New Year's Resolutions: Stocking Stuffers

Let's finally put a nail in the coffin of the holiday season with a dose of mini reviews for some festive favorites!

Fred Claus

Year: 2007

Director: David Dobkin

Cast: Vince Vaughn, Paul Giamatti, Elizabeth Banks

Run Time: 1 hour 56 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG

Santa Claus has a naughty older brother who is jealous of living in his shadow all those years.

Is there a word for holiday flicks where the plot’s every beat is pretty much telegraphed from the poster, and whose sole reason for existence is to act as cinematic comfort food during the Christmas season? I’m pretty sure there isn’t, but I would like to submit for your consideration the phrase “Fred Claus.” No moment or character in this entire film is original (save a totally arbitrary cameo by Ludacris as an elf DJ, but that’s only because the people who brainstormed that for previous holiday movies were fired), but that doesn’t mean it won’t wash down like cookies and a glass of milk.

The cast is admittedly pretty grand, including Kathy Bates, Paul Giamatti, and Kevin Spacey (in another one of those thankless roles he kicked around in while waiting for the world to invent House of Cards), but the script is so rote, nobody can make much of a dent in it. Surprisingly, the one performer who breaks from the pack is lead actor Vince Vaughn, because he (mostly intentionally) seems to be inhabiting a completely different universe than everyone else. His acerbic, quick-tongued performance is a reminder that the man can be genuinely good when he tries to be, creating a totally relatable, humorously durable con man out of thin air. It’s a bleak and humble character, and he’s remarkably arresting to watch.

The comedy outside of Vaughn’s sphere is largely a tacky fruitcake, leaning too heavily on cartoonish sound effects and too-safe character relationships, but Vaughn’s presence makes Fred Claus ten chimney loads more watchable than your average Santa Clause sequel.

Rating: 6/10

The Christmas Shoes

Year: 2002
Director: Andy Wolk
Cast: Rob Lowe, Kimberly Williams-Paisley, Max Morrow
Run Time: 1 hour 40 minutes

A workaholic lawyer learns the true meaning of Christmas when a young boy enlists his help buying shoes for his terminally ill mother.

As a TV movie based on one of the most notoriously bad Christmas songs of all time, Sergio and I went into The Christmas Shoes expecting to get a barrel of unintentional laughs. Unfortunately, as happens so often with made-for-TV fare, we found that it refrained from erupting into the expected over-the-top antics, instead plodding through the same typical sub-Lifetime fare as any other on-air holiday trifle.

Sure, there are some sparkling moments, like the mom’s inexplicably shoe-centric backstory, the network’s insistence on playing the “Christmas Shoes” song over a climactic moment, or any scene where you get to watch Rob Lowe flounder through the syrupy dialogue, but for the most part, the movie puts its head down and trudges to the finish line. Save for one actress, the whole thing would have been an insipid wash.

That actress is Kimberly Williams-Paisley as the shoeless mother. She displays a frankly flabbergasting range showing off her natural charisma in her pre-illness scenes and stoically embracing the symbolic role she is forced to shoulder in the second half of the story. Considering that her role, while secondary, forms the emotional core of the entire piece, his is an indomitable triumph. The script may be slack, but she picks up the reigns and manages to make them sting, elevating Christmas Shoes’ shallow gruel into a still meager but at least tasty holiday meal.

Rating: 5/10

Black Xmas

Year: 2006
Director: Glen Morgan
Cast: Michelle Trachtenberg, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Lacey Chabert
Run Time: 1 hour 24 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

Sorority girls are celebrating Christmas, only to discover that the serial killer who used to live in their house has just escaped and is picking them off one by one.

Being a horror fan in the 21st century, one needs to get used to pointless remakes of beloved properties. And as much as I despise the likes of A Nightmare on Elm Street 2010 or Rob Zombie’s Halloween, I always try to come to remakes with an open mind. And when we land on Black Christmas, a property I began to truly appreciate only recently, I figured a screening of the remake wouldn’t sting quite so bad as a franchise I had a much more abiding affection for. I was wrong. It was worse.

Black Xmas is a much more palatable bad remake than many that I’ve been subjected to, but watching it in close conjunction with the original masterpiece is like trying to pretend Red Lobster microwave rolls are just as delicious as the real thing. Hell, it’s like trying to pretend they’re just as edible as the real thing. There are absolutely reasons to recommend Black Xmas, but they are so divorced from the ideals of character and suspense that dominated the original, it is all the more devastating and unsatisfying.

When I was watching Black Xmas, I found myself not being able to tell the characters apart. It didn’t help that the actresses looked pretty much the same, but I don’t think there’s a single member of the sorority who has character traits beyond having skinny legs, wearing seasonably inappropriate clothing, and being kind of mean. And for every actual good thing in the film, there’s a niggling flaw latched onto it like a lamprey. For example, there really is an ambitious amount of gore in the film, but a lot of it is too demurely shot to actually make out what’s happening, and almost every kill utilizes a plastic bag. This is presumably 1) an homage to the original, and 2) cheaper than buying prosthetics. However, the end result is that the movie feels like a repetitive assembly line of carnage.

I closing, it’s obviously too much to hope for a good script (“Merry Christmas, motherf**ker!” Bracingly original work, right there.). It’s obviously too much to ask for good villains (the reveal is nonsensical and leads to a grossly unnecessary, overlong coda). But when I get a campy gorefest and it’s bogged down by limp characters that are distractingly supermodel hot, even by remake standards, it’s like getting coal in your stocking. Santa skipped my DVD player this Christmas.

Body Count: 18

1. Claire is smothered and stabbed with a pen.
2. Guard is stabbed in the neck with a candy cane.
3. Megan is smothered, stabbed, and has her eye ripped out.
4. Santa’s neck explodes.
5. Billy’s Dad is smothered and hit with a hammer.
6. Billy’s Stepdad is stabbed through the face.
7. Billy’s Mom is beaten with a rolling pin.
8. Dana gets stabbed in the back of the head with a three-pronged garden tool.
9. Eve is decapitated.
10. Heather explodes.
11. Mrs. Mac is impaled with an icicle.
12. Melissa is hit with an ice skate.
13. Lauren has her eyes gouged out.
14. Kyle is stabbed in the head with a glass unicorn.
15. Morgue Worker is bone sawed.
16. Leigh has her neck snapped.
17. Agnes is defibrillated in the face.
18. Billy is impaled on a tree topper.

Rating: 5/10

New Year's Eve

Year: 2011

Director: Garry Marshall

Cast: Sarah Jessica Parker, Jessica Biel, Ashton Kutcher

Run Time: 1 hour 53 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

A veritable army of airbrushed celebrities attempt to find love on New Year’s Eve.

Garry Marshall’s Valentine’s Day was a crappy film. But it made money because it was cute and its cast included every known star this side of Alpha Centauri. Naturally, they were going to milk that for all it was worth. And thus New Year’s Eve was born. Notice that fours years have passed since that fateful premiere and there’s still no St. Patrick’s Day.

The bottom line is, New Year’s Eve stinks. It stinks like a sewer rat-gorgonzola sandwich. There are exactly five humorous moments in the entire film, two of which are unintentional, one of which is a thirty second Larry Miller cameo, another of which is Seth Myers being funny in spite of the script and his own body because that’s his natural state of being, and the last (and best) of which is a blooper that plays during the credits. And this is a film that’s two f**king hours long.

The thing about transplanting Valentine’s Day’s sprawling romantic comedy to the New Year’s holiday is that nobody in the world particularly cares about New Year’s Eve except as an excuse to dilute their bloodstream with as much alcohol as possible. Thus, the movie is forced to contort itself, plying a ridiculous amount of meaning to the day (“It’s New Year’s Eve. Anything is possible.”), frantically altering holiday archetypes (Ashton Kutcher plays a Grinch who despises New Year’s Eve, because that’s totally a thing), and straight-up inventing traditions (“Second chances expire at midnight.”) to the point that the holiday providing the film’s backbone is virtually unrecognizable.

Without a spine, New Year’s Eve is paralyzed, utterly incapable of even attempting to elicit laughter. Some gags fall flat on their face and some pop and fizzle like wet fireworks, but most of the time it’s hard to even identify an attempt to be funny. Do yourself a favor and make it your New Year’s resolution to quarantine yourself from this film. That’s one that I sincerely hope you keep.

Rating: 2/10

Word Count: 1566

Reviews In This Series
Black Christmas (Clark 1974)
Black Xmas (Morgan, 2006)

They Don't Move In Herds

Year: 1997

Director: Steven Spielberg

Cast: Jeff Goldblum, Julianne Moore, Vince Vaughn

Run Time: 2 hours 9 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG -13

In between the release of Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park in 1993 and The Lost World: Jurassic Park in 1997, two very important things happened: 1) Jurassic Park became the highest grossing film worldwide, and 2) Schindler’s List. Both of these explain, in turn, exactly why The Lost World exists and why it’s not so great.

Much like Scream 3, which I also happened to review recently, The Lost World is a sequel helmed by an auteur that had, quite frankly, checked out. Spielberg had already mentally moved on to his, arty, Important phase and was only directing the film out of a beleaguered sense of commitment to the fact that – if the franchise had to be screwed up, it might as well be by him.

It’s the popcorn movie version of senioritis.

The Lost World is helmed by returning screw-up Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum), the rock star mathematician – an oxymoron which could only exist in a Crichton novel. In a scene that’s clunkily written and contradictorily sequelly in the most threadbare, irritating way possible, he learns from the defamed billionaire John Hammond (a palpably bored Richard Attenborough) that not only is there another island of dinosaurs (on which the monstrous creatures have roamed free for four years, only recently revealing themselves by attacking a young Camilla Belle in a desperate attempt to prevent her from remaking When a Stranger Calls), but his girlfriend Sarah Harding (Julianne Moore) is already there, part of a crack team that Hammond has put together to study these creatures in the wild.

When Malcolm joins the team along with Nick Van Owen (Vince Vaughn) and Dead Guy (Dino Meat), he only does so to rescue Sarah and get the hell out of there. Unbeknownst to him, his daughter Kelly (Vanessa Lee Chester) has snuck along for the ride because she feels neglected. The lesson here is the becoming an Important Filmmaker does not make the daddy issues go away.

Once on the island, Ian and the team discover that Hammond’s company InGen, which has been taken over by his nephew Peter Ludlow (Arliss Howard), is leading a safari team to capture the animals and take them to the mainland and create a zoo, because that idea worked so well the first time. So it’s Good Science vs. Bad Capitalism until Big Scary Monsters get pissed and start eating everything that moves, leading the groups to band together in an attempt to escape the island intact.

Also, Sarah is studying the parenting habits of T-Rexes because dinosaurs can have daddy issues too.

The Lost World is to Jurassic Park as a paper cut is to an axe wound. It’s much shallower, less visually interesting, and you can make a big deal about it if you feel like it, but it’s just not the same. It’s an utterly flat film. Where the original comes alive and crackles with tension at nearly every second past the hour mark, The Lost World squelches along, reading a newspaper, pausing only at intervals to look up and remember that it’s supposed to be doing something and ramp up the tension once more.

The film is wracked with a profound sense of weariness, going through the motions without ever challenging itself to be something more than a routine popcorn pic, save for two sequences. One of these sequences I have the profound and annoying pleasure of being able to name drop: My father was the film’s liaison from Fleetwood, the company which provided the mobile home that hangs off the cliff in the only truly memorable scene. So you’re welcome. Without him the film would have nothing to recommend itself save a raptor attack so short it could buy ad time on the Super Bowl without breaking the bank.

Industry jokes always kill in these reviews, you’re welcome.

Of course, John Williams has the audacity to score all of this – even the pulse-pounding, genuinely thrilling RV sequence – with some hideously limp, sanctimoniously light bongo music. It is perhaps the single worst tune the man has ever composed, and I’m counting any particularly on-key flatulence. What the film hasn’t already torn to shreds in terms of tension, characters (Ian Malcolm’s behavioral traits are put in a blender and almost completely rearranged for this film), and logic (Did I not mention that they bring a T-Rex to San Diego? Well, they bring a T-Rex to San Diego), are blasted into smithereens by this woeful, dreadful score and flushed straight down the U-bend.

With that out of my system, it must be said that, for all my complaining, this film is only truly bad by the high standards set by Jurassic Park. Except for that John Williams score. Screw that John Williams score and the whimsical island mule it rode in on. It’s a disappointment that The Lost World is nothing more than a popcorn movie, but it’s reasonably diverting and at the very least, it’s not as woefully idiotic as Jurassic World.

Again the film is well shot (this time by long-time Spielberg compatriot/best friend bracelet-sharer Janusz Kaminski), with well placed shafts of lights delicately playing amidst the dusky forest. Again the dinosaurs are well realized, though none have the sheer weight and terror provided by pre-Schindler Spielberg’s keen direction. Only the effects on the raptors are in any way improved from Stan Winston’s master class in animatronics.

And finally we get some goddamn stegosauruses!

The thing about The Lost World is that it’s outrageously uneven, which is why this lumpy review is jerking from place to place like a scooter on a gravel driveway. There’s a dollop of cheery humor here, a dash of undercooked gore there… It’s like Spielberg got out the Jurassic Park mix packets and was busy whisking the ingredients together in the bowl when he noticed the he’d accidentally thrown away the box with the instructions on it.

There’s some jabs at a theme in the beginning (Malcolm is only a good boyfriend/father when he can make dramatic gestures, not in the everyday things) that get completely lost by the finale (a T-Rex visits a swimming pool!), the acting is largely decent but totally forgettable (Moore hasn’t quite yet settled into her talents, and Chester is at least more palatable than the Murphy siblings), and the action is shallow but present.

The most I can say about The Lost World is that it’s there, and I don’t begrudge it of that. It’s an absolutely workable film and sometimes that’s all a film is. It’s not awful. It’s not great. It’s not Spielberg, that’s for darn sure. And that’s why it’s so painful to watch, despite its blandly pleasant qualities. The loss of what could have been is so plainly, palpably there, throbbing behind the screen.

Oh well, at least they never made any more of these.

Ah. Damn.

TL;DR: The Lost World: Jurassic Park is a disappointment after the high standards set by the first film.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1185

Reviews In This Series
Jurassic Park (Spielberg, 1993)
The Lost World: Jurassic Park (Spielberg, 1997)
Jurassic Park III (Johnston, 2001)
Jurassic World (Trevorrow, 2015)
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (Bayona, 2018)

An Olympic Sized Gene Pool

Year: 2013

Director: Ken Scott

Cast: Vince Vaughn, Chris Pratt, Cobie Smulders

Run Time: 1 hour 43 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

On a whim last night, my friend Henry and I caught a late night showing of the new Vince Vaughn comedy Delivery Man. It was cheap and we had nothing else to do so we figured why not. The state of cinema this year is so dreary that this was our best option behind seeing Catching Fire again.

Much to my surprise, the film was actually pretty decent! I know, right? It's by no means the best comedy of the year (that title goes to Texas Chainsaw 3D), but I actually laughed - something I wasn't expecting at all.

Then again this guy was in it.

David Wozniak (Vince Vaughn) is a schlubby everyman (an interesting change of pace for him) who learns that through a clerical mistake at a sperm bank that he donated to in his 20's, he is the father of 533 children, many of which want to contact him but can't due to the company's anonymity clause.

With a pregnant girlfriend of his own (Emma, played by How I Met Your Mother's Cobie Smulders) and a life he needs to get back on track - he's a meat deliveryman who isn't particularly good at his job and also hey, he has $80,000 in gambling debts - he's understandably a little skittish about taking responsibility for hundreds of his offspring.

But when his lawyer friend Brett (Chris Pratt), who is defending him under his pseudonym "Starbuck," gives him the profiles of the children who are filing the lawsuit, his curiosity is piqued and he begins to visit his children without letting them know he's their biological father. Basically he acts as a guardian angel, helping them out when they need it without revealing his identity because that's a lot of pressure, man.

Also Aunt Robin is a cop, which is just too sexy to handle.

The opening scenes are, to be honest, an unmitigated train wreck. Jokes are bashed into the ground and beaten senseless like they pissed off the LAPD. As this was exactly what I was expecting, I was lulled into a false sense of superiority before the sweetness infiltrated the film and turned it into a charming if fumbling effort.

The moment the film makes its turning point is during David's first child visitation - it turns out one of his many little goblins is now in the NBA and he cheers that boy on like the proudest father this side of Harvard. It's perhaps not sweet enough or funny enough to really recommend, but it's definitely worth catching it on Netflix when it inevitably shows up on Streaming.

There are some laugh out loud moments, but the film mostly simmers in a charming register, content not to push the envelope but merely be pleasant.

Family dinners are more like a mosh pit than anything else.

Directed by Ken Scott, the director of the original French Canadian film, Starbuck, Delivery Man is by all accounts a watered down interpretation of its themes. However, it was good enough that watching it made me more interested in seeing Starbuck, so it at least does it enough justice to make it more enticing.

And then inexplicably, sh*t gets real. David bonds with a mentally handicapped son, one of his daughters overdoses on heroin, and the gambling bosses stop by to give David a quick drowning in the bathtub. In a sweet family comedy. What just happened? The gambling subplot is especially intriguing because it spends so much time on the sidelines that it comes as a shock anytime it returns.

Some real quick SPOILERS, if you care about such for Vince Vaughn family comedies. The momentous announcement in which David decides to admit to his paternity, the crux of the entire film in which he's learning to put his life together and take responsibility, the apex of the thematic through line of the entire film, the moment the entire film has been leading up to, takes place on Facebook. He tells the kids he's their father on Facebook. Talk about anticlimactic. If you want to see my angry face, pop this scene on, you will be appeased. SPOILERS

But Aunt Robin.

Postscipt: I would have spent a lot of time making fun of how so many of Vince Vaughn's kids turned out to be sexy beasts with sparkling blue eyes but I was too busy Googling shirtless photos of them. 

Say, that gives me an idea!

(NEW FEATURE! Every film I review now will be scanned by the Stud Finder to find the hottest person onscreen so we can all partake in the handsomest of the handsome. You know, to help build community. Or whatever.)

Stud Finder: David's Biological Children (Dave Patten, Jack Reynor, Amos Vanderpoel, Matthew Daddario)

Don't you dare try to tell me a single one of these kids could in any way be biologically related to Mr. Vaughn.

TL;DR: Delivery Man is more charming than it possibly seemed it could have been.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 855