinking of the Simpsons' dog. I assume the "helper" is Cory, who tries to bring good cheer to Shawn by giving him a Christmas present after Shawn's dad gets laid off. He learns a valuable (albeit somewhat rushed) lesson about the difference between doing a good deed in the expectation of gratitude and doing it with no possibility of taking credit.

Actually, maybe Santa's Little Helper is George Feeny:

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S3 E10: Train of Fools: Jeff McCracken, 1995
IMDb rating: 7.8 out of 10

I'm cheating with this one, because it's really a New Year's Eve episode. But it aired in the middle of December, and besides, when will I ever have a chance to talk about this?

Eric Matthews has somehow managed to get a New Year's Eve date with a teenage supermodel called Rebecca Alexa, played by 30-year-old former Miss Universe laureate Angela Visser. Eric and Rebecca have the misfortune of sharing a limo with Cory, Shawn and Topanga, and the further misfortune that the limo turns out to be a hearse. (That's kind of a tired joke, isn't it?) This forces the gang to resort to the subway to get them downtown in time for the big party. Rebecca Alexa ditches Eric when she discovers how desperate he is to be seen in public with her, which is a weird plot development.

They spend most of the episode stuck on the train due to mechanical problems. This is what's called a "bottle episode" (or so I'm told), where they make as much use as possible out of one set. Shawn has to recruit a pizza delivery man to help deliver a baby in an adjacent car, some guy keeps saying the word "par-tay," Topanga desperately tries to keep up spirits by calling people "Buckers" (and then immediately pointing out the ridiculousness of calling people "Buckers"), and Eric disguises himself as Steve Jobs:

There was a B-story in this episode about two of my favorite characters, Jonathan Turner and Eli Williams, trying to enjoy a bachelor's night in and being interrupted by Jonathan's exes. According to a DVD commentary, these characters were introduced in a self-conscious effort to appeal to 20-somethings. I guess it didn't work. (And I guess the cat's out of the bag now: yes, I have listened to the Boy Meets World DVD commentary tracks.)

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S4 E10:Turkey Day: Jeff McCracken, 1996
IMDb rating: 7.7 out of 10

Now I'm really cheating, because not only was this not in any way a Christmas episode, it didn't even air at Christmas time. This is unequivocally a Thanksgiving episode.

Well, whatever. No jury will convict me. This is a good episode, mostly because it prominently featured another one of my favorite characters, Frankie—or, as TV.com identifies him, Francis "Albert" "Frankie" "The Enforcer" Stechino. Old FAFTE Stechino was one of the three bullies introduced in season 2, all of whom looked like 1950s greasers and spoke like they'd just stepped out of a Damon Runyon play. But the Faft stuck around after his fellow rowdies had been written out, reconceived as a misunderstood gentle giant with a poetic side. And his dad was Big Van Vader:

This Thanksgiving episode was about the class differences between Cory and Shawn's families, and it was decent. But isn't it weird that Big Van Vader, who played himself and was supposed to be a famous pro wrestler on the show, would live in a trailer park? I mean, he's not exactly the silver spoon type, but he must be reasonably well to do.

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S4 E12: Easy Street: Jeff McCracken, 1997
IMDb rating: 7.8 out of 10

I'll just quote you IMDb's description of this one: "Cory gets a job at a restaurant controlled by the Mafia; when Shawn tells him who owns the restaurant Cory quits. Shawn takes Cory's job to earn money for Christmas."

Read that a couple of times. Especially the first sentence, about the Mafia.

Needless to say, Shawn eventually learns that indispensable life lesson that surely every teenager can relate to, namely the folly of associating with mobsters. But can anyone explain to me why Buddy Hackett and Soupy Sales played them?

I'm happy to say that the file name of that photo was "Mafia.jpg".

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S5 E11: A Very Topanga Christmas: David Kendall, 1998
IMDb rating: 7.9 out of 10

I don't really remember this very well. After the fourth season, the show became more and more committed to bludgeoning its audience with the eternal cosmic significance of the relationship between Cory and Topanga, and I recall this episode as typically heavy-handed. I always found this love story particularly uninspiring. I liked Cory and Topanga individually, but what were they supposed to have seen in each other? They were one of those couples that seem to bring out the most irritating in one another. The irony of it is that I'm sure we all had high school friends like this in real life, who got into a serious relationship and then bored us to tears by endlessly dwelling on it.

Aw, all right, I guess they're not so bad.

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S6 E11: Santa's Little Helpers: Lynn M. McCracken
IMDb rating: 8 out of 10

The main story in this episode was some boring thing about Cory ruining Shawn's relationship with his girlfriend Angela (who was 29 years old in real life—would you have ever guessed that?), but what was more interesting was the secondary plot about Eric and an orphan kid named Tommy. This time, I'm almost certain it's Eric who's the little helper:

Oh, Helpers this time? I don't know then.

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I think that's all. I've really stretched this one as far as it will go. It was a great show, and I guess over all I would call these episodes

Doug's Christmas Story

Paul Sparagano and Myrna Bushman, 1993
IMDb rating: 9.1 out of 10

For the past four years, I've attempted to post as many Christmas movie reviews as I can during December. The first year, it was easy to find material. Everybody remembers The Santa Clause and Home Alone. But every year it gets a little bit harder. Yes, there are plenty more out there, but the effort required has increased.

So, this holiday season, rather than shovel ever deeper into the garbage heap of obscure Hallmark Channel Christmas movies, I've decided to do something a little different. I'm going to review all the world's most important Yuletide-themed TV episodes. Next year, it's back to the shovel.

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Doug was a pillar of American culture during my childhood. Douglas Yancey Funnie was a kid everyone could relate to: conscientious, friendly, imaginative, bald, lacking in self-assurance but always willing and able to do the right thing. And like most children, he wore a green sweater vest and khaki short pants every day of his life. The show is obviously fondly remembered, as the IMDb rating for this episode attests.

Aside from the Funnie family, the town of Bluffington was peopled by a memorable cast of multi-colored characters: Doug's gadget-loving, spendthrift neighbor Mr. Dink and his long-suffering wife Tippy; blue-blooded Beebe Bluff and her doting father Bill; no-nonsense assistant principal (and Don Knotts impersonator) Lamar Bone; oddballs Al and Moo Sleech and their dad the doughnut maestro. And of course there were Doug's schoolmates, including Patti, Roger Klotz, and Skeeter.

But the focus of the Christmas episode was Doug's best friend (non-human, that is), Pork Chop the Dog. During a game of pine cone hockey on a frozen lake, Pork Chop rushes to the rescue to prevent Beebe Bluff from falling through thin ice. Beebe doesn't understand the danger, and Pork Chop can't talk, so he has to resort to the emergency measure of biting Beebe on the ankle and dragging her to safety.

Oblivious to Pork Chop's benign motivations, Bill Bluff presses charges against him, and Doug's cries for due process fall on deaf ears, as the apathetic Bluffingtonians refuse to lend any support. The outlook is grim for poor Pork Chop, who faces a hanging judge and a crusade by radio host and former mayor Robert "Bob" White, who makes the trial his cause célèbre, seeking to win back City Hall by clamoring for the death penalty. The prosecutor is likewise out for blood, and she calls an expert in canine psychiatry to paint Pork Chop as a slavering brute.

This is all pretty intense for a Christmas episode of a kids' show. I'm not kidding about the death penalty—there's even a fantasy sequence where Doug pictures Pork Chop's headstone. It's especially disturbing since Pork Chop is basically a human being: his dog house has a refrigerator and a television; he clearly understands English and knows how to read and write; he once held down a summer job doing yard work; and in one episode he even manages to say "hello" over the phone. But one bite on the ankle and he's headed for death row. And he doesn't even have benefit of counsel, human or otherwise.

Fortunately, Doug musters up his inner Clarence Darrow and persuades the judge not to pass sentence until visiting the scene of the crime. There, remarkably, history repeats itself when Beebe tries to reenact the events of the fateful day. Pork Chop has to save her for a second time, this time going so far as to plunge into the Stygian lake after her. The tide of fickle public opinion turns at once, and the townspeople who moments ago wanted his head now cheer for Pork Chop. "The greatest hero Bluffington has ever known," Bill Bluff calls him.

A giant and a saint walked in that four-legged body. And we, who tread in his pawprints, are the richer for it, and the better, and the wiser.

Mr. Magoo

Stanley Tong, 1997
Rotten Tomatoes score: 4%

Mr. Magoo is one of several live-action adaptations of old cartoons that came out in the 1990s and early 2000s. I've already told you Richie Rich was underrated, and I feel the same way about The Flintstones, but I'm afraid this one doesn't get off quite so easy.

Why is Mr. Magoo now a vegetable cannery owner? Did that ever happen in the cartoons? And why is he producing operas for charity? And what's with that hairstyle? It isn't Leslie Nielsen's usual hair, and I thought Mr. Magoo was bald.

Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself. The basic plot, as far as I can tell, is that Mr. Magoo has somehow come into possession of a priceless jewel called the Star of Kuristan (not to be confused with Kurdistan or Kyrgyzstan), and at least half a dozen characters, each one stupider than the last, want to take it away. Mr. Magoo, of course, is oblivious and assumes this rock-hard, fist-sized gemstone is a ball for his dog to play with.

A woman who calls herself Prunella (Kelly Lynch) ingratiates herself to Mr. Magoo to try to get him to part with the jewel. This results in a series of pointless cartoon pratfalls involving Magoo's nearsightedness. Meanwhile, two federal agents (Ernie Hudson and some other guy) sneak into his house, suspecting Magoo himself of the theft. This results in a series of pointless cartoon pratfalls involving the agents' clumsiness.

Simultaneously, Magoo's nephew Waldo, who is even dumber than Magoo, has fallen in love with a dignitary from Kuristan (Jennifer Garner in a role that consists mostly of standing absolutely stock-still and smiling vapidly at Waldo). I don't recall any pratfalls in this plot thread, but I wasn't paying all that much attention.

Eventually, these plots collide when Waldo discovers the Star of Kuristan in Magoo's possession. Unfortunately, a second criminal named Bob, who likes to go around trying to garrote people (fortunately he only ever succeeds with inanimate objects), steals the jewel. Bob drives away in Magoo's Studebaker, which has been tricked out with a highly refractive windshield, causing Bob to drive out of control. Magoo and Waldo, accompanied by Prunella, who now claims to be an FBI agent, give chase in a car that for no apparent reason looks like a giant eggplant.

...I was going to try to describe the plot all the way to the end, but my courage fails me. This is so damn confusing. There are so many people after this jewel that it's hard to remember—and impossible to care—who they all are. For most of the movie, Malcolm MacDowell seems to be the main bad guy, but once he gets his hands on the jewel, a new and more dangerous bad guy (Miguel Ferrer) gets thrown into the mix. This results in an excursion for Magoo and Waldo to Brazil (though it seems to be a part of Brazil where everyone forgot they're supposed to speak Portuguese rather than Spanish). Why? Why was any of this necessary?

Prunella (whose real name is Luanne) is also a bad guy, and she kung fu fights Miguel Ferrer for possession of the jewel. Then she and Magoo fall over a waterfall in an inflatable dinghy, but she escapes by hooking herself to a cable dangling from a helicopter, and he escapes by using the dinghy as a parachute. I guess that's the end.

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The biggest problem with this movie is the most obvious one: there's nowhere near enough material in a Mr. Magoo cartoon to be stretched to an hour and a half. There was barely enough for a five-minute cartoon. How about a 90-minute Bazooka Joe movie? What's Funky Winkerbean up to these days?

In every cartoon, Mr. Magoo's nearsightedness makes him oblivious to the various perils he finds himself in, but he miraculously survives by a series of coincidences. They knew that couldn't be a whole movie, so they added this boring, incomprehensible jewel caper and kept introducing more and more characters, all of whom are one-dimensional plot devices and would have been better suited to a cartoon short. My favorite character was the dog.

Of course, I can't neglect to mention the disclaimer at the end of the movie, which reads in its entirety:

The preceding film is not intended as an accurate portrayal of blindness or poor eyesight. Blindness or poor eyesight does not imply an impairment of one's ability to be employed in a wide range of jobs, raise a family, perform important civic duties or engage in a well-rounded life.

All people with disabilities deserve a fair chance to live and work without being impeded by prejudice.

When Siskel and Ebert reviewed this movie, Ebert commented that he never found Mr. Magoo offensive, and Siskel added that the disclaimer was the funniest part of the movie. I agree. (And who ever said Mr. Magoo was blind? He's not blind; he just needs glasses and is very stupid.) Then again, I guess there is something demeaning about the idea that nearsighted people are so clueless they might go blundering around skiing on ironing boards and mistaking paddle-wheels for escalators. Maybe the disclaimer would have gone over better if it had said this:

The preceding film is not intended as an accurate portrayal of anything. Blindness or poor eyesight does not imply an impairment of one's ability to perform in charity operas or thwart an international jewel heist. Nearsighted people can have a healthy, productive life, as long as they don't try to ski on ironing boards or use rubber dinghies as a parachute.

All people with disabilities deserve a fair chance to live and work without having to watch movies like this.

Let's also take this opportunity to apologize to government agents, Brazilians, and people from either Kurdistan or Kyrgyzstan. And Leslie Nielsen, who is way, way too talented for this.

Sorry. We're sorry. We're very sorry you watched this. Maybe we'll have better luck with "Rocky and Bullwinkle"...

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Well... four percent? All right, fine.

Hocus Pocus

Kenny Ortega, 1993
Rotten Tomatoes score: 30%

In 1993, a once fearsome being, with wild hair the color of damnation, reemerged and used her spectacular powers in an attempt to reclaim the glory of her lost youth. But enough about Bette Midler, let's talk about the movie.

All right, all right, I've made jokes like that before, and I feel sort of bad doing it. But really, I don't think Bette Midler has to worry about jibes from the likes of me. She's got four Golden Globes, three Grammys, three Emmys, a Tony, and about 900 gold records. She starred in the musical version of Rochelle, Rochelle (a young girl's strange erotic journey from Milan to Minsk).

And she did this:

God, what an entertainer.

Hocus Pocus begins in October 1693, at the height of the Salem witch trials. (Actually, Wikipedia tells me the trials ended in May, so I guess this one ran long.) You may have heard that the witch trials were a humanitarian abomination, where innocent people were persecuted by a Puritan establishment whose members only recently had escaped persecution themselves, a hideous irony that stands as a monument to the dangers of ignorance, superstition and bigotry.

Well, you're not going to believe this. It turns out the accused actually were witches, who terrorized the townspeople with their Satanic powers, and their executioners did us all a tremendous favor.

Unfortunately, the worst witches got one over on them. After being arrested for killing young Emily Binx and transforming her brother Thackery into a housecat, but before the hangman had a chance to do them in, the Sanderson sisters (Bette Midler, Kathy Najimy and Sarah Jessica Parker) called upon the Dark Prince to make it so that they would return to life some day in the far future.

Three hundred years later, we meet teenager Max Dennison (Omri Katz) and his sister Dani (Thora Birch), who recently moved to Salem from Southern California. Max is a cool, easy-going dude, but when he questions the existence of witches, his classmates and teacher upbraid him for his heresy. Not only that, but two bullies (who strangely look much more like stereotypical California guys than Max does) steal his cool shoes.

But things start to look up for Max when he and Dani visit a Halloween party at the home of Max's dream girl Allison. Allison's parents just so happen to be the proprietors of a museum in the old Sanderson mansion, so the kids decide to skip the party and try to bring the witches back to life instead. To their surprise, they are immediately successful, and once the Sandersons return from the Beyond to steal the souls of children, the gang spends the next hour or so trying, with the help of the feline Thackery Binx, to... I guess kill them. I mean, that sounds very disturbing, but it is what they're trying to do.

There's actually a lot of disturbing stuff in this movie. For example, there's a scene where Bette Midler brings a dead person back to life, and he climbs out of the ground as a shambling, visibly rotting corpse. (But since we're told he comes from 1693, shouldn't he be completely disintegrated by now? And wait, why don't the Sandersons also look like corpses? Are they ghosts, or—sorry, forget it.)

Then there's the part where the kids lure the witches into the high school art classroom, lock them in the clay-firing kiln and immolate them. It doesn't work—I mean, it works, but they come right back to life—but I really don't think I can remember another kids' movie from my own lifetime where children incinerate three people.

And what about the bullies? The witches lock them in a cage toward the end, and we're never told whether they survive or not. I guess they're dead. But at least Max got his cool shoes back.

Eventually, the plot tactfully allows the witches to die without being directly murdered by the kids. Instead, they simply burst into sparkly dust when the sun comes up on November 1. (Actually, Bette Midler first turns into a pillar of salt, then bursts into sparkly dust.) This follows some plot points that always confused me where they first have to fool the witches into thinking the sun has come up by shining a car's headlights through the window of the museum.

The ghost of Thackery Binx is freed from the cat's body and rejoins the spirit of his sister, who may or may not have spent the last 300 years wandering back and forth in a field shouting "Thackery" over and over again. They walk through a gate that opens for them, as if by magic, but it's not the gates of heaven or anything; it's an actual, physical gate in a field in Salem, Massachusetts. I don't know what that was about.

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Usually I try to decide whether a movie is over- or underrated on the basis of its Rotten Tomatoes score. In a case like this, I'm not sure that makes sense. Hocus Pocus was panned by critics when it came out, but I don't know anyone who remembers this movie and doesn't like it. I guess I should take this huge change in public opinion into account in my highly rigorous rating system. But then on the other hand, I don't feel like it.

Did you know?

1. Thackery Binx, in human form, is played by Sean Murray from NCIS. If you don't know what NCIS is, just ask your dad. It's his favorite show. But Binx's voice, in both human and feline form, is Jason Marsden. And if you don't know who Jason Marsden is, he's the guy who played the best friend on every single thing you ever watched on TV from 1992 to 1998.

2. The man dressed as the devil, who hits on the Sanderson sisters, is played by Garry Marshall, and his wife is played by Garry's real-life sister Penny Marshall. Who was responsible for that casting decision?

3. Here's Bette Midler performing "I Put a Spell on You" at the age of 69:

She's still got it.

The Pagemaster

Joe Johnston, Maurice Hunt, 1994
Rotten Tomatoes score: 18%

When I reviewed Richie Rich about two years ago, I noted that Macaulay Culkin won a Razzie in 1994 in recognition of his performances in three movies: Richie Rich, Getting Even with Dad, and this one. That was an underrated movie, but all I had to say at the time about The Pagemaster was, "the less said the better."

Well, far be it from me to leave well enough alone.

This was a foray into the style of movie-making that combined live action and animated content, but unlike Roger Rabbit, this movie doesn't combine the animated and real-life characters in the same scene. Instead, it begins as a live-action movie, but then switches to animation after the first act.

I guess that was supposed to be enough of a gimmick to draw you in, because the story certainly wasn't worth telling. But you wouldn't know that to look at the Wikipedia article, a huge portion of which is given over to describing a dispute amongst the writers, the production staff, the studio, and the Writers' Guild of America over who was entitled to take credit for this masterpiece.

Macaulay Culkin plays Richard, a boy so pathologically anxious that he's too afraid to participate in such harmless pursuits as doing dangerous bike stunts without a helmet at a construction site. What a loser! His dad, Ed Begley Jr., wants him to toughen up, so he deploys him on a mission to buy nails at the neighborhood hardware store during a thunderstorm. Amazingly, this turns out to be a bad idea, and Richard has to take shelter in a local library.

It's one of those gigantic, cavernous libraries with multi-million-dollar frescoes painted on rotunda ceilings, no patrons, and a mysterious librarian (Christopher Lloyd) who insists on doling out library cards to every person who wanders in just to get out of the rain. Richard slips on some water and falls headfirst on the stone floor, rendering him unconscious.

Don't worry, this is the fun kind of concussion, the kind that causes you to have mysterious adventures through animated alternate realities. Richard suddenly finds himself in a cartoon world (he is even aware of the fact that he is now a drawing, which I found somehow strange). He is greeted by the Pagemaster (voice of Christopher Lloyd), who tells him about the jaw-droppingly generic journey he's about to embark on to reach the library exit.

Richard makes three new friends on his voyage, and they're all books: Adventure (voice of Patrick Stewart), Fantasy (voice of Whoopi Goldberg), and Horror (voice of Frank Welker). So there you have it—this is one of those inane kids' movies that tries to teach you the joy of childhood literacy by dramatizing bland, uninspired interpretations of Victorian literature.

Our animated heroes venture into the secret laboratory of Dr. Jekyll (Leonard Nimoy), who immediately transforms himself into Mr. Hyde. Fleeing Mr. Hyde's obligatory wrath, they cast off to sea, where they almost instantly come face-to-face with Moby-Dick and the crew pursuing him. Moments later, they wash ashore on a desert island, and—

I'm going to stop here and just list the remaining literary works that are referenced: Treasure Island, Gulliver's Travels, some generic dragon story, Jack and the Beanstalk.

Richard then reaches the exit, is congratulated for his bravery by the Pagemaster, and returns to the real world, where he has gained the courage necessary to ride his bicycle over dangerous ramps in inclement weather and sleep in a ramshackle treehouse. End of movie.

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The Pagemaster was in production for three years (which, incidentally, explains why Macaulay looks so much younger here than in Richie Rich). Why did they bother? The DVD even includes a behind the scenes "making of" featurette, hosted by Christopher Lloyd. You can tell he doesn't believe a word he's saying about what a magical experience the movie is.

I remember this kind of drivel being everywhere when I was a kid. We were constantly being told how books can take you to faraway places and how your imagination is your ticket to a new reality. But kids aren't stupid, and they know the difference between books and hallucinogenic drugs. Hearing adults say things like that is just embarrassing.

And what's worst about it is that a lot of these books really are capable of entertaining kids. Treasure Island can be filmed in a way that children will love, as the Muppets proved. But it takes more than just a half-assed 45-second sequence depicting one or two of the characters. The literary vignettes in this movie have all the dramatic sophistication of a Sunny D commercial.

That might not matter if the movie itself had any semblance of a story. But nothing happens in it. Once you take out the homages to public domain classics, all that's left is a story about a nervous child who suffers a head injury.

Heavyweights

Stephen Brill, 1995
Rotten Tomatoes score: 29%

What better plot can you imagine for a family feature than a story about overweight children who commit aggravated kidnapping, aided and abetted by three ostensibly responsible adults?

It's all right, I'll give you time to think.

Heavyweights is an odd film, one of a few from its era that straddles the nostalgia line between dopey kids' movie and mid-90s counterculture talisman. Judd Apatow co-wrote it, it was one of Ben Stiller's early starring roles, and Paul Feig (creator of Freaks and Geeks) appears in it. So does Jeffrey Tambor. Even Tim Blake Nelson (from O Brother, Where Art Thou?) has a pointless cameo as a guy who apparently does door-to-door recruiting for a summer camp.

It also reunited the writer and many of the cast members of the Mighty Ducks trilogy, including Kenan Thompson and Goldberg.

Gerry Garner is a husky, sarcastic kid who gets no respect. When his parents send him off to a weight loss camp, he balks at the idea of spending the summer with "a bunch of fat loads." But once he arrives at Camp Hope, his attitude changes. The other big-boned youngsters are nice to him, and counselor Pat is a cool role model who bears a strangely close resemblance to Gerry, to the point that you keep wondering if he's going to turn out to be his real dad.

(He's not.)

But then comes the bad news. The kindly, encouraging camp owners have come upon hard times and filed chapter 9 bankruptcy. (Will their faces ever be red when they discover chapter 9 is only for municipalities.) The camp has been sold to wannabe fitness celebrity Tony Perkis (Ben Stiller), who is "looking forward to interacting with children for the first time" and plans to put the kids in an info-mercial. Gone are the fun camp pastimes, replaced by grueling "Perki-cising" sessions and co-ed dance parties designed for the sole purpose of humiliation.

Not only that, but the campers are told they will be forced to compete in the Apache Relay, an annual athletic contest against the jocks from Camp MVP across the lake. But if this is an annual source of misery, does that mean the kind-hearted former camp owners made the kids participate in previous summers? I'll let you ponder that in the quiet of your study.

When Uncle Tony discovers that the campers have not been losing weight, he reacts by ordering them on a 20-mile hike. The counselors express entirely well-founded concerns, so they all forbid the children to participate in this obviously dangerous activity, and that's the end of the movie.

No, sorry, I was reading the alternate version of the script where not every adult on the planet earth is totally useless. In the real movie, Tony shouts down the voices of reason and the pushover counselors give up immediately.

During the criminally negligent forced hiking activity, the boys hatch a plan to get the upper hand. They set a cartoon booby-trap for Uncle Tony, trap him in a hole, and somehow transport him back to camp, where they lock him in a cage that they have taken the grotesque extra step of electrifying with a bug zapper. When the counselors discover this Lord of the Flies situation, they instantly free Tony, forbid him to interact with the children anymore, call everyone's parents, and recommend the children seek psychiatric care. So that was Heavyweights—

Whoops, there I go again. No, actually the adults decide that unlawful imprisonment is the way to go, so they leave Tony in the cage and take over the camp. After the kids (and Paul Feig) slather themselves in chocolate syrup and spend the night outside in the grass, Pat takes charge and announces that every eleven-year-old camper is now in charge of his own diet. (What could go wrong?) When Parents' Day rolls around, the parents are horrified to learn how badly Tony has been treating the kids, though no one sees fit to mention that he is being detained in an electrified chicken-wire cage in the adjacent building.

Tony's dad (also played by Ben Stiller) is called in to shut the camp down, but all the kids say they'd rather stay on, and Pat is elected to take over. Pat says he's been at Camp Hope for 18 years, and earlier in the movie he said he's been coming every year since he was ten. Are we supposed to believe that this man

is 28? He was actually 36.

So Pat helps the kids prepare to take on Camp Apache or whatever I said it was called in the annual relay games. Fortunately for the Camp Hope team, the games include such events as balloon-shaving and solving math equations in an impossibly short time, subjects at which the boys just so happen to excel.

The final event is a go-kart race. The race begins with a pistol start, but wouldn't that defeat the purpose of a relay competition? What's the point of all the other events if you can't get a head-start on the final race? (Did you ever use to watch Nickelodeon Guts? Let's not get into that.)

Gerry wins the race with the help of an electric fan that launches him into the air and on top of the other kid's go-kart, which (1) would never work; (2) would surely be against the rules; and (3) would have killed the other racer if he hadn't inexplicably had a roof over the top of his kart.

So there you have it. Gerry has had the best damn summer of his life (allowing him to say the D-word), and all the kids have learned a lesson about... self-esteem, I guess. Or self-confidence? Whichever.

Did you know...?

1. In the scene where Uncle Tony uncovers the secret junk-food stash, I always thought it looked funny when Goldberg makes the "Seymour Butts" joke, as if the line was dubbed over in post-production. Sure enough, it was. The original line was quite a bit more risqué—I shall not repeat it here—and would probably have led to a PG-13 rating.

2. In the dance scene, watch carefully and you'll notice that several of the child actors are apparently sharing costumes. There's at least one other kid dressed exactly like Gerry, and two other actors are wearing identical t-shirts. My only theory is that they needed substitute kids due to work-hour limitations, and I guess there were only so many Les Mis shirts to be had.