Wednesday, December 3, 2014
Tuesday, December 2, 2014
Holidaze Review: Grumpy Cat's Worst Christmas Ever (2014)
Late in Grumpy Cat’s Worst Christmas Ever, a made-for-TV holiday movie based on the popular Internet meme, the heroine (with the titular feline in the passenger’s seat) drives a Camero in circles around the villain’s car.
That scene sums up the movie pretty well: Going around and around without ever actually getting anywhere.
The plot of Worst Christmas Ever is barely enough to fill out a half-hour special, much less a two hour extravaganza: Grump Cat (real name: Tardar Sauce; voiced by Aubrey Plaza) lives in a failing pet shop, whose owner is pinning all his hopes on selling a super-expensive dog. (How the owner can afford such an expensive dog when he can’t even pay his rent on the pet shop is never explained.)
One of the owner’s employees, Crystal (Megan Carpentier), is a 12-year-old who isn’t popular with the cool kids and is going through her first Christmas after her parents’ divorce, so when she gets a magic coin from a mall Santa Claus (who may be the real deal), she wishes for “a friend—one who listens to me and on whom I can depend.” And for her wish, Crystal gains the ability to hear Grumpy Cat talk and therefore has to suffer all the misanthropic one-liners and unfunny narration along with the rest of us.
Meanwhile, two nitwit thieves (think Home Alone, only dumber) plan to steal the dog when the mall closes on Christmas Eve, and it’s up to Crystal, Grumpy and the other denizens of the pet shop to stop them.
There’s also some nonsense about a bumbling mall cop and some romantic shenanigans between Crystal’s mom and a mall elf, but even with all that, screenwriters Tim Hill (who also directed) and Jeff Morris pad the proceedings out with lots of self-deprecating humor (mocking this movie, other Lifetime movies, holiday specials in general and Grumpy Cat merchandise) and pop culture references (to Batman, Murder She Wrote, The A-Team and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, among others).
This wouldn’t be so bad if Worst Christmas Ever were cut down to an hour, weeding out repetitive action and Grumpy Cat’s never-ending yammering (read in a sullen monotone by Plaza). Such a pruning would also have given the special a tighter focus on whatever audience this thing was intended for and spared the viewers some truly tasteless sequences, like when Grumpy imagines the horrid sequence of events if the pet shop closes, culminating in her being put to sleep (no, seriously), and a child molestation joke, in a Christmas special (no, seriously).
Instead, what we get is an unfocused, rambling, overlong, tone-deaf mess.
Turns out the title qualifies as truth in advertising--Grumpy Cat’s Worst Christmas Ever really is the worst.
That scene sums up the movie pretty well: Going around and around without ever actually getting anywhere.
The plot of Worst Christmas Ever is barely enough to fill out a half-hour special, much less a two hour extravaganza: Grump Cat (real name: Tardar Sauce; voiced by Aubrey Plaza) lives in a failing pet shop, whose owner is pinning all his hopes on selling a super-expensive dog. (How the owner can afford such an expensive dog when he can’t even pay his rent on the pet shop is never explained.)
One of the owner’s employees, Crystal (Megan Carpentier), is a 12-year-old who isn’t popular with the cool kids and is going through her first Christmas after her parents’ divorce, so when she gets a magic coin from a mall Santa Claus (who may be the real deal), she wishes for “a friend—one who listens to me and on whom I can depend.” And for her wish, Crystal gains the ability to hear Grumpy Cat talk and therefore has to suffer all the misanthropic one-liners and unfunny narration along with the rest of us.
Meanwhile, two nitwit thieves (think Home Alone, only dumber) plan to steal the dog when the mall closes on Christmas Eve, and it’s up to Crystal, Grumpy and the other denizens of the pet shop to stop them.
There’s also some nonsense about a bumbling mall cop and some romantic shenanigans between Crystal’s mom and a mall elf, but even with all that, screenwriters Tim Hill (who also directed) and Jeff Morris pad the proceedings out with lots of self-deprecating humor (mocking this movie, other Lifetime movies, holiday specials in general and Grumpy Cat merchandise) and pop culture references (to Batman, Murder She Wrote, The A-Team and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, among others).
This wouldn’t be so bad if Worst Christmas Ever were cut down to an hour, weeding out repetitive action and Grumpy Cat’s never-ending yammering (read in a sullen monotone by Plaza). Such a pruning would also have given the special a tighter focus on whatever audience this thing was intended for and spared the viewers some truly tasteless sequences, like when Grumpy imagines the horrid sequence of events if the pet shop closes, culminating in her being put to sleep (no, seriously), and a child molestation joke, in a Christmas special (no, seriously).
Instead, what we get is an unfocused, rambling, overlong, tone-deaf mess.
Turns out the title qualifies as truth in advertising--Grumpy Cat’s Worst Christmas Ever really is the worst.
Monday, December 1, 2014
Holidaze Review: A Christmas Carol (1971)
According to Wikipedia, the oldest known film adaptation of A Christmas Carol, the 1843 Charles Dickens novella that introduced the world to Ebenezer Scrooge--the mean, cheap old man who nonetheless gets a shot at late-life redemption thanks to the ghost of his late business partner, Jacob Marley, and spirits representing the past, present and future of the Christmas holiday--popped up in 1901, when film itself was little more than a decade old and Dickens had existed within living memory.
Over the century-plus since, dozens of versions have appeared on screens big and small. Full-length features, made-for-TV specials, musicals, adaptations filtered through the pop culture prisms of Mister Magoo, Mickey Mouse and the Muppets, sitcom episodes…you name it, A Christmas Carol has probably been pounded, shoved or twisted into it.
The most popular version of the tale is probably the 1951 big-screen version starring Alistair Sim as Scrooge. Completely understandable--that version was in the public domain for years and played on many TV stations in many holiday seasons.
But did you know that, 20 years later, Sim starred in another version of A Christmas Carol--possibly the best, if most obscure, version of all?
It was a half-hour animated TV special, which aired in 1971 and was later issued on VHS, but never made it to DVD, much less Blu-ray.
That’s a shame, because this version deserves the widest audience possible, for a number of reasons.
First off, the special, produced by the legendary Chuck Jones directed by Richard Williams, is visually stunning, with fine line work in the hand-drawn animation that not even the blur of my copy (a bootleg bought from eBay and obviously dubbed from the aforementioned VHS release) could obscure. There are some moments that hint at Jones’s usual style (previously gracing another Christmas classic, How the Grinch Stole Christmas), but many more that look like book illustrations come to life.
Second, the special uses the relative brevity of the original story to great advantage. It was, after all, a novella, not a full-blown novel, and this version packs nearly all the major incidents into its 25-minute running time while still hitting on minor moments often forgotten in other, more lavish versions, like the visits to a mining camp and a ship at sea with the Ghost of Christmas Present, or Bob Cratchit lamenting at deathbed of Tiny Tim. There’s not a line or scene in it that’s not straight from Dickens, making this possibly the most accurate adaptation of all.
Lastly? The ghosts. The scary, scary ghosts.
Marley’s Ghost (voiced by Michael Hordern, who played the same role opposite Sim in the 1951 version) is one of the most frightening creatures ever to float across a TV screen, and even the usually jolly Ghost of Christmas Present had kids jumping behind the couch when he pulled back his robe to reveal the children, Want and Ignorance, clinging to his legs. (I remember this scene from the one time I saw this version when I was a kid—probably when it originally aired in 1971--and it still gives me the creeps.)
We can always hope that somebody somewhere gets the bright idea to release a “special edition” of this special, especially in high definition. It really deserves to be seen. Until then, those of you who still own VCRs (like me) can track down VHS copies on eBay or Amazon. Trust me--it will be worth it, though I apologize in advance for any nightmares Marley’s ghost scares up…sorry about that.
Over the century-plus since, dozens of versions have appeared on screens big and small. Full-length features, made-for-TV specials, musicals, adaptations filtered through the pop culture prisms of Mister Magoo, Mickey Mouse and the Muppets, sitcom episodes…you name it, A Christmas Carol has probably been pounded, shoved or twisted into it.
The most popular version of the tale is probably the 1951 big-screen version starring Alistair Sim as Scrooge. Completely understandable--that version was in the public domain for years and played on many TV stations in many holiday seasons.
But did you know that, 20 years later, Sim starred in another version of A Christmas Carol--possibly the best, if most obscure, version of all?
It was a half-hour animated TV special, which aired in 1971 and was later issued on VHS, but never made it to DVD, much less Blu-ray.
That’s a shame, because this version deserves the widest audience possible, for a number of reasons.
First off, the special, produced by the legendary Chuck Jones directed by Richard Williams, is visually stunning, with fine line work in the hand-drawn animation that not even the blur of my copy (a bootleg bought from eBay and obviously dubbed from the aforementioned VHS release) could obscure. There are some moments that hint at Jones’s usual style (previously gracing another Christmas classic, How the Grinch Stole Christmas), but many more that look like book illustrations come to life.
Second, the special uses the relative brevity of the original story to great advantage. It was, after all, a novella, not a full-blown novel, and this version packs nearly all the major incidents into its 25-minute running time while still hitting on minor moments often forgotten in other, more lavish versions, like the visits to a mining camp and a ship at sea with the Ghost of Christmas Present, or Bob Cratchit lamenting at deathbed of Tiny Tim. There’s not a line or scene in it that’s not straight from Dickens, making this possibly the most accurate adaptation of all.
Lastly? The ghosts. The scary, scary ghosts.
Marley’s Ghost (voiced by Michael Hordern, who played the same role opposite Sim in the 1951 version) is one of the most frightening creatures ever to float across a TV screen, and even the usually jolly Ghost of Christmas Present had kids jumping behind the couch when he pulled back his robe to reveal the children, Want and Ignorance, clinging to his legs. (I remember this scene from the one time I saw this version when I was a kid—probably when it originally aired in 1971--and it still gives me the creeps.)
We can always hope that somebody somewhere gets the bright idea to release a “special edition” of this special, especially in high definition. It really deserves to be seen. Until then, those of you who still own VCRs (like me) can track down VHS copies on eBay or Amazon. Trust me--it will be worth it, though I apologize in advance for any nightmares Marley’s ghost scares up…sorry about that.
Sunday, November 30, 2014
Saturday, November 29, 2014
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