Mainlining Christmas

I want to start by saying upfront: you should discourage your kids from watching these. I'm not joking. And I'm not saying that because these are awful - they are, but that's the least of their problems. These specials cross a line between obnoxious and inappropriate in how they market their toys to kids. I'm not just talking about using animation as an extended ad, either -- this goes way beyond GI Joe or Transformers. GI Joe never explicitly told kids owning their crap would help save Christmas; these specials - all three  of these specials - quite literally convey that message. You want Santa's sleigh to fly? Help by "caring for" one of these three magic toys. I am not exaggerating. I don't recall ever seeing a show or special do anything like this before. With that out of the way, let's talk about the specials themselves, or rather the specials as a group. While all three contain unique characteristics, the overall concept and structure is iden

I'll admit I haven't tried particularly hard, but a cursory glance provides very little insight into how "Father Christmas is Back," a new British comedy purchased and released by Netflix, actually came to be. The short blurb on Wikipedia only includes vague filming dates - September through November of last year. While that certainly doesn't answer the question, combined with elements in the movie itself - its limited locations, small cast, and the slapdash story - I can't help but wonder if this was sort of thrown together at the last minute. I certainly can't say for certain this was a movie made without a finished script, but I can assure you it absolutely, unequivocally left me with that impression. I assume it goes without saying I didn't like this one. The premise centers on a family with the surname "Christmas" (really), whose patriarch, James Christmas, (played by Kelsey Grammer) abruptly walked out on them decades beforehand on Chri

Santa Inc. is one of those pieces of media I feel I need a disclaimer before reviewing, as it feels like it was intended to be viewed while high. As I watched this sober, my opinion may be skewed. I should note Santa Inc. is an 8-episode stop-motion series streaming on HBO Max. The premise, as implied by the title, concerns a corporate version of Santa's operation, staffed by magic creatures but (mostly) operating in a capitalist paradigm. If you're planning to watch this, be aware it's intended for mature audiences (though in my experience, shows made for mature audiences tend to be the least mature). I suspect there are plans to continue the series, though I have no idea whether this will build the buzz needed to justify that (I'm guessing between the animation and cast it's not cheap to produce). To be safe, I'm labeling this as "Season 1." Seth Rogen voices Santa, or at least the current holder of that title. He's not actually the main characte

This is going to be one of those incredibly awkward situations where I'm looking at a Christmas installment in a series where I didn't see the earlier films. I'm not sure if it makes it more or less awkward that this one was reviewed far more harshly than the original (the middle installment wasn't received any better). So obviously take my opinion with a grain of salt. And that opinion seems to be in line with the consensus. Overall, this didn't work for me, and a lot of the jokes have aged badly. The series stars and was co-created by Ice Cube. Stylistically, it's reminiscent of Clerks, particularly for the first half. The story here is incredibly thin, which isn't necessarily a bad thing in a comedy, so long as the jokes pick up the slack. Again, they didn't work for me, though I'm not really the target audience and there's absolutely a possibility a lot of the humor went over my head. The movie opens with a thief dressed as Santa breaking int

I was genuinely shocked when the end credits for Elf-Man rolled and revealed a full cast worked on the picture. With the exception of a few decent shots and a couple actors who deserved better, this thing looked and felt less like a "real" movie than... God, I'm struggling to find some point of comparison. Some of it felt like the low-budget direct-to-video production it was, but it was rare for the movie to hit even that mark. More often it felt like a cheap sitcom, and even those sequences accounted for fifty percent or less. Most of the rest felt like a college project. At times, I'd have believed a handful of high schoolers were somehow calling the shots. Now that we've got that out of the way, let's talk about the premise of Elf-Man, a 2012 fantasy/superhero/comedy serving as a vehicle for Jason Acuña, here credited as "Wee Man." The story centers around two kids and their father, an inventor whose wife died a few years before. On Christmas Eve,

By its nature, Mainlining Christmas often leaves us scrambling to cobble together some sort of context for media we're unfamiliar with. We regularly check out Christmas episodes of shows we've never seen or wander into genres we otherwise avoid. But this takes that to a whole new level. We put this on not knowing who Bam Margera is or what we were getting into. We're of course familiar with Jackass as a concept, but neither Lindsay or myself ever actually watched anything from that franchise before, nor did we realize it had spawned multiple spin-offs under different titles. I actually assumed I was putting on a conventional comedy. This was... I'm honestly still not sure what the hell this was. Like I said, I've never seen Jackass, but my impression is it's primarily defined by over-the-top, idiotic stunts intended to shock the audience. And, in a sense, that's what this was. Only... it wasn't? Imagine someone created a movie revolving around a series o

These days, we watch almost everything on streaming services, but early in the life of this site, we frequently picked up holiday-themed DVDs from clearance bins. That's how we ended up with a few of the more unusual selections we're planning to cover this year.  Prior to watching these episodes, I was only vaguely aware of the existence of this show and I knew nothing about it. My first impression after a few minutes was confusion that it didn't seem to be dubbed. There's something hard to define about the writing, some mix of absurdism and quirky word rhythm, plus physical comedy that feels a little like commedia dell'arte pantomime, that immediately said to me "not made in the U.S." Sure enough, LazyTown is an Icelandic production. It was intended to combat childhood obesity, although very little in the two holiday episodes we watched is directly about that. There are three characters played by humans: Stephanie, a young chipper audience stand-in, Robbi

Just Friends is one of several Christmas comedies from the first decade of the millennia that's been largely forgotten, and in this case, it's not hard to understand why. The premise is largely built around the concept of the "friend zone", a somewhat misogynistic idea popularized in the mid-'90s that - for reasons that continue to elude me - someone thought would make a good basis for a movie a decade later. The story centers on Chris, played by Ryan Reynolds, who grew up in New Jersey, where he was humiliated in high school due to being overweight. His best friend was Jamie, a girl he secretly pined over for years. I should note the movie opens with an extended sequence set during this time that involves Reynolds in a fat suit. We'll come back to this. Jump ahead to Christmas ten years later. Chris has lost weight, he has a high-paying job as a record producer in LA, and his love life is a series of dates with models. But of course, he still pines for Jamie,

A minute or two into Santa Girl, I remarked to Lindsay that I'd seen student films with better production values. Ten minutes later, we paused the movie to check whether it actually was a student film. The answer is somehow both no and yes. Santa Girl was produced through a partnership with Shenandoah University. I'm still a little unclear on the specifics, but Shenandoah boasts the majority of the cast and crew are students . It shows! I was honestly a little surprised to learn the movie wasn't written or directed by students, too. Let's talk plot. The story is centered on Cassie Claus, daughter of Santa, reimagined as a calculating, business-oriented yuletide CEO. Cassie is betrothed to the son of Jack Frost, because the house of Santa requires their patronage in order to... Wait. Is this going for a corporate thing or a medieval royalty vibe? Both! Probably should have picked one, because the mixture comes off as incoherent. Regardless, Cassie isn't happy about h

We struggled with whether it was worth reviewing this or not. It's one of those cases where a movie skirts the border of our already loose requirements for consideration in the pantheon of holiday films. I think it technically qualifies under our most subjective rule (i.e.: Christmas plays a pivotal role in a key scene), but just barely. Back when we reviewed Sleepless in Seattle , I assumed that would be about as fringe of a case as we'd put on the blog, but this is even more questionable. Ultimately, we're mainly letting it squeak through the cracks because regardless of whether I think it's a Christmas movie, the film's editors were pretty specific: this opens and closes with Christmas music. The premise centers on a pair of destined lovers played by John Cusack (Jonathan) and Kate Beckinsale (Sara) who share a meet-cute while shopping for a gift intended for their current romantic partners. They immediately hit it off and go on a sort of impromptu date. It's

Like a lot of foreign movies we look at, Morozko has a few titles it's been released under in the US. "Jack Frost" appears to be the most common - that's the name from its 1966 release and from when it appeared on Mystery Science Theater 3000. It's also sometimes called "Father Frost." I don't think either are horrible, though I'll be sticking with the Russian title, Morozko. First, it's worth noting this is more accurately described as an alternative to a Christmas film. The title character (who doesn't appear until after the halfway point) is one of many midwinter mythological figures loosely tied to Santa Claus. The movie itself is based on a folktale, though it's been expanded and made a bit more kid-friendly. The folktale is pretty simple: two stepsisters live together, with the mother spoiling her bratty biological kid and abusing the other, despite the fact she works hard and never complains. Eventually, the (step)mother makes

Hilda is an animated Netflix series adapted from a series of graphic novels inspired by Scandinavian folklore. The art style mimics the feel of the comics it's based on, building a world that honestly looks like drawn pictures come alive. Depending on the episode, you might end up seeing something wacky and fun, magical and awe-inspiring, or even a little dark and unnerving. It's an absolutely phenomenal show, beautifully written and animated, and we recommend you watch it at once. Which of course poses a bit of a problem. The holiday episode I'm about to discuss is towards the end of the second season, so while I absolutely recommend it, I'd suggest watching the rest of the series first. This isn't so steeped in continuity that you'll be spoiled or confused: it's just better in context. The main character of the series, unsurprisingly, is Hilda, an adventurous preteen girl who moves to Trolberg, a cross between a modern city and a walled medieval village. T

First off, whatever version of Miracle on 34th Street you think this is, you're almost certainly mistaken. This isn't the 1947 classic , nor is it the sickeningly melodramatic 90's remake . In fact, it's not really a movie at all, at least not in any sense I'd use the word. No, this was a TV special attempting to remake the original movie at a breakneck pace to fit neatly into an hour timeslot. That's an hour with commercials - the special itself is around 45 minutes. What's odd about this is that, with a couple exceptions, the parts that aren't cut for time are nearly a word-for-word copy of the original. Hell, the leads even appear to be mimicking the original actors, albeit at a faster clip. Think understudies in a stage play filling in. Since we're more or less using a pared down version of the '47 script, the plot is virtually identical. Kris takes a job as a Macy's Santa (though the scene with the drunken Santa he's hired to replace