Tag Archives: holiday movies

Office Christmas Party

By my count it’s been at least 12 years since a holiday movie has earned Classic status (Elf is kind of a sure thing; The Polar Express pretty darn close) and Office Christmas Party is no where near in danger of being added to that hallowed list. It’s just funny enough, which seems to be the way with these things.

Jason Bateman plays the Jason Bateman character: bland 40-something white dude. Thanks to his horrible boss (Jennifer Aniston), the only way both the company where he works at and Christmas itself can be saved is by turning the office holiday party up a notch – to eleven – and letting the festivities turn near-apocalyptic.

Is it a dumb premise? Of course it is. I’m not sure I would have seen this movie at all had I OFFICE CHRISTMAS PARTY not been deliberately trying to kill time AND had this particular movie not been playing in the convenient slot. Should YOU see it? Not unless you find yourself in similar circumstances. I mean, it’s not awful. Check it out next year on Netflix, maybe. It’s got a pretty good cast and the odd chuckle, so it’s not a complete waste of space. It just wouldn’t quite make it onto Santa’s Nice list, we’ll say. Is that generous of me? Am I in the holiday spirit? Gross.

Actually, I’m writing this from my desk, where I am currently going through some post-cruise symptoms, such as feeling my whole office list when I know damn well that I’m firmly on land. My body, however, has not yet adjusted. I am also wrapped up in fluffy blankets and slippers because while my skin has become adjusted to Hawaiian temperatures, we arrived home last night to a winter storm that made our morning commute particularly hellish.

Back to the movie: actually, I may as well be done this review. It’s what you expect from a cotd_utwaaekdh0 non-denominational holiday mixer where Kate McKinnon is stretching out a 3 minute bit and she’s the best thing on screen.

For my office get together, we rent out a suite and watch the Ottawa Senators play some team, and usually get beaten. But there’s food and booze. What does your office do? Do you accidentally get clients high on blow? Bring hookers as dates? Wind up in the hospital? Flee in an epic car chase? Your office party might be a lot more tame than the one in this movie, but I bet the cliche factor is pretty similar, and it can’t possibly be any less original. Ho ho hold onto your money. They usually rerun It’s a Wonderful Life for free on TV.

Bad Santa

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A mall Santa and his “elf” rob department stores after a long day of hearing children’s Christmas lists. After a particularly good score, Billy Bob Thornton vows to stop his Bad Santa ways and head on down to retire in Miami like the good drunk he is. And he does. It’s just that he’s still a miserable SOB whose only skill is taking things that aren’t his.

Bad Santa is a proud raunchy comedy, sparking an alarming trend in holiday films. At the time (2003) it held the record for most profanities in a Christmas film: 300, over half which are fucks.

bad-santa-3-1000 Weirdly, both Bill Murray and Jack Nicholson hoped for the role before committing to other projects. Billy Bob stepped into the title role (which was translated as “Santa is a Pervert” in the Czech Republic) and to this day he lists the filming as one of only 3 time periods he’d care to revisit (the other two being the Alamo, and 1979, when he worked for the Arkansas Highway Department. He’s a weird guy.).

Anyway, Bad Santa and his conman elf get back into business in Arizona, where the fly in their ointment is a bullied chubby kid whose family would make a great mark if only he wasn’t so endearing. Cloris Leachman, who plays the kid’s uncredited Grandma, is the only high point of the film. I watched this when it was new and didn’t care for it so colour me surprised to learn that there’s a sequel out in theatres, because apparently someone wanted that.

What I didn’t want was to see John Ritter sweating away in this last embarrassing role, or Bernie Mac constipated and not much else, but what I REALLY didn’t want to see was a Gilmore Girl awkwardly folded into the front seat of a shitbox car screaming “Fuck me, Santa!” I have recently spent time with the Gilmore Girls revival on Netflix but I have no urge to find out how much badder this Santa can get. It should be noted that Lauren Graham is NOT back for Bad Santa 2 but Oscar winner Octavia Spencer is, and she’s joined by Oscar winner Kathy Bates. Mysteries abound.

A Christmas Melody

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This movie is achingly bad from the very first. Lacey Chabert, aka, the littlest Party of Fiver, aka one of the mean girls, aka hasn’t worked since “stars” as a single mom who has to give up her dream of being a fashion designer in L.A. to move back home to Ohio for Christmas, with her young daughter in tow.

Things look up very briefly when Kathy Najimi makes a brief appearance as her bubbly aunt, but it’s fleeting and as soon as Najimi’s offscreen, things go downhill rather fast.

So fast in fact that before I know it Mariah Carey is now making my day much worse, download appearing as the PTA mom who’s about to make Lacey Chabert’s life even more unbearable, as if being exiled to Ohio wasn’t bad enough. Now she has to put up with some old rival from high school one-upping her and flaunting the lifestyle that dentistry bought her. Some very talented directors have occasionally elicited some not-terrible performances from Carey (I’m thinking of Precious here, and I’m not sure what else) but whoever directed this monstrosity is clearly cowed by her. She’s more wooden than a nutcracker and she’s making hand gestures like she’s Celine Dion, live in concert.

The movie unfolds exactly as a Christmas movie must: little girl finds acceptance by singing in the school pageant, mom falls in love with the music teacher, a major department store wants to buy her designs but she’s already so happy in Ohio she doesn’t need to pursue her other dreams anymore. Oh, and the school janitor may or may not be Santa Claus.

Questions?

Arthur Christmas

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Merry Christmas.

You may have learned by now that Matt and I are therapists who specialize in crisis counselling. People can get depressed or suicidal at any time, around the clock, around the calendar, so our office never closes. IT NEVER CLOSES. Which means I’m at work today, and was at work yesterday too, and have worked through the holidays for 7 years running. And that’s okay. It’s not fantastic. I’d rather be at home, or with family, or in bed, or in Jamaica, or pretty much anywhere else, but this kind of work doesn’t come without sacrifice, and I knew that going in. I’ve made peace with it, although I always regret leaving Sean (a measly lawyer) home alone (we don’t live in the same city as our extended families) – albeit with a nice bottle of scotch, The Good Dinosaur on Disney Infinity, and a little droid called BB-8 (who is probably terrorizing our dogs).

The good news is, we do find workarounds. Since I’m working until 11pm on Christmas day, we had our Christmas dinner last night, when I got home from work (did I feel like cooking a big meal after a long day at work? you bet!). Then we settled into the hot tub with a bottle of wine. It was a full moon last night, and unseasonably warm here in Canada (a record high of 16 degrees, I believe – what was it like for you?), and it so we relaxed under a starry night to watch a movie recommended by Carrie called Arthur Christmas.

Arthur is the son of Santa, and the grandson of Santa too. It’s a job that gets proudly passed down in their family, and someday soon Arthur’s brother Steve will wear the suit. He already nearly runs the whole operation, having streamlined the process with his high-tech gadgets. Grandsanta is enjoying his retirement but Santa’s still loving his Christmas Eve missions and is reluctant to pass the torch. Arthur, meanwhile, too clumsy and keen to ever seriously be considered for the role, works in the letter department, answering all the kids who write to Santa. This Christmas Eve, Steve runs an impeccable shift and 2 billion presents are delivered, almost without a hitch. Almost. End of day, an elf comes across one undelivered present. Steve is comfortable with their error margin and Santa’s ready for bed, so it’s up to Arthur, Grandsanta, and an androgynous elf named Bryony to somehow get a bike to Gwen before she wakes up and thinks Santa forgot her.

The movie’s a lot of fun, with just the right amount of saltiness in the sweet to make me happy (not many holiday movies have a Santa threatening to euthanize himself with a rock). Plus the voice cast is top-notch: James McAvoy as Arthur, Hugh Laurie as Steve, Jim Broadbent as Santa, Bill Nighy as Grandsanta…actually, the list goes on like crazy. Have fun trying to recognize them yourself.

This morning Sean and I had a Christmas brunch and gave the dogs each a Christmas steak. No one will ever make a Christmas movie about our non-traditional celebrations (although they tried – it’s called Mixed Nuts), but we did manage to put a little merry in our hearts. And hey – working on Christmas isn’t all bad: I came armed with cheeseball.

Happy holidays.

The Grumpy Guide to Christmas Movies

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Why must Christmas movies be so…terrible? What is it about the holidays that turns regular moviegoers into big balls of mush? I feel like a big green cynic but bah, humbug! I hate when it magically starts to snow when two people kiss. I hate when families gather round a piano to sing carols. In movies, extended families always fit around one large table. Nobody ever has to sit at a wobbly card table. Nobody ever has to balance a paper plate on their lap, trying not to let a lake of gravy scald them. Nobody ever gets stuck sitting between two lefties. The turkey comes out golden brown and nobody ever gets salmonella. Nobody ever buys their brother a sweater that doesn’t fit. Nobody ever has to skype Christmas greetings because they drew the short straw at work. And most of all I’m sick of everybody always falling in love at Christmas. Has anyone actually ever fallen in love at Christmas? Isn’t that like having your first date on Valentine’s day?

Here’s a bunch of sappy Netflix movies I’ve watched while wrapping my oddly shaped gifts (in movies they’re always easy to wrap boxes and nobody has to hunt for scotch tape for 2 hours) so you don’t have to.

Holiday Engagement: a woman breaks up with her perfect fiance the week before she was going to trot him out to her family at Thanksgiving. Since 30 is “in her rearview mirror” and her mother’s determined not to have an old maid for a daughter, she does what any reasonable woman would and hires an actor to pose as her intended. So of course they spend an awkward holiday weekend pretend-planning a wedding (while buying actual dresses and china) and – wouldn’t you know it – falling in love. Hated every minute of it and even seeing Shelley Long as the obtrusive mother didn’t mitigate this for me in any way.

Merry Kissmas: Two people meet in a mistletoed magical elevator and so of course they must begin the 89 minute process of falling in love. It’s slightly awkward because she’s actually engaged to someone else, but don’t worry, he’s a dick, and we don’t feel sorry for him in the least. We have to sit through the couple getting into a cutesy flour-fight while baking suspiciously perfect cookies, and then they top it all off by adopting a shelter dog.

12 Dates of Christmas: I’ll see you your rescue dog and raise you some orphans! Remember when Amy Smart was almost a thing? I think she probably peaked around Butterfly Effect, which was at least a decade ago. So now she’s relegated to the land of bad Christmas movies, where washed up TV stars frolic. Mark Paul Gosslar co-stars as the man she’s bound to fall in love with. The catch? 12 Dates of Christmas is holiday Groundhog Day. Poor Amy Smart keeps waking up on Christmas Eve trying to find the right combination of Christmas cliché to break the spell and let her live happily ever after with Zack Morris (hint: it will involve both an orphan AND a rescue dog).

The Heart of Christmas: Just in case you thought I was going a little soft on 12 Dates, now I’m going to shit all over a kid dying of cancer. Because really, how better to up the Christmas ante than with childhood leukemia? I don’t necessarily want to make light of a very serious disease but then again, the movie does star Candace Cameron Bure (from that other early 90s TV show, Full House) as a workaholic mom who has no time for her kids until she discovers a blog written by a woman watching her 3 year old son go through chemo, and spends all her time reading that instead, still netting no time with her kids, but man do your little heartstrings get yanked. A sick kid’s not going to see another Christmas? You know what that means! Time to get the whole town to band together and sing Christmas carols in the street! Candace is very lucky that the only thing she loves more than god is shitty movies – she’s been able to nudge her career along by combining the two into a putrid Christmas holiday special nearly every season since her husband retired from the NHL. I assume they cover her SUV payments. Early next year her old sitcom’s getting a (Netflix!) reboot, so I guess her Christmas wish came true.

Everybody’s got a Christmas Movie

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Instead of skeletons in their closets, celebrities have Christmas movies.

I recently came across a real piece of ~~work~~ art called The 2nd Day of Christmas that I can only imagine keeps Mark Ruffalo up at night. It stars Mary Stuart Masterson as the aunt of an orphaned 7-year-old girl who she trains up as a pick-pocket. Their Oliver Twist act is pretty fruitful too, until they get caught by a department store security guard (Ruffalo) at Christmas. Holiday Movie Law applying, the owner fails to call the cops, or child services, and opts instead for his ‘prisoners’ to be guarded by Ruffalo in his own home over the holidays. And guys – you totally won’t believe this, but they fall in love. I know! How can that happen? In 24 hours? While being forcibly imprisoned against your will? Hard to believe, and yet this is what Christmas schmaltz is all about.

The second movie I watched, called Happy Christmas, is apparently titled ironically. Also, it’s an indie movie, in every sense of the term: it looks bad, it sounds bad, and it costars Lena Dunham. It’s about the fuck up family member that everybody has – this time, Kevin’s little sister Jenny (Anna Kendrick) is moving into his basement and no one really knows why. Job? Breakup? Drinking problem? Kevin’s wife Kelly (Melanie Lynskey) is a stay-at-home mom who is both exasperated and enchanted by her irresponsible sister-in-law. Christmas only exists on the absolute periphery of this movie, and as long as you like your holiday classics with a fair bit of pot smoking and erotica, and almost a total absence of cheer or hope or merriment, this one’s for you.

A Christmas Story 2

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Last year for Christmas my baby sister Jana presented me with a gift, declaring (gleefully, I thought) “You’ll hate it!” My immediate gut reaction was to make cooing noises resembling ‘I’m sure it’s lovely’ but something stopped me. This was Jana. She gets me. She’s not struck by second thoughts or buyer’s remorse. She knows I’m going to hate this. She wants me to hate it.
It was a copy of A Christmas Story 2. That’s right: the sequel. Didn’t know it had one? Yeah, me neither. And A Christmas Story is my favourite holiday movie of all time. It’s just so charming and nostalgiarrific (it even caused me to call Jana a bitch in last year’s review!). But a sequel? Isn’t anything sacred?

Answer: no. Nothing is. But some things should be. This movie is not exactly terrible, it’s just terribly derivative. It’s supposedly the same family – Ralphie, his weird kid brother Randy, his cantankerous old man, and his poor, harried mother – just 5 years later. Of course, it’s all new actors and this time Daniel Stern is playing the old man, and while he’s not bad, he’s not Darren McGavin. It tries really hard to have the same narrative style, but I missed the sarcasm, the nearly dark undertones of the first. This one is clearly a pale imitation, and one that recycles the same jokes: the awful outfit from Aunt Clara, the tongue getting stuck, even the leg lamp makes a comeback. And of course Ralphie’s lusting over that one perfect gift again, only gone are the days when a red ryder BB gun; Ralphie’s grown up and this year, he wants a car (and if you remember his stingy old man, then you know how likely he is to get it). The film even attempts to recreate the fantasy bits which I so loved in the first and quite hated in the second. They’re not just a bad imitation, they’re dragging down an already sub par movie.
The sequel fails to recapture the magic of the first. But if you’re tired of watching the same thing every year, or if your sister’s trying to get your goat – well, tis the season.

Meanwhile, I’m still thinking about that one perfect gift. I never asked for a car or a gun but last year I wrote about the Barbie horse trailer that I always wanted and never got. I got plenty, let me tell you, but there is still one thing that sticks out as The Best Present Ever. It was a pair of Doc Martens – a perfect, special pair chosen just for me that I knew meant my mother had gone to Montreal to get. Those boots wore the scuff marks of nearly every concert I ever attended. I’d often wear them with a short skirt and a looooong jacket. I loved them dearly, both because they were cool boots, and because I knew the trouble my mother had gone to for them. I loved them so dearly they are still in my closet today (they’re a little awkward to scrapbook).

What was your Best Present Ever?

Daddy’s Home

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One of the things that made Will Ferrell so great on Saturday Night Live was his versatility. For every out-there cheerleader, there was a guy who drove a Dodge Stratus (for the record, the Dodge Stratus guy is one of my all-time favourites, the cheerleaders, not so much). But even the Dodge Stratus guy ended up being over-the-top, you just didn’t know it at first. The one thing we never really saw was low-key Will Ferrell.

His movie roles continued that trend with only one or two exceptions (like Stranger than Fiction and judging from the trailer, Bewitched). Of course, with those low-key movies being flops, in almost everything else we have gotten from Ferrell he’s a cartoon (Anchorman, Zoolander, Blades of Glory), a cliche (Get Hard, The Other Guys, A Deadly Adoption), or both (Semi-Pro, Talladega Nights). And more often than not, those movies have disappointed.

With all that in mind, and especially in light of the awfulness that was Get Hard, my expectations for Daddy’s Home could not have been lower, because a half-assed Will Ferrell riff on a loser step-dad is one of the least-funny characters I could picture.

But you know what? Will Ferrell’s step-dad in Daddy’s Home isn’t a cartoon or a cliche. Maybe he’s a bit of a loser but he’s also a sweet and genuine guy that is loved by everyone around him (even his step-kids are warming up to him). And then the kids’ sleazy, deadbeat biological dad (Mark Wahlberg) appears and throws everything into chaos.

For the first time in years, we finally get something fresh from Ferrell. He is clearly using his whole ass in Daddy’s Home and it’s glorious. With Ferrell bringing his A-game, everyone else steps up as well. Mark Wahlberg plays (or is?) a fantastic charming asshole, and I also thoroughly enjoyed Thomas Haden Church as Ferrell’s boss and Hannibal Burress as Ferrell’s contractor/unwanted houseguest.

Daddy’s Home deserves praise as well for a script that avoids the easy way out and sets up something greater. It is wonderful to see jokes come together the way they do in Daddy’s Home. A perfect example is the daddy-daughter dance sequence, which has to be seen to be believed. It’s set up so well that in hindsight it’s obvious but I didn’t see it coming until it happened. Daddy’s Home delivers these types of scenes again and again, right until the credits roll, and will keep you laughing the whole time.

Daddy’s Home gets a score of nine long and shiny broadswords out of ten. Be sure to catch it when it opens on December 25.

A Very Murray Christmas

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Let’s get one thing straight: this isn’t Scrooged, the redux. It’s a plotless variety show without a lot of variety, but it’s got Bill Goddamned Fucking Murray, so what else do you want?

It’s Christmas Eve and Murray is contractually obligated to put on a Christmas special live from the Carlyle Hotel in Manhattan. He’s in no position to be doing such a thing and the show is doomed to hell, but so what? His piano accompanist is Paul Shaffer, for crying out loud. How bad could it be?

Well, as Amy Poehler and Julie White come bustling into his room to assuage his pre-show jitters\brow-beat him into meeting his obligations, it would seem that they are worried too. There’s a blizzard blanketing NYC, and none of the celebrity guests have shown up. No guests at all, actually, except for Michael Cera, playing a slimy talent agent desperate to sign Murray (who is famous in real life from being unrepresented).

Murray starts off singing dejectedly but can’t even finish his first song. The special’s a disaster! But wait! Who’s that sight for sore eyes revolving through the door? Why it’s none other than Chris Rock, here mistakenly, but here nonetheless, and despite his vehement refusals, he gets emotionally manipulating into joining the live broadcast. Singing ‘Do You Hear What I Hear?’ as a duet, Murray and Rock are one of the highlights of the show. In a special that’s not even an hour long, Chris Rock proves he may not be a singer but he is indeed an actor; the reluctance to join in spackled across his slowly turns into Christmas cheer as the joy of the song spreads to his heart…until the power goes out, and he takes the opportunity to make his escape.

“Force Majeure!” cry his cheeky producers. The contract taken care of by an act of god, White and Poehler hoof it out of there too, leaving Murray to mope around a nearly-deserted hotel where he comes across a sobbing bride (Rashida Jones) and her wobbly wedding cake. Dream wedding ruined, no guests in sight, no preacher to marry them, and a bunch of lobsters going bad, she and her groom (Jason Schwartzman) have fought.

Never fear: when not hosting Christmas specials, Bill Murray also proffers marital counselling, and so in he goes to save the day, and spark up some more “impromptu” holiday tunes. Jenny Lewis playing a waitress is on hand to do the lady part of ‘Baby It’s Cold Outside’, everyone’s favourite date-rape carol, and the band Phoenix is conveniently on hand pretending to be kitchen staff to back up several more ditties, so that Jason Schwartzman can prove there is a worse singer in this thing than Chris Rock.

And then Maya Rudolph shows up playing a washed up lounge singer, and holy hell, she just puts them all to shame. She belts out a ‘Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)’ so good that even Darlene Love would approve (she sang that song on Letterman every Christmas since 1986 except for the writer’s strike in 2007 – this will be her first year without, since Dave is retired). It’s not surprising that Rudolph is amazing: she is, after all, daughter to soul singer Minnie Riperton and composer-songwriter Richard Rudolph. Oh, and granddaughter of Teena Marie. She’s got chops, plus extra credentials for often impersonating Beyonce on SNL, and for playing in a Prince cover band called Princess. And I’ve got a huge crush on her.

Then the action mysteriously leaves the Carlyle Hotel for a decked-out soundstage in New Jersey, where two new guest stars join the festivities: Miley Cyrus, cheating on her own cameo in The Night Before, and George Clooney to mix the martinis. An unlikely pair? If you say so!

I wish I could find something to be grumpy about with Miley’s performance, but the truth is, she sounds good. Perched atop Shaffer’s piano, Silent Night is rendered faithfully, although there’s probably a little too much leg for the holy parts. The real surprise, and delight, is when Clooney pipes up during ‘Santa Claus Wants Some Lovin.’ Is the world ready for this side of George Clooney? Unfortunately he flashes a lot less leg, but he does look awfully dapper in his suit.

Anyway, director Sofia Coppola did quite a job of rounding up a slew of stars and dipping them in Christmas coating. You can play a real game of celebrity bingo, as you’ll see in the comments. There’s no plot, no story, no moral: just a lot of the ever-charming Bill Murray. It’s available on Netflix and it’s the kind of thing you can easily just put on in the background while you do some holiday baking or cleaning or wrapping, or better yet – some imbibing.

Cheers.