Ernest Goes to Jail

John R. Cherry, III, 1990
Rotten Tomatoes score: 13%

Thirteen percent? I take that as a personal insult. This is without a doubt the best of the Ernest movies, and that is saying something.

Ernest is now working as the night janitor in a bank, where he works alongside trigger-happy security guards Chuck and Bobby (the off-kilter airline guys from Ernest Saves Christmas). Ernest spends his time pining after bank clerk Charlotte (Barbara Bush—apparently there are at least two Barbara Bushes in the world) and dreaming of trading his floor-scrubber for a teller's desk. Unfortunately, the uptight bank manager doesn't take kindly to Ernest's habit of accidentally transforming into a human electromagnet and making a horrible mess of the bank.

After the outrageous cartoon hijinks of Ernest electrifying himself and being chased around the bank by metal filing cabinets, we cut to a prison in the aftermath of an inmate's murder. We don't see the body or anything, but I'm pretty sure this is the only time an actual death takes place in an Ernest movie. The killer, Ruben, seeks protection from a shadowy figure called Mr. Nash.

Ernest is delighted to learn that he's been selected for jury duty in Ruben's trial. During the trial, Ernest accidentally breaks open a ballpoint pen in his mouth. There is no purpose for this, but it's hilarious. At the same time, Ruben notices that Ernest bears an uncanny resemblance to Mr. Nash. During a highly unorthodox jury field trip to the crime scene, Mr. Nash manages to switch places with Ernest. While Nash commits jury tampering to acquit Ruben, Ernest spends a day in prison before figuring out what's happened.

Ernest reluctantly agrees to imitate Mr. Nash, lest the real Nash should hurt his friends, while Nash takes advantage of Ernest's job to plan a bank heist. Unfortunately for the real Ernest, Nash's last appeal has been turned down, and he has a date with the chair.

In most movies, a scene of the main character being mistakenly sent to the death chamber would be terrifying, but in this movie . . . it's still pretty disturbing. They do their best to distract you with gags like a sign switching from "vacant" to "occupied" when Ernest enters, and Ernest refusing a last smoke because "cigarettes'll kill ya." But this is still pretty heavy. At least, it is until Ernest is actually in the chair, at which point he of course does not die, but rather becomes electrified again. This time, he's not just magnetic; he has also acquired the power to shoot lightning from his fingertips, which is a convenient way to get him out of the prison.

Ernest returns to the bank just in time to find that Nash has tied his pals to a time bomb set to blow the vault. Finally the twain meet, and Ernest goes mano a mano with Mr. Nash. He manages to collide with one of the security guards' booby traps, which electrifies him yet again, giving him the gift of flight. Ernest sacrifices himself by taking the bomb and flying through the bank's glass ceiling just before it explodes.

Ernest's friends express their heartbreak at Ernest's heroic death, but you'd think they would have learned by now. Second later, Ernest falls back through the ceiling and flattens Nash, having suffered only minor comical injuries.

(The TV version of this movie includes a number of deleted scenes, including one at the end where Ernest has achieved his dream of being a bank clerk, but he still suffers from accidental magnetism.)

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This is a great movie. I saw it on video when I was six (my first Ernest encounter), and I find it every bit as entertaining now. As a six-year-old, I was thrilled by Ernest's electrically-powered jailbreak, and that scene alone is still enough reason to watch the movie.

As in Ernest Saves Christmas, Jim Varney seems to have been eager to maximize his screen time playing characters other than Ernest. That movie put Ernest in three disguises (all playing characters he had created elsewhere), and here they went the extra mile by having him play a separate character, in addition to the scene where Ernest rattles off a series of impressions while trying to impersonate Nash. I like all of these characters, and it's a shame Jim Varney was so underused in his lifetime.

(Incidentally, isn't it strange that someone as ostensibly idiotic as Ernest is such a consummate actor? He is fully capable of portraying a character more intelligent than himself, most notably Astor Clement in Ernest Saves Christmas, who uses words the real Ernest wouldn't recognize. This is a great cartoon tradition, so of course it requires no further justification.)

I also can't help laughing when security guard Chuck finally realizes, after days of interaction with Nash, that he isn't the real Ernest: "I sensed it immediately."

Finally, I have to mention the theme music in this movie, both the opening song "Doin' Time," and the inexplicable end credits theme, which features the refrain: "Don't make me climb / These aren't my tree-climbin' shoes." I have no comment.

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Good Burger

Brian Robbins, 1997
Rotten Tomatoes score: 31%

It's time to put hard times behind! Get all the bad things off your mind.

When I was in the 4th grade, Nickelodeon rolled out All That, a sketch-comedy show featuring a teenage cast. It included such brilliant and subtly-executed characters as Walter the Earboy, a high school student with oversize ears; Randy and Mandy, two cooking show hosts who put chocolate in all their food; Pierre S. Cargot, who lived in a bathtub and taught such valuable French phrases as "Why is your butt talking?" in an accent no Frenchman could understand; and of course, H. Ross Perot, as portrayed by a twelve-year-old girl.

But the most popular sketch by far was "Good Burger," featuring Kel Mitchell as a parody of the stupid teenagers who are so widely reputed to work at fast food restaurants. Ed was so dumb that when a customer complained that his burger was well-done instead of rare, Ed took it as a compliment. (That particular sketch aired after the Jack in the Box E. coli scandal, so I doubt any fast food restaurants were still offering rare burgers, but that's neither here nor there.)

In the grand tradition of Saturdary Night Live, Nickelodeon decided to spin off this sketch into a critically panned movie. By 1997, Kel Mitchell had already been paired with his All That co-star Kenan Thompson in a sitcom called Kenan & Kel. Although this movie has no connection to that show, they clearly wanted to recapture its cast dynamics, with Kenan playing the flappable straight man to Kel's dangerously incompetent idiot. Dan Schneider returns from the sketch as the high-strung manager, and he's joined by Shar Jackson as Good Burger's only competent employee (and Kenan's eventual love interest in a pointless sublot) and, unbelievably, Abe Vigoda as a Good Burger lifer named Otis. Also appearing are Carmen Electra as a sinister vamp who tries to seduce Ed and Sinbad as a disco dude so out of touch that he's flattered to be compared to Shaft.

Dexter (Kenan) is looking forward to a summer vacation with no responsibilities, but when he drives his mother's car without permission and gets into an accident with his teacher Mr. Wheat (Sinbad), he has to take a summer job to pay for the damages. He finds work at Mondo Burger, the world's most ridiculously high-class burger joint, but the psycho owner Kurt (Jan Sweiterman) fires him on his first day.

Thus Dexter has to fall back on Good Burger, the mom-and-pop fast food restaurant across the street. Good Burger is struggling financially, largely because they have yet to fire Ed, even after he bathes in the milkshake machine. Now that Mondo Burger is in town, they may finally go out of business.

Luckily, Dexter discovers that Ed has a special sauce recipe that could bring patrons back to Good Burger. Kurt, however, is so hell-bent on monopolizing the local burger market that he hires Carmen Electra to use her wiles to acquire Ed's secret recipe. It doesn't work, so Kurt immediately stoops to attempted murder, which I guess is what anybody would do, right? He poisons Ed's sauce and calls in a favor with a mental hospital so corruptly managed that it is willing to confine two teenagers and Abe Vigoda for no reason. Fortunately they escape just in time to stop Good Burger's customers from eating the contaminated food.

It turns out that Kurt has been using illegal food additives to increase the mass of his burgers, in violation of the laws of the United States and thermodynamics. Dexter and Ed break into Mondo Burger and sabotage its operations, putting Kurt out of business for good.

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This movie was pretty ludicrous. It had to be, given its source material. It pains me to admit that All That doesn't quite hold up for me anymore, but really, I think that was the point. Nickelodeon has always had its finger on the pulse of what kids think is funny, and yes, kids think it's funny when a dumb teenager gives a fast food patron a cocker spaniel puppy instead of a burger.

Really, apart from the character of Ed, this movie has very little to do with the sketch. They were careful to throw in a couple of scenes where Ed screws up some customer's order, which was the entire concept of the TV version, but most of the running time is dedicated to a plot that would have had no place in a sketch comedy show. This can be done well, as in Wayne's World, and it can be done horrendously, as in MacGruber. Good Burger is somewhere in between.

I think the most genuinely funny line in the movie occurs during a shoehorned-in, unconvincing character-building moment where Dexter is bearing his soul to Ed. Dexter explains that he doesn't even remember what his deadbeat dad looks like, to which Ed replies: "I don't remember what my dad looks like either, but at least I get to see him every day." Actually, maybe the funniest line is Abe Vigoda's "I think I broke my ass." That made me laugh because he said "ass" in a kids' movie.

But really, just listen to this theme song. How can you listen to that and not feel good about your life?

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Fun Fact: The customer who received the cocker spaniel was played by Sherman Hemsley. Someone find that episode.

Going Berserk

David Steinberg, 1983
Rotten Tomatoes audience rating: 30%

I had never heard of this movie until Netflix suggested it to me. It doesn't seem like many other people have, either. Usually I only resort to the audience ratings on Rotten Tomatoes when I'm dealing with a made-for-TV movie, but as far as I can tell, this was released in theaters. Yet Rotten Tomatoes didn't have a single review for it.

The movie is hard to describe. Its plot, if you can call it that, is that a trio of cult leaders wants to assassinate a crusading Congressman (Pat Hingle, the commissioner from Batman) by hypnotizing his son-in-law (John Candy). This might be an homage to The Manchurian Candidate, or it might not. I would estimate that this plot occupies less than a third of the movie. The rest is taken up by a string of unrelated scenes. The only connection between one event and the next is John Candy's character.

John gets arrested and escapes custody, hand-cuffed to a killer (Ernie Hudson). The killer then dies, and John has to drag his body around in a strange prefiguring of Weekend at Bernie's. After John's friend Chick (Joe Flaherty) helps him remove the cuffs, they just abandon Ernie Hudson's body in a bar, where a talkative old friend is conversing with the corpse. The police never come looking for John or Ernie Hudson; the whole story is just dropped.

In another scene, John goes into a restaurant called Mom's, which has apparently transformed into a biker-punk bar. The punks pick a fight with John, he fails to talk sense into them, they spray-paint his clothes, and he leaves peacefully. Then he knocks their bikes over with his car. This gag actually made me laugh, but it had zero connection to anything else that happened in the movie.

John's fiancée Nancy is Alley Mills, the mother from The Wonder Years. She is effectively a non-entity, so I can't much comment on her performance. Early on, we're told that her father the Congressman is out to shut down the aforementioned sinister cult, but once this fact is established, it is never discussed again. Obviously we had to be told about this animosity between the Congressman and the cult, because the movie's climax is an assassination attempt against him. But you would think that this would warrant some kind of development or at least a few lines of dialogue.

Eugene Levy is also present as DiPasquale, a sleazy hack of a filmmaker who (for no apparent reason) wants to make a movie of John and Nancy's wedding. DiPasquale has previously produced a movie starring John and Chick called "Kung Fu U." It's a combination of a campus comedy and a martial arts flick, and we are of course treated to an extended selection.

I'm aware that I'm just describing isolated scene after isolated scene, but believe me, that's the name of the game. Clearly they had a lot of ideas for individual scenes, and the story was just an afterthought. Most of the participants in this movie came from the comedy troupe The Second City, and it reminded me of a later Second City production, Strange Brew, which was equally nonsensical but with funnier characters.

Even I once wrote a screenplay that was nothing but a bunch of disconnected "funny" scenes. It was even more incomprehensible than this movie. My excuse is that I was 15.

John Candy was one of the greats, and Planes, Trains, and Automobiles is one of my favorites. But for a guy as funny as he was, he really had a talent for appearing in stupid movies. I guess it's a testament to how great John Candy was that I don't really mind watching this stuff as long as he's in it. I guess that's also a testament to my taste in movies.

Ghost Dad

Sidney Poitier, 1990
Rotten Tomatoes score: 7%

There is no excuse for this movie. It was directed by Sir Sidney Poitier, Oscar-winning actor, Bahamian ambassador, and Medal of Freedom recipient. It featured Bill Cosby, who in 1990 was probably the biggest sitcom star in America. You would think they couldn't go wrong even if they had tried. But they rose to the challenge.

Dr. Cosby plays Elliot Hopper, a successful, living businessman who is just days away from securing his family's future by landing a big account. He is the widowed father of several children, only one of whom (daughter Diane) plays a substantial role in the story. Elliot seems to have it all, until one day, he dies.

Of course, with a title like Ghost Dad, it's a foregone conclusion that Elliot is going to be dead by the end of act one. The movie toys with the audience by making us think he'll expire in an elevator accident, but no, that would be much too commonplace for what this picture has in mind. Instead, Elliot makes the fatal mistake of accepting a cab ride from a deranged, violent, psychopathic Satanist. (I'm not making a joke; the character is explicitly said to be a devil-worshiper.) In a fit of lunacy and a painfully drawn-out, unfunny stunt-driving sequence, the cabby drives off a bridge, and Elliot drowns in the river below.

I have no idea why they chose this as the means by which Elliot becomes a ghost. It is a truly surreal viewing experience. Moments after he dies, Ghost Dad climbs out of the river and recoils in terror as a bus barrels down on him. Of course, being a Ghost Dad, he is unharmed; but the real point is that a bus accident would have been a much more reasonable way to kill this character. So would the elevator crash we were teased with minutes earlier. So would anything.

Elliot is relieved to learn that, in spite of being a Ghost Dad, he can still be seen, albeit only in the dark. He can also communicate by mental telepathy, but conveniently for the filmmakers, he has to move his mouth as if he were really talking. He can even touch solid objects if he really makes an effort. So don't be confused by the utter lack of any visual or auditory clue; he is still a ghost.

A man named Sir Edith summons Ghost Dad to London, where he tells him that he will be permanently passing into the great beyond in a few days' time. Why Sir Edith has the power to summon ghosts is not satisfactorily explained. Back at his home, Ghost Dad explains to his kids that he will be returning to work so that he can make sure he secures their financial well-being before vanishing forever. The kids all seem awfully unfazed by the revelation that their father is now a disembodied spirit, and everyone takes it for granted that once he lands this business deal, they will be just fine without him.

In the movie's climax, Sir Edith travels to the Hopper household to tell everyone some big news. It turns out that Elliot isn't dead—he's only in a coma, but since his body was found with no ID, the authorities haven't contacted the family. Apparently there is a trait that runs in families that causes the souls of comatose people to exit their bodies, and the Hopper family carries the gene. This explains, says Elliot, why his father was also a Ghost Dad years ago. Maybe I just wasn't paying attention, but I'm 100% sure this seemingly relevant fact was never mentioned up to this point.

Just as the Hoppers are on their way to the hospital to reunite Ghost Dad with his body, Diane takes a nasty fall down the stairs and goes into a coma. At the hospital, she reveals that she has become a Ghost Daughter and has no desire to re-enter her body. After about 90 seconds of dialogue, Elliot persuades her of the folly of this decision, so Ghost Dad and Ghost Daughter rejoin with their bodies and come back to life.

In the final scene, Ghost Dad (now Normal Dad again) encounters the Satanist from earlier in the movie. He orders the Satanist to go directly to hell and sit on a hot coal until it snows. I'm not sure if we're supposed to assume the Satanist is going to kill himself or what, but it's an extremely disturbing way to end the movie. Couldn't Elliot at least have called the police? Why is the Satanist still alive anyway? He fell into the river too.

Before I conclude this review, I should mention that there were a couple of plot threads I didn't mention, including a scene where Ghost Dad helps his son perform a magic act, a subplot about Ghost Dad falling in love, and an adventure involving a conniving neighbor who learns Elliot's secret. (I omitted this last one out of a desire not to demean the titan of a young actor who played the neighbor by mentioning his connection to this movie.) If you really want to know about those scenes, you'll just have to watch the movie. But be forewarned that it is

National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation

Jeremiah S. Chechik, 1989
Rotten Tomatoes score: 63%

In psychological development, there are certain critical periods, during which a growing organism is uniquely suited to acquire particular skills. I think the same must be true for taste in certain movies. If you saw The Goonies when you were eight years old, you love it; if, like me, you missed it, you will never understand its appeal. I'm sure most people cannot comprehend how much I enjoy the Mighty Ducks trilogy, not to mention the Ernest canon. (Or maybe that last one is just me.)

When it comes to the National Lampoon Vacation series, I must have missed the boat. I didn't see any of these movies until I caught this one in German translation (where it's called Schöne Bescherung) at the age of 18. I finally saw the original Vacation about three years ago, along with its European sequel.

I thought the original, with Anthony Michael Hall playing Chevy Chase's son Russ, was pretty amusing, while European Vacation is an international atrocity that should have been banned by the Geneva Accords. This Christmas version came next, followed by Vegas Vacation in 1997, which is rightfully forgotten except for its introduction of the comedy pseudonym "Nick Papagiorgio." Apparently the trainwreck is still a-rolling, as new films have been released quite recently, all without Chevy Chase.

But today we're here to talk about Christmas Vacation. I watched this again a few weeks ago, so I have at least a vague recollection as to what happens in it.

The first two Vacations were about road trips, but in this one the Griswold family stays put while the vacation comes to them. My general view on gimmick sequels is that, once you've made two very high-concept movies in a series, it's very risky to make additional sequels that drop that concept. (That's why Die Hard 3 is such a disappointing sequel.) So once you've got two "Family of Morons on Vacation" movies in the can, it's going to be a rough adjustment making a "Family of Morons at Home" movie. And so it is, but the movie keeps its stride by cranking the moronicity dial way up to 11. There is nothing whatsoever to like about any member of the Griswold family, but it can be mildly amusing to watch them fail at the most basic tasks in life.

In the opening sequence, we see Chevy Chase nearly kill his entire family through gross incompetence behind the wheel. Later we see every adult member of his family struggle to figure out how to turn on a light switch. Someone locks Chevy in the attic, and in a McCallisteresque fit of obliviousness, the family leaves him there for hours. In a jewelry store, Chevy musters every ounce of effort to avoid staring at (and commenting on) a young floorwalker's chest, and spectacularly fails to utter a single sentence without an embarrassing slip.

How can these people be so stupid? How do they manage to feed themselves? How do they manage to dress themselves?

Actually, seeing Chevy Chase at work is one of the really funny parts of the movie, and it's a nice change from the earlier installments. His boss (Brian Doyle-Murray), a curmudgeonly Scrooge, is a funny character I wish we could have seen a lot more of. Chevy is expecting a big bonus this year because he's invented a "non-nutritive cereal varnish," which I found hilarious.

The rest of the movie is just a meandering story about the huge number of people in the Griswold house for Christmas. Beverly D'Angelo returns as Chevy Chase's inexplicably patient wife, a live-action Marge Simpson who should really just abandon ship. The two Griswold children, Russ and Audrey, have never been played by the same actors in any two Vacation movies—Russ is forgettable here, but Juliette Lewis as Audrey is relatably annoyed by the sheer volume of human bodies in her house. Randy Quaid is back as the insufferable Cousin Eddie. Aside from these, there are several hundred other family members who either didn't have any lines, or else I just didn't care enough to remember them. Oh, somewhere in there is a horrific scene where a cat disintegrates.

The whole holiday falls apart when Chevy learns that he isn't getting his Christmas bonus. Then, in a Hillbilly ex Machina ending, Cousin Eddie abducts the penny-pinching boss and brings him to the Griswold house. Suddenly, the boss has a complete change of heart and gives Clark an even bigger bonus than he was expecting.

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I feel I've been unusually harsh on this movie, and that probably isn't fair. Like I said, the stuff about Clark's job is great, and the rest is just so-so. Only a few scenes are actively off-putting. I would be willing to watch it again.

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1. Being around family is important at Christmas.
This is true even if no one in your family has any redeeming qualities.

2. If you want to install an outdoor swimming pool, you should spend money that you have.
I forgot to mention the part where Clark spends money he doesn't have on a pool. It wasn't worth mentioning.

3. "Non-nutritive cereal varnish" is funny.
This is a lesson for people who make Christmas comedies and are looking for suggestions about funny words and phrases. It's hilarious.

The Year Without a Santa Claus

Jules Bass and Arthur Rankin, Jr., 1974
Rotten Tomatoes audience rating: 84%

After Rudolph and Santa Claus Is Coming to Town, Rankin-Bass must have realized they were onto something. But what other legendary Christmas tales were left to be told? None, so they just made one up.

Shirley Booth (Mrs. Claus) tells us the tale of that fateful year when Santa Claus decided to quit his job. When Santa (Mickey Rooney returning to the role) is feeling under the weather one December, he calls the world's most misanthropic doctor, who assures him that the whole world is beyond saving and there's no need for Christmas anymore. Santa admits that he has been feeling the same way, so he decides to stay in bed for the foreseeable future.

Mrs. Claus thinks the old man is giving up too easily. First, she muses in song that she could take over Santa's job. For some reason she rejects this eminently sensible option, and instead she sends two elves, Jingle Bells and his brother Jangle, to scour the world for some trace of Christmas spirit. When the elves arrive in Southtown, Santa's fears seem confirmed. A local constable cites them for violating draconian laws prohibiting reindeer and elf costumes, and the kids in town don't care that Santa isn't coming. (The kids have read in the newspaper that Santa has called it quits, but they say they don't believe in Santa. What kind of world is this where newspapers are printing press releases from the North Pole, but the children somehow don't believe that Santa Claus exists?)

Worried for the elves' safety, Santa has hauled himself out of bed and followed them to Southtown. Disguising himself as "Mr. Klaus" (they'll never figure that out), he meets a young agclaustic named Ignatius Thistlewhite. Invited into the Thistlewhite home, Santa sneezes in the most disgusting way possible, surely infecting the entire family with an exotic North Pole illness. Then he sings about believing in Santa Claus. Mr. Klaus reveals his secret identity by flying off on a reindeer to rescue the elves and the baby reindeer they rode in on.

The reindeer is at the pound, disguised as a dog. The professionals at the pound fail to realize that this hoofed creature is not a dog, so the elves and Ignatius have to persuade the mayor of Southtown to intervene. He agrees to help, but only if the elves can conjure up a snowy day in Dixie. Unbeknown to them, Santa has already sprung their reindeer friend and rushed back to the Pole. Before Santa can make it home, Mrs. Claus jets off to Southtown to collect the elves (and Ignatius, for some reason) to pay a visit to an old friend.

Mr. Snow Miser, the frosty giant who controls winter weather, is the only one who can bring snow to Southtown. After a jaunty ragtime tune about himself, Snow Miser explains that he'd be all too glad to make it snow down south, but he's certain that his brother Mr. Heat Miser would turn it to rain. Heat Miser hates his brother (though not enough to think of a different theme song), and the two can't be made to agree. If Mrs. Claus wants it to snow in Southtown, she'll have to get Mother Nature involved. Mother Nature tells her miserly sons to play nice, and they agree to horse-trade a snowstorm in the south for one spring day at the North Pole.

The snow inspires the world's children to guilt Santa into reinstating Christmas, so they send him gifts and letters and sing "Blue Christmas." Their trick works, and Santa resumes his duties.

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TRUE MEANING OF CHRISTMAS:

1. It never snows in the South except by supernatural intervention.
If you think it does, you're just remembering wrong.

2. If you only work one night out of the year, you can't really afford to take a sick day.
But if you're going to be sneezing all over the world, maybe it's not such a bad idea.

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Ron Underwood, 2006
Rotten Tomatoes audience rating: 54%

There is also a live-action version of this movie, and it is an abomination.

As much fun as it sounds like to see the great John Goodman as Jolly Old St. Nick, I implore you to stay away from this monstrosity. There is not a single sympathetic, likable, pleasant, or interesting character in the entire movie. The closest you get are Jingle and Jangle, played here by Eddie Griffin and Ethan Suplee, but even they can't bring any cheer to your TV screen. Chris Kattan is in this movie. Chris Kattan is in this movie. Stay away, in the name of all that is holy.

If you must indulge your curiosity, please confine it to this production of the Heat Miser and Snow Miser song. It features Michael McKean as Mr. Snow Miser and Harvey Fierstein as Mr. Heat Miser. But I caution you, this is something that, once seen, cannot be unseen. You've been warned.

I don't know what masochists in the audience have been giving this a positive rating. They are probably very sick people.

Richie Rich's Christmas Wish

John Murlowski, 1998
Rotten Tomatoes audience rating: 33%

This was direct-to-video, so the best I can get is an audience score from Rotten Tomatoes. Self-selected audience reviews are usually more generous than critics, so if even the viewers didn't like it, that doesn't bode well.

This is of course based on the long-running Richie Rich comics. It is purportedly a sequel to the 1994 film Richie Rich, but there is zero continuity and no returning cast members. That was a grossly underrated movie, and we'll have to get to it at some point. But for now, let's deal with the Christmas version.

In the first act, Richie learns that Professor Keenbean (Eugene Levy doing an unnecessary English accent, but still wearing his trademark horn-rimmed glasses) has just invented magic. His "wishing machine" can make anyone's wish come true, but only on Christmas Eve. But while he's still getting the kinks worked out, Richie will have to contend with his insufferable cousin Reggie van Dough (not to be confused with Laurence van Dough, the evil CFO played by John Larroquette in the first movie).

Reggie is the bad kind of rich person—he enjoys abusing his power over others, he openly detests poor people, and he resents Richie for ever doing anything nice for anyone. So when Richie participates in a charity event, delivering presents to orphans on a self-powered sleigh, Reggie sabotages the sleigh and destroys all the presents, leaving Richie holding the bag. Richie knows that Reggie is responsible, but rather than make even a passing effort to clear his name, he immediately resorts to wishing himself out of existence with Keenbean's machine.

So there you have it. This has been building up to a Wonderful Life story. Richie now finds himself in a world where he has never been born and Reggie owns his home, his family, his family's business, and the entire town. (Apparently Reggie sued his parents to escape their custody, then sued Mr. and Mrs. Rich for the right to become a despot. It's harsh, but that's our legal system.) Even Richie's closest friends no longer recognize him.

But wait. If Richie has never been born, how does he exist? He's not a ghost. Everyone can see him; they just don't recognize him. If he wished himself out of existence, shouldn't he just cease to exist? You know what? Forget it.

In order to wish the world back to normal, Richie must escape from Reggie's secret police and contact his friends from his previous life. He meets his trusted valet Cadbury (who is now a rock musician) and Professor Keenbean. Keenbean tells him that he and the local kids will have to break into a museum to steal the world's largest wishbone from a dinosaur statue to make the wishing machine work again. Unfortunately, the police show up, lock up the gang, and deliver the wishing machine to Reggie.

Reggie uses the machine to wish for the power of flight, and if you've ever seen Superman IV, it's not quite as bad as that. Luckily, the Rich family dog pulls the plug on the machine before Reggie can wish for world domination. Richie and the gang bust out of the joint just in time to race back to Rich Manor at the eleventh hour.

In a pulse-pounding scene, Keenbean spends five minutes attempting to connect an alligator clamp to a bundle of wires, and the clock begins to toll midnight as Richie prepares to make his wish. The gang all cheer him on as he apparently struggles to formulate an appropriate wish. Finally he overcomes this seemingly insurmountable obstacle and wishes to "be Richie Rich again for the next Christmas, the next Christmas, and every Christmas for the rest of my life!" I'm not sure if he is going to continue to exist for the other 364 days of every year, but I guess that's a start.

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For a straight-to-video movie, this is about what you'd expect. Say what you will about the original Richie Rich movie; at least it felt like they put some effort into it. Martin Mull is clearly phoning it in as Richie's dad, and the kid from Seventh Heaven is no replacement for Macauly Culkin from the first movie. On the plus side, cinema's Richard Riehle gives a winning performance as a cop. (He has people skills! He's good at dealing with people! Why can't you idiots understand that?) Also, one of the kids is Michelle Trachtenberg, who if I'm not mistaken has gone on to do other things.

Take it for what it is, and you shouldn't be disappointed.

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TRUE MEANING OF CHRISTMAS:

1. It's wrong for children not to exist.
If they don't exist, their parents can't possibly spend sufficient time with them, and if we've learned anything at all, it's that parents should spend time with their children.

2. Infinitely powerful inventions have some potential to create mischief.
Let that be a lesson to you scientists out there who think you can invent a wishing machine and expect nothing to go wrong.