SCROOGED. (1988) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS.

SCROOGED. (1988) DIRECTED BY RICHARD DONNER. BASED ON THE 1843 NOVELLA, A CHRISTMAS CAROL, BY CHARLES DICKENS.

STARRING BILL MURRAY, ROBERT MITCHUM, ALFRE WOODARD, KAREN ALLEN, DAVID JOHANSEN, CAROL KANE, BOBCAT GOLDTHWAIT AND MARIA RIVA.

I love this Christmas film, though it has certainly divided opinion between those who think it’s brilliant and those who think it’s a little too dark and mean-spirited to be a perennial Christmas favourite, and yet here we are, lol.

 It’s a re-telling of the traditional festive story of Charles Dickens’s, in which a mean old miser is visited by three ghosts on Christmas Eve and is taught by them the true meaning of Christmas. What is the true meaning of Christmas, you ask?

Well, I would say it’s to let others into your heart at this emotional time of year, and to try and do as much good for them as you would have them and others do for you. I think that’s it in a nutshell, but you may of course have your own interpretation.

For some people, it just represents a break from work and a microwaveable turkey dinner for one. For television bigwig, Frank Cross (played by Bill Murray), it means keeping his staff and crew working late into the night on Christmas Eve on a live version of the Charles Dickens’ story, A CHRISTMAS CAROL. Sounds like a pretty big ask, doesn’t it?

Not for the cynical, battle-scarred Frank Cross, who damned well didn’t get where he is today (IBC Television President) by pussy-footing around the employees’ feelings and needs. Did ‘e ‘eck as like, as they say down Weatherfield way. If Frank’s stuck in work on Christmas Eve, slaving away over a hot script, then so will his workers be, goddammit!

Frank is so scabby that he gifts the people he doesn’t give a shit about- his devoted personal assistant Grace and his kindly brother James- a poxy IBC towel for Christmas, whereas the top network executives he feels he has to kiss up to all get Hi-Fi stereo-slash-VHS-recorders.

Grace’s kids (one little fella has been unable to speak since he witnessed his father’s death) to their mom when she finally gets home: ‘Mommy, mommy! Where’s your bonus?”

Grace: ‘I’m drying my hair with it…!’

Anyway, so much for Frank Cross and his much-vaunted kindness and generosity! His old deceased boss Lew Hayward, played by the handsome John DYNASTY Forsythe, comes to Frank to tell him that, due to his Scrooge-like ‘Bah! Humbug!’ mentality, he can expect the Three Spirits in due course.

The Ghost of Christmas Past is an obnoxious taxi driver played by David Johansen of the predating-glam-rock-and-punk band, the New York Dolls. Frank is shown by this ghost how he cruelly dropped the love of his life, Claire (Karen Allen of Indiana Jones fame), for the lure of showbiz money and glamour. Claire works in a homeless shelter now, but she’s still crazy in love with Frank, more fool her…

The Ghost of Christmas Present is a delightfully violent fairy played by horror movie star Carol Kane, who once starred in one of the scariest horror films ever made: WHEN A STRANGER CALLS. (‘Have you checked the children?’)

Frank, through the ball-breaking, ass-kicking little tiny fairy, learns that he pays his personal assistant Grace a pittance which doesn’t go far enough in enabling her to support her hungry family, and that he’s treated his brother James disgracefully, even though James still loves him and wants to be pals with him again.

Frank is finally urged to change his selfish ways by the Ghost of Christmas Future, who shows him what it feels like to be cremated. Yes, cremated, and I don’t fancy it either, lol. And what’s even worse than being cremated? Being cremated with no-one there to mourn for you because you were such a curmudgeonly so-and-so in life…

Bobcat Goldthwaite as fired IBC employee with a grudge Eliot Loudermilk also features in the transformation of Frank Cross, as does a rather frightening glimpse into Grace and Claire’s cold, bleak futures… the futures that will happen if Frank doesn’t make the effort for them now. Will Frank get off his smug, comfortably insulated network hiney and step up to the plate…?

Robert Mitchum, star of the Golden Age of Hollywood (CAPE FEAR, RYAN’S DAUGHTER, THE WINDS OF WAR, WAR AND REMEMBRANCE, etc.), plays Preston Rhinelander, Frank’s boss, and Preston’s wife, interestingly enough, is portrayed by a lovely lady called Maria Riva, the daughter of none other than acting royalty, Marlene Dietrich.

Bill GHOSTBUSTERS Murray is great when he’s doing anything, but he’s probably at his best when he’s administering death by a thousand verbal paper cuts to his co-actors, that is to say, when he’s being supremely bitchy, catty, cutting, sarcastic, insulting, you name it, he can do it. He’s got a repertoire of insults that STRICTLY’s Craig Revel-Horwood would die for, dawling, and that’s saying something…!

SCROOGED is up there with NATIONAL LAMPOON’S CHRISTMAS VACATION, CHRISTMAS WITH THE KRANKS, JINGLE ALL THE WAY, HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS, DECK THE HALLS and all those other terrific Christmas films that we re-watch every year even though we know them upside-down and inside-out by now. They’re as much a part of Christmas as sage and onion stuffing and wrapping paper, so let’s watch ‘em all again this year and to hell with the begrudgers. It’s only once a year, after all…

NATIONAL LAMPOON’S CHRISTMAS VACATION. (1989) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

NATIONAL LAMPOON’S CHRISTMAS VACATION. (1989) WRITTEN AND BASED ON CHARACTERS CREATED BY JOHN HUGHES. DIRECTED BY JEREMIAH CHECHIK.
STARRING CHEVY CHASE, BEVERLY D’ANGELO, RANDY QUAID, JOHNNY GALECKI, JULIETTE LEWIS, DIANE LADD, DORIS ROBERTS, SAM MCMURRAY AND JULIA LOUIS-DREYFUS.
REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

NATIONAL LAMPOON’S CHRISTMAS VACATION is the story of Clark Griswold, ably played by Chevy Chase. Clark just wants a nice perfect family Christmas for his family. He wants the perfect Christmas tree, the perfect turkey and the house all decked out with so many lights that you can see it from space. I’ve said this before, but the Americans really do do Christmas better than anyone else, and nowhere do they do it better than in these lovely ‘Eighties Christmas movies.

Clark’s so looking forward to the perfect family Christmas that he doesn’t even mind that his own parents and his in-laws will be joining them for the holidays. The more the merrier, is how he sees things. That is, until his wife’s cousin and her deadbeat hubby rock up in their decrepit RV with their nippers and delinquent mutt Snots in tow and announce their intention to stay indefinitely. Just what you want to hear at Christmas, isn’t it?

And when the expected Christmas bonus from his Scrooge-like boss doesn’t materialise and he’s seven and a half grand out of pocket on the deposit for a swimming pool for his family, Clark finds that he’s really up against it. Can he recover his Christmas spirit and manage to enjoy the holiday season to which he’s been looking forward so fervently? We can only hope he does…

There’s a load of slapstick comedy in this film to satisfy the viewers who love to see people being hit in the face with planks of wood, electrocuted hilariously and attacked by squirrels. Yes, I said squirrels. Randy INDEPENDENCE DAY Quaid does a great job as the hilariously obnoxious but lovable Eddie who sees fit to empty the foul contents of his RV’s ‘shitter’ on Sparky Clarky’s lawn. Dontcha just love visitors who come for the holidays?

There’s a whole host of familiar faces in the film that you’ll have seen in many other movies since this one, so have loads of fun playing: ‘Now where the diddly-dickens have I seen him/her before…? And what the devil was the name of that thing they were in…? Martha, get in here! Who’s that actor there? No, not that one, that one! I’ll be up all night trying to remember unless I can think of their name, it’ll drive me mad…! Martha, get the kids in here, maybe THEY’LL know!’ Let’s see if I can help a little bit…

Doris Roberts used to play Mildred Krebs in REMINGTON STEELE, that sexy American detective series featuring Stephanie Zimbalist and the swoonsome Pierce Brosnan. Juliette Lewis, the Griswold’s teenage daughter, is known for such films as CAPE FEAR with Robert DeNiro, Nick Nolte and Jessica Lange, and NATURAL BORN KILLERS with Woody Harrelson from CHEERS.

Sam McMurray once played Chandler Bing’s boss in sitcom FRIENDS. He was the boss who’d give anyone who did good work a resounding slap on the butt, and, at first, this made Chandler deeply uncomfortable, but then he started to really miss it after he’d made his boss stop doing it, haha. That was a good episode. Mind you, they were all good episodes. A winner every one. Bill Doyle-Murray, who plays Clark’s boss in the film, is actually the older brother of actor and comedian Bill Murray, of SCROOGED and GHOSTBUSTERS fame, a fact I didn’t even know myself until now.

Johnny Galecki used to be in sitcom ROSEANNE, starring Roseanne Barr and John Goodman, and in THE BIG BANG THEORY, and multi-award-winning comedian and actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who plays the Griswold’s yuppie next-door-neighbour, Margo, was in SEINFELD and THE NEW ADVENTURES OF OLD CHRISTINE.

Diane Ladd is the mother of actress Laura Dern (JURASSIC PARK). William Hickey was nominated for an Oscar for his role in PRIZZI’S HONOUR, also starring Jack Nicholson, Kathleen Turner and Anjelica Huston, but I personally remember him best for playing Al Pacino’s gravelly-voiced, poetry-spouting old dad in sexy thriller SEA OF LOVE, which co-starred Ellen Barkin.

And now to the piece de resistance of who-used-to-play-what-role. Mae Quetzel, who portrays dotty old Aunt Bethany, used to voice animated characters Betty Boop and Olive Oyl in the ‘Thirties. Anyone who did anything at all that long ago is surely worthy of our respect and a round or two of applause, lol. And, overall, that’s quite the line-up for just one movie, isn’t it? It’s got a classy, even iconic, cast.

The pre-Christmas mishaps come thick and fast and the scene in which cute but uncouth little Ruby Sue asks her Uncle Clark if he’s Santa Claus is as sweet as sugar. The film has all the trimmings and trappings of the ideal American family television Christmas so, you know what? I’m perfectly satisfied. Sometimes that’s all you need from a festive film.

I’m not American, by the way, I’m actually Irish. In case you were wondering why I’m bigging up the Americans and their festive traditions so much. But there sadly aren’t any Irish films in which a determined but misguided paterfamilias falls off a snow-covered roof while trying to put up twenty-five thousand twinkly Christmas lights, for the sole edification of his family and neighbours. More’s the pity.

By the way, if you carefully watch the credits of NATIONAL LAMPOON’S CHRISTMAS VACATION, you’ll see that someone called Frank Capra the Third worked on the movie. Could he possibly be the grandson of the original Frank Capra? That would be amazing if it were true. Answers on a postcard, film fans and movie nuts.

PS, if you’re the kind of person who switches off the credits or even- Gawd ‘elp us!- walks out of the cinema while the credits are playing, you’re running the risk of, firstly, missing a funny bit at the end, secondly, missing the weaker second credits song, and, thirdly, disrespecting the efforts of the hundreds or even thousands of good peeps who worked hard on the movie and made your viewing experience as good as they could possibly make it. So sit your butt back down there, mister, and pay your dues. It’s not much to ask. Oh, and Happy Christmas to you and yours…!

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, poet, short story writer and film and book blogger. She has studied Creative Writing and Vampirology. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, women’s fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra’s books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

Her debut romantic fiction novel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books:

The sequel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS LATER,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books:

THE HOLIDAY. (2006) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

THE HOLIDAY. (2016) WRITTEN, DIRECTED AND CO-PRODUCED BY NANCY MEYERS.
STARRING KATE WINSLET, CAMERON DIAZ, JACK BLACK, JUDE LAW, SHANNYN SOSSAMON, RUFUS SEWELL AND ELI WALLACH.
REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

People were telling me for ages that this was a great movie, I should watch it and why hadn’t I watched it already, and so on. So, then, I watched it on Netflix last weekend and guess what? I hated it, even though I normally love top actresses Kate TITANIC Winslet and Cameron Diaz of VANILLA SKY fame.

I just found it mushy, sickly and unbelievable, and, you know me, I’m immensely gullible and will willingly believe most any romantic scenarios put before me for my edification, but this one just didn’t pass muster with me. The behaviour of both female leads left me ashamed for the whole of womankind, and no kidding.

And I can’t stomach the sight or sound of Jude Law, who, as you’ll all know, is generally considered to be a Grade A heart-throb. But not by me. Does that make me unusual? I don’t honestly mind if it does. I am unusual, lol.

I would have tolerated the floppy-haired, Liz-Hurley-dating Hugh Grant in the Jude Law role. He’s posh and privileged and no stranger to wearing a dinner jacket, but he’s funny, warm and endearing as well, even when he’s playing a cheating bastard. He’s brilliant in romantic comedies like NOTTING HILL and ABOUT A BOY. What might have been, eh?

Kate Winslet plays Iris Simpkins, a society columnist for an English newspaper. For years and years and years, she has been letting a posh prick of a writer- with curly hair- called Jasper Bloom string her along something terrible. She gives him free editing and writing advice for his books, and he offers her sex in his car when he gets a minute.

She buys him a thoughtfully chosen first edition of a book he loves for Christmas, and he gets her nothing, that’s the kind of non-relationship ‘relationship’ they have, and still she simpers about after him like a moonstruck puppy. Iris Simpkins indeed. Iris Simpers, more like.

Even when he gets engaged to someone else right under her nose, she can’t even muster up the balls to speak harshly to him or, better yet, tell him to sling his hook. Instead, she abandons her gorgeous, picture-perfect cottage just a few minutes’ drive from London to go haring off to the home of a movie producer in Los Angeles, in a daring, slightly too trusting, even foolhardy move known as a ‘house swap.’

The house belongs to Cameron Diaz’s character, Amanda Woods, who’s every bit as much of a ‘simperer’ as Iris Simpkins, the simpering Queen of the Simperers. Amanda has been cheated on by her boyfriend Ethan, and, after a lot of ‘how could you do this to me?’ and ‘get out of my house!’ and other relationship-related drama (all initiated by Amanda, a talky little thing), she packs a bag and flies to England to Iris’s house.

The ladies are swapping lives, to a certain extent, as well as just bricks and mortar. They each meet new blokes as a result of being domiciled in each other’s residences. For Iris, it’s a laid-back film music composer called Miles Dumont, played by the adorable and cuddly Jack Black, an actor I love and who I’d fancy over Jude Law any day of the week. Miles is being messed about by his cheating actress girlfriend, Maggie, played by Shannyn Sossamon, but is deeply attracted to Iris, so we’ll see how that works out, as if we couldn’t tell…!

Iris really meets two new men, strictly speaking, because she befriends Arthur Abbott as well, an elderly neighbour of Amanda’s who used to be a script-writer in the Golden Age of Hollywood a million years ago.

Played by the still-sprightly big screen legend Eli Wallach (THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY, 1966), Arthur helps Iris to grow a pair and develop some much-needed gumption around blokes. Iris, a fitness fanatic, in turn helps Arthur to get in shape for a big Hollywood retrospective of his work being held to honour him. Sweet, and just about bearable in terms of the mushy factor…!

Meanwhile, in England, in the picture-perfect Christmassy snowscape that is Iris’s patch, Amanda is initiating sex with Iris’s book editor brother Graham Simpkins (Jude Law), when he turns up pissed on her first night and looking for a place to crash.

We’re supposed to melt like butter on the hob when we observe that he’s not just a tousle-haired English posh bloke-slash-heart-throb combined, but also a ‘tragic’ widower with two ‘adorable’ little daughters to bring up alone.

I forget their names. Probably Daisy and Lily, or Poppy and Araminta, or some such country garden Englishness. Either way, I’m afraid my own heart remains stonily unmoved at the sight of a single father and his sprogs, but Amanda can’t throw herself into Gray-Gray’s arms fast enough.

The scene where she is running, in high heels, along a snow-covered country lane, to reach him and the cosy domesticity he brings with him all the faster is completely unbelievable. It’s just not possible to run that fast in the snow in high heels. Even if you’re Hollywood superstar Cameron Diaz.

Call me cynical, but have you ever noticed that she’s really only got one good move? That’s right, it’s when her mouth widens into that gorgeous smile. She’s beautiful all right, but I don’t know if there’s much else going on there behind the glitz and glamour.

A bit like the film itself, maybe. Some nice packaging to disguise the basic lack of any real substance underneath. Oh, I just don’t like this movie. It’s upsetting to see women being so badly jerked around by such, sleazy self-serving blokes.

Dustin Hoffman has a cameo role in the video store scene, though, which was nice. Apparently, he was in there just by a coincidence and wandered over to see what the story was and what they were filming, and they just gave him a spontaneous cameo on the back of it. That’s how you do things when you’re Hollywood royalty…!

Much as I love Dustin Hoffman, though, I was nearly even more excited to see the video store itself, I must admit. What an emporium of magic and wonderment these places used to be in their day! We should never have just let them die out like that. Anyway, happy holidays to you all and enjoy THE HOLIDAY if you decide to watch it. Just because I hated it doesn’t mean that you’ll hate it too…!

  AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.
 
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, poet, short story writer and film and book blogger. She has studied Creative Writing and Vampirology. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, women’s fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra’s books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO
Her debut romantic fiction novel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books:
https://www.amazon.com/Thirteen-Stops-Sandra-Harris-ebook/dp/B089DJMH64
The sequel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS LATER,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books:
 https://www.amazon.com/dp/1781994234

 

LAST CHRISTMAS. (2019) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

LAST CHRISTMAS. (2019) INSPIRED BY THE SONG OF THE SAME NAME BY WHAM! WRITTEN BY EMMA THOMPSON AND GREG WISE. DIRECTED BY PAUL FEIG.
STARRING EMILIA CLARKE, HENRY GOLDING, EMMA THOMPSON, MICHELLE YEOH, PATTI LUPONE, SUE PERKINS AND PETER SERAFINOWICZ.
REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

This is a fairly entertaining Christmas romp, if you don’t mind a few plot holes and cliches and slightly far-fetched storylines. It’s the story of Kate Andrich, the adult daughter of Yugoslavian immigrants living in London in modern times.

Kate’s a bit of a mess. She couch-surfs amongst her friends because she doesn’t have a place of her own, and she’d apparently rather be homeless than go back and live with her parents. Yes, Emma Thompson as a Yugoslavian immigrant from ‘the old country’ is a bit of a nightmare, but at least she adores her quirky daughter with a mother’s love and care.

Kate boozes and eats junk food and has one-night stands with total strangers and doesn’t get enough sleep. She doesn’t look after herself at all. Yep, she’s a mess. And, even though her friends love her, she keeps letting them down and accidentally destroying their stuff and being downright irresponsible around them.

It’s as if everyone else around her has grown up except Kate, who even ‘outs’ her sensible older sister Marta to their parents in a fit of spite, an act which alienates her sister from her, and maybe even some viewers as well. That’s not Kate’s story to tell, after all.
 
Kate works as an elf in an all-year-round Christmas shop run by Michelle Yeoh as ‘Santa,’ but she keeps letting Santa down with her complete and utter flakiness and disappearing acts and being on her phone all the time when she’s meant to be working. It’s actually really sad when Santa’s beautiful store gets broken into and trashed one night because Kate carelessly forgets to lock up properly behind her when she clocks off.

Kate wants to be a performer, a singer, and we see her going to various auditions and flopping badly each time. Comedienne Sue Perkins and actor Pete Serafinowicz (SHAUN OF THE DEAD, BLACK BOOKS) each have funny little cameos on the different casting panels.

Kate is starting to think that she’s lost ‘it,’ but what’s happened in her life that everything is suddenly so messy, messed-up, dreary and hopeless? I can’t tell you that, but I can tell you that, one day, right out of the proverbial, a handsome and endearing guy called Tom Webster drops into her life and gradually, inch by inch, Kate begins to look at things in her aforementioned life through a different, and certainly more gratitude-based, viewfinder…

The film attempts to be very, very politically correct and inclusive. Marta’s girlfriend is black, and Kate’s friends whose couch she stays on are in a mixed-race relationship too. Kate has a trans doctor, and there are disabled and mixed-race people galore at the homeless shelter that Tom gets Kate involved in. It’s just too PC for words.

That being said, wouldn’t Emma Thompson’s Eastern European accent murdering songs from ‘the old country’ count as cultural appropriation, one of the new ‘sins’ against political correctness? I just don’t know any more. It’s all very complicated.

By the way, I loved that Patti LuPone turns up- very randomly, maybe she’s a friend of Emma Thompson’s or something!- in Santa’s Christmas shop as a customer. Patti starred in a sort of teen family drama from 1989-1993 called LIFE GOES ON, which I loved.

She played the mom of the goody-goody Thatcher family. There was a dreamy guy in it called Jesse, who was the boyfriend of Patti’s screen daughter Becca, and it was really shocking and so sad because Jesse was HIV-positive, and we all had big crushes on him and wanted to mammy him because he was sick, oh my, those were the days…!

I also love the way that Kate, a basically selfish person, learns in this mostly enjoyable and entertaining film that she’s not the only person in the world with problems, and that there are more ways than just one to look at something.

Example. Did you ever walk down the other side of a street you’re accustomed to walking regularly, only to discover that the street looks completely different from the other side and you even see things you never noticed before?

I particularly liked that Tom teaches Kate to look up occasionally. Yes, a bird might shit in your eye, but there’s a whole beautiful world up there above eye-level that you’re missing out on if you just keep your eyes trained on the ground.

I also love Kate and Tom’s secret garden, and the fact that this is a new Christmas movie for us to watch that’s not LOVE ACTUALLY, which I’m quite tired of by now. All that LAST CHRISTMAS is really lacking is the wonderful Bill Nighy, looking bemused and saying ‘…arse, head and hole…’ for some mad reason.

Better say a word about the music of George Michael and WHAM!, which is featured throughout the film. To be honest, I preferred Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet to WHAM! way back in the ‘80s, although I’ll admit that LAST CHRISTMAS is a great Crimbo song and the video is iconic, to say the least, if a bit cheesy.

I definitely prefer the music of George Michael to the music of WHAM! Songs like FAST LOVE and his duet with Elton John DON’T LET THE SUN GO DOWN ON ME mark him out in my mind as a superior singer-songwriter. By the way, Andrew Ridgely supposedly has a cameo in the film but I obviously wasn’t quick enough as I seem to have missed it. Let’s hope you have better luck…!

    AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.
 
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, poet, short story writer and film and book blogger. She has studied Creative Writing and Vampirology. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, women’s fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra’s books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO
Her debut romantic fiction novel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books:
https://www.amazon.com/Thirteen-Stops-Sandra-Harris-ebook/dp/B089DJMH64
The sequel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS LATER,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books:
 https://www.amazon.com/dp/1781994234

NATIVITY! and NATIVITY 2: DANGER IN THE MANGER! A DOUBLE FESTIVE MOVIE REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

NATIVITY! (2009) and NATIVITY 2: DANGER IN THE MANGER! (2012) BOTH FILMS DIRECTED BY DEBBIE ISITT.

REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

I watched these two films as a double bill on Christmas Eve, and they weren’t half as excruciating as I was expecting ’em to be from what I’d heard, lol. In fact, my son and I were laughing out loud at times at the implausible but warm-hearted and well-intentioned silliness of it all.

In NATIVITY!, the original film, Martin Freeman (THE HOBBIT and about a million other things) plays an unhappy primary school teacher called Paul Maddens. He’s unhappy because his lovely bubbly blonde girlfriend Jennifer has left him and buggered off to Hollywood to become a film producer. ‘Those who can’t do, teach. Those who can’t teach, teach primary.’

Now he’s embittered, cranky and seemingly incapable of having any fun. The kids in his class are definitely suffering under his tense and rigid play-everything-by-the-book rule. He’s become a bit of a Scrooge, frankly.

Paul is horrified one morning at Assembly when the headmistress of St. Bernadette’s, Mrs. Bevan (played by Pam Ferris), announces that he, Paul Maddens, is to take charge of the school Nativity play this year.

This will possibly be Mrs. Bevan’s last year as the Head, and her dearest wish before she retires is to have St. Bernadette’s take the five-star-review for their Nativity play from local critic and super-bitch Patrick Burns (‘That’s why they call ’em ‘Burns’ Victims…!”), played by Alan Carr. (Ricky Tomlinson from THE ROYLE FAMILY cameos here also as the local Lord Mayor.)

Normally the five-star-review goes to Oakmoor, the local posh school, whose Nativity is run by Gordon Shakespeare, Paul’s old friend from drama school and his fiercest rival. No pressure then, Paulie my man.

Paul is horrified at the thought of having to shoulder this new challenge/burden/responsibility/millstone, but never fear, Mrs. Bevan has lined up some help for him…

This help comes in the form of overgrown-schoolboy-type Desmond Poppy (played by Marc Wootton), Paul’s new classroom assistant who just so happens to be Mrs. Bevan’s nephew. Mr. Poppy is much more interested in playing the fool and having fun than helping the children to buckle down and learn anything.

Mr. Poppy is excited beyond measure at the thought of the Nativity play, especially when he overhears Paul boasting- lying- to his rival Gordon Shakespeare about how Jennifer, Paul’s old girlfriend who’s now a bigshot Hollywood producer, is coming to the Nativity play at St. Bernadette’s with a big fancy Hollywood camera crew.

This lie grows legs and is all over the school and, indeed, the town by lunchtime. Paul is in a quandary. He can either tell the truth about how there is no Hollywood production team coming to see the Nativity play, thereby making the school famous, and devastate the kids and their parents, or he can bloody well get on the blower to Jennifer in Hollywood and try to make it happen. Of course he can do that. It’s not like he’s still hopelessly in love with her or anything…

NATIVITY 2: DANGER IN THE MANGER! is much funnier, I feel. Mrs. Bevan has not retired, and the fun-loving Mr. Poppy is still in situ. This time around, he’s terribly excited about ‘A SONG FOR CHRISTMAS,’ a talent show for schools that’s taking place in Wales this Christmas.

Mrs. Bevan says that they can’t take part because St. Bernadette’s has neither the time, the talent (cheek!) nor the transport to manage it. But since when have rules and regulations ever stopped the ebullient Mr. Poppy from doing exactly what he pleases? He throws himself into the singing auditions in true Simon Cowell-style, and before long he and the pupils of Class Seven have a song for the show.

One of the many flies in the ointment is the new Class Seven teacher Donald Peterson, played by Scottish heart-throb David DR. WHO Tennant. (Mmmmmm, David Tennant…!)

As a new teacher, Donald Peterson is anxious to play-everything-by-the-book and if Mrs. Bevan says that there’s to be no show, which she most assuredly has done, then that’s that.

So how come he suddenly finds himself aboard a presumably stolen amphibian bus full of eager kids, being driven to Wales by the irrepressible Mr. Poppy, who knows as much about navigation, child safety and the rules of the road as he does about the flippin’ Periodic Table?

Mr. Peterson is beside himself with rage and anxiety. He’s got a pregnant wife at home who’s due to give birth at any time, and Mr. Poppy has chucked his (Donald’s) phone out the bus window so now he has no way of contacting her. Nice one, Mr. Poppy…

The journey to Wales becomes utterly unbelievable at times. We’re expected to believe that a class full of kids, two adult males (Mr. Poppy and Mr. Peterson) and a donkey and a baby (don’t ask!) can casually climb up and down mountains that experienced hikers who’ve been planning for months would find hard to do. Just do what I did and say to yourself: It’s a film. These things happen in films…

A SONG FOR CHRISTMAS is hilarious and deliciously bitchy. Class Seven is not only up against their old enemy, Gordon Shakespeare and his little coterie of poshos from snobby Oakmoor, but against Roderick Peterson as well.

Roderick is the world-famous conductor who just so happens to be Donald Peterson’s identical twin brother (also played by David Tennant) and their father’s favourite, more successful son. There’s obviously a lot at stake here.

The songs in the contest are funny and witty and Angel Matthews, the celebrity soprano-cum-presenter, is an utter bitch who quite obviously fancies the terrifyingly ambitious Roderick Peterson, who represents St. Cuthbert’s School. (‘Inhale success, exhale doubt.’) Well, he’s even more of a bitch so they ought to complement each other nicely.

So, does Mr. Peterson win the contest and grab back some of his self-respect from the father (played by Ian McNeice) and brother who’ve spent his lifetime trying to erode it? Can the two brothers ever be friends after all the animosity and hostility that’s come between them in the past, and that their father has clearly encouraged in order to spur them into further competing with each other? It’s a surprisingly common method of parenting but not one, I fear, that yields the sweetest results.

Does Mr. Poppy keep his job after the Head finds out what he’s done? Can St. Bernadette’s come out on top for once? The kids certainly deserve it after the journey they’ve made, but will they be disqualified for breaking nearly all the rules of the contest? We’ll see…

The crowds of people arriving at the contest in their droves for St. Bernadette’s reminds me of CLOCKWISE. This is a comedy film starring John Cleese about the headmaster of an ordinary comprehensive school who’s travelling to a much posher school to give an address during a headmasters’ conference. CLOCKWISE is a genuinely witty and funny film. Watch it if you can.

The kiddie actors are great in both NATIVITY! films, by the way. There’s an especially cute little boy called Bob (played by Ben Wilby) who Wilby (will be!) a very good actor when he grows up.

NATIVITY! and NATIVITY 2: DANGER IN THE MANGER! aren’t exactly on a par with CITIZEN KANE but they’ll keep the kids busy- and in fits of laughter- while you peel the sprouts this Christmas. Job done.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, film blogger, poet and book-and-movie reviewer. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, womens’ fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra’s books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

You can contact Sandra at:

https://www.facebook.com/SandraHarrisPureFilthPoetry

https://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com

http://sexysandieblog.wordpress.com

http://serenaharker.wordpress.com

sandrasandraharris@gmail.com

https://twitter.com/SandraAuthor

IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE. (1946) THE CHRISTMAS CLASSIC REVIEWED BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE. 1947. BASED ON THE SHORT STORY ‘THE GREATEST GIFT’ BY PHILIP VAN DOREN STERN. DIRECTED BY FRANK CAPRA.

STARRING JAMES STEWART, DONNA REED, HENRY TRAVERS, THOMAS MITCHELL, GLORIA GRAHAME, BEULAH BONDI, H.B. WARNER AND LIONEL BARRYMORE. REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

‘Attaboy, Clarence…!’

‘I got a punch on the jaw in answer to a prayer a while ago.’

‘My mouth’s bleeding, Bert! Whaddya know about that?’

‘Merry Christmas…!’

What can I say about this cinematic offering that hasn’t already been said? God only knows! It’s a gorgeous fairytale of a film that has been topping ‘BEST CHRISTMAS MOVIES’ lists for nearly seventy years now.

Everyone knows it. Most people, I’m guessing, love it. Maybe some people hate it. I know some people who refuse to watch it because they think it’s ‘too soppy.’ You certainly can’t get the festive season started without it. So what’s it actually all about…?

It’s the story of George Bailey, played by James Stewart at his All-American best and handsomest. George has spent his whole life in picturesque American small town, Bedford Falls, though his dearest wish is to travel the world and have adventures. Fate intervenes time and again, however, to prevent George from following his heart. Could Fate possibly have a reason for so doing? We’ll find out…

When George’s beloved father dies from a stroke, George is obliged to stay in his home-town and run the Baileys’ Building And Loan. This is the business Mr. Bailey Senior set up so that the people of Bedford Falls could someday buy their own homes and not have to live in the slum dwellings owned by Mr. Potter, the town’s richest man and a regular Scrooge/Mr. Burns-type.

Mr. Potter owns everything in Bedford Falls except for the Baileys’ Building And Loan and, man, doesn’t it gall him! He’s tried every trick in the book to get his hands on this surprisingly successful little family concern.

There’s an awful lotta love in Bedford Falls for this little financial institution. Not only is it run on decent family values of honesty and hard work, but it also provides the locals, as we’ve just noted, with a choice, a choice not to live in Mr. Potter’s exorbitantly-priced slum houses. This choice is crucial for the people of the small town and they appreciate that the Bailey family have given it to them. 

Mr. Potter tries to make a grab for the Building And Loan when Pa Bailey dies, but George steps in to stop him. Mr. Potter then tries to bribe George with twenty thousand bucks a year and the promise of European travel to bring George over to his way of thinking, but George holds firm. It’s a real ‘Get behind me, Satan!’ moment, though.

All that’s really left for the mean, immoral and scurrilous old Mr. Potter to do, aside from fuming privately about his loss, is to wait for George to fuck up in some way, to put it bluntly, and see if he can acquire the Building And Loan that way. He gets his chance one gorgeous snowy Christmas Eve.

Bedford Falls looks a pretty as a picture under all that snow. It looks just like a winter wonderland from a Christmas card. George’s Uncle Billy is en route to the town bank to lodge eight grand of the Bailey’s Building And Loan’s money before close of business today. Should be simple enough to do, right?

When George’s Uncle Billy loses eight thousand dollars of the Building And Loan’s money, however, and the police are called in, George is so distraught and fearful of the shame and disgrace about to befall him that he contemplates suicide. He wishes, in fact, that he’d never even been born. Next comes the trippy part. Pay attention now…

After a series of painful misadventures that only serve to bolster George’s notion that things would have been better for everyone if he’d never been born, an elderly angel called Clarence is sent down from Heaven to help him.

His mission? To show the despairing George just what the lives of his friends and family would have been like had George never been born. And guess what? That’s right, you guessed it. It turns out that everyone he knows would have been a lot worse off for not having known George, who is the kindest and most generous man you could ever meet in a day’s walk, as we say here in Ireland.

I always get annoyed, though, when I see that Mary Hatch, George’s loving and endlessly loyal wife, would have been doomed to a sexless, repressed and colourless life as the town’s spinster librarian if George hadn’t been around to ‘save’ her.

She had other suitors, hadn’t she? Why couldn’t she have married Sam ‘Hee-Haw’ Wainwright and had loads of sex and kids with him? I just don’t see why she has to turn out like the very model of someone’s maiden aunt just because some guy wasn’t there to save her from it. Very sexist, that is, very sexist indeed. It just irks me, that’s all. 

I love Gloria Grahame as the feisty Violet Bicks. Not quite as soft and genteel as the more fortunate Mary Bailey, Violet is a woman who’s had to fight and struggle for her place in life. I also love that Ellen Corby, the Grandma from THE WALTONS, has a small role in IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE as the little woman who only wants seventeen-fifty from the kitty at the Baileys’ Building And Loan.

Anyway, when George sees all that Clarence has to show him, he decides that he wants to live after all. Clarence lets him go back home to his wife and children, who are waiting for him with the most marvellous news.

Yes, it appears that at George’s house, a Christmas miracle has occurred. Everyone in Bedford Falls has rallied round the Baileys with enough of their hard-earned cash to make up the shortfall and then some.

Then good old Sam Wainwright, George’s old schoolfriend who’s now become something of a millionaire at business, comes through for George as well and things are all hunky-dory and tickety-boo once more. 

The Building And Loan is saved and so is George. Clarence the Angel gets his wings at last and we nod off in front of the telly with a surfeit of turkey and plum pudding inside us. Aw, isn’t it a wonderful life after all…? Of course it is. Just ask George Bailey. He knows…

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, film blogger, poet and book-and-movie reviewer. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, womens’ fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra’s books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

You can contact Sandra at:

https://www.facebook.com/SandraHarrisPureFilthPoetry

https://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com

http://sexysandieblog.wordpress.com

http://serenaharker.wordpress.com

sandrasandraharris@gmail.com

https://twitter.com/SandraAuthor

JINGLE ALL THE WAY. (1996) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

JINGLE ALL THE WAY. (1996) DIRECTED BY BRIAN LEVANT. STARRING ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER, JAKE LLOYD, RITA WILSON, PHIL HARTMAN, ROBERT CONRAD, SINBAD AND JAMES BELUSHI. REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

Ho-ho-ho and Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and all that festive jazz…! JINGLE ALL THE WAY is one of those seasonal staples that’s as much a part of Christmas as getting pissed on bubbly while you’re waiting for the turkey to cook, and shagging the one person at your work’s annual Christmas do who’s guaranteed to put the snap you drunkenly allowed them to take of your ass up on social media. That’s not just me, surely…? Lol.

Anyway, I’d classify JINGLE ALL THE WAY as a Christmas comedy on a par with THE GRINCH WHO STOLE CHRISTMAS, CHRISTMAS WITH THE KRANKS, NATIONAL LAMPOON’S CHRISTMAS VACATION, HOME ALONE and all those other favourite Crimbo films we all love to unearth at this time of year. Parents will identify with it (painfully so, I’d say!) and kids will laugh their heads off at it.

It stars the Austrian Oak, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and he’s in a much more perilous situation than any fix he’s ever had to face in his TERMINATOR or other action-packed movies. He’s a Dad at Christmas who has failed, repeat failed, to pick up the toy his son wants for Christmas in advance of the big day. Boo…! For shame, Howard Langston, for shame. That’s his name, lol.

He is a bad father. He should be tied to a chair and pelted with tofu balls while Cliff Richard’s MISTLETOE AND WINE plays on repeat on the sound-system. Too harsh, you say? No, I’m sorry but the penalty stands. It has to stand, if the world order isn’t to collapse under a weight of wrapping paper and festive ribbons and bows.

There’s no crime worse than failing to buy Little Timmy or Tammy Snotnose exactly what they want for Christmas. Money equates love, see? The bigger the gift, the more you love your kid. Simple. And buy two of everything. The little brats won’t wanna share. And for Chrissakes, remember the bloody batteries…!

Howard is horrified to discover on Christmas Eve that he has neglected to purchase the toy which his son Jamie has asked Santa for this Crimbo. The must-have toy-du-jour is Turbo Man. I love the way the people in the toy-stores all laugh maniacally at him when he asks for a Turbo Man. Any self-respecting parent worthy of the name knows that that particular toy has been sold out for months. Hah!

The scenes of chaos in the toy-stores in the film on this Christmas Eve are terrifying, but not at all unusual. A family member had the misfortune to work in a Dublin toy-store last Christmas and she still hasn’t forgotten the misery. The stampeding, the screaming and bawling, the abuse, the recriminations, and that was just the staff. Never mind the pushy parents or the marauding kids.

She sits in her chair at home every day now, not talking, just continually rocking back and forth, and when she closes her eyes she can still see the shells falling, smell the awful smell of burning flesh and put her hands into the pile of goo that used to be her best friend’s face… No, wait a minute. That was ‘Nam, wasn’t it? From what I hear, though, there’s not much difference between the two…

Anyway, Howard finds himself in some extraordinary situations as he races around town looking for a Turbo Man doll in time for the Christmas Parade later in the day. Followed everywhere he goes by a manic mailman looking for the same toy and a pissed-off copper who likes to give out parking tickets, he encounters a group of crooked Santas (crooked in the sense of corrupt, not askew!), chases a small girl through a crowded shopping mall, breaks into his neighbour’s house with theft in mind and pretty much terrorises the host of a radio show.

This is all in the name of finding the doll and proving to little Jamie and his wife Liz that he’s neither the screw-up they seem to think he is nor a neglectful, emotionally- and physically- absent parent.

What the kid and the wife don’t seem to realise is that the reason that Dad is away so much is because he’s working his butt off to keep the ungrateful pair in the style they’ve obviously long been accustomed to. And what a style! Their house is fabulous.

As this is an American film, they’ve really gone to town on making the film look as magically Christmassy as possible. I’ve always maintained that the Americans know how to keep Christmas well, as old Scrooge might say.

The houses and snow-covered gardens and streets are all decked out in full festive regalia, the shops look gorgeous and there are real carollers singing in the open air in proper Victorian garb. Charles Dickens, the writer credited with inventing the true traditional Victorian Christmas by putting it all down in his books for posterity, would be proud to see how wonderfully festive it all is.

Arnie is funny and handsome throughout, especially when he’s all togged out as Turbo Man for the parade. I love the way his wife says ‘Howard…!’ in surprise when she realises that she’s actually sexually attracted to her husband in the super-hero suit. Well, it’s a very snug-fitting suit, ahem. I wouldn’t be in any rush to take it back to the costume shop myself…

Phil Hartman, the voice of both Lionel Hutz and Troy McClure from THE SIMPSONS, does a real star turn here as the obnoxious Ted, Howard’s annoying, know-it-all next-door-neighbour who always has to go one better, much to Howard’s irritation.

It’s a lot like THE SIMPSONS, with Ted as Ned the pious and virtuous neighbour who gets his son’s TURBO MAN weeks in advance of Christmas and Howard as Homer who forgets it completely until- you guessed it- the last minute.

Homer, however, would have forgotten it because he was more interested in boozing at Moe’s Bar than in preparing for Christmas, something he’d perceive to be Marge’s territory. Howard only forgets because he’s genuinely snowed-under at work. Snowed-under, geddit? It’s funny ’cause it’s Christmas.

Anyway, the housewives all adore the newly-divorced Ted, and Ted has his sights set on Howard’s missus Liz, probably because he’s actually jealous as hell of the muscular Howard. I love Ted’s line to Howard which reveals all Ted’s own insecurities and petty envy: ‘You can’t bench-press your way out of this one…!’ See what I mean? Jealous, jealous, jealous.

The film is good clean fun, if a tad far-fetched and, at the end, the commercial message it’s been sending to viewers all throughout the film (to buy, buy, buy and then buy some more) gets turned completely on its head, which is nice.

Keep watching those end credits as well, because there’s a cute little twist right at the very end which impatient viewers, anxious to switch off and get the little horrors to bed, might miss. Aw, kids. Kids are great, aren’t they? You can’t live with them, you can’t donate them to charity. Well, that’s what the woman in Oxfam told me, anyway, and she’d know…

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, film blogger and movie reviewer. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, womens’ fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra’s books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

You can contact Sandra at:

https://www.facebook.com/SandraHarrisPureFilthPoetry

https://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com

http://sexysandieblog.wordpress.com

http://serenaharker.wordpress.com

sandrasandraharris@gmail.com

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