Mainlining Christmas

The Search for Santa Paws is, obviously, the spin-off prequel to the fourth spin-off sequel of the direct-to-video fifth installment of the Air Bud series. It has a sequel, but we're not there yet. This was directed by Robert Vince, who - according to Wikipedia - "specializes in directing movies that feature animals playing sports". His parents must be so proud he ignored their advice and followed his dreams. This movie differs from its predecessor in several ways. First, while it still features talking animals, their role is much less central to the film. Unless you count humans as talking animals. There are a lot of talking humans in this movie. Also, singing. I'm sorry. I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's start at the beginning, which takes place at the North Pole. The producers were unable to get George Wendt back to portray Santa, so they replaced him with Richard Riehle, who has a very different take than Wendt's. In the last movie, Wendt&

Ugh. I feel for the folks who made this, and the folks who love this character, but I cannot recommend you watch this. It’s incredibly dull. The episode opens with Static bemoaning the busy life of a superhero when he has holiday festivities to attend. Of course, no sooner does he get there, but the power goes out, and he’s off to melt the mysterious ice engulfing the substation. He conveniently ignores the girl on the scene, and then rinse, repeat. Whining, Mysterious Ice, and then he finally figures out it’s the girl. We are treated to some tedious backstory about Permafrost. She lost her mom at a young age and is living on the street. Sad story, right? Not the way it’s animated here. Instead, it’s boring. Static finally goes looking for some information about her and learns her sad story. When she shows up again, he reaches out in compassion, and she agrees to accept help. That should be a good story, but the writing is so pedantic that any emotional impact is muted. It so

This episode I liked less than the first. One problem, as I see it, is that many shows which attempt to adapt either It’s a Wonderful Life or A Christmas Carol (or sort of mash them up, as this one does) need to bend their characters so far out of shape to do it, that the resolution has no sentiment or weight. Also, the premise here is really dumb. Maddie needs to keep everyone in the office over what would be their Christmas break to keep a case active. They stage a petty, whiny revolt, and David gives her a moralistic speech of nastiness. Then she learns that her aunt, sick in a nearby hospital, has died before she had time to visit because she’s been so busy. Cue regret, wishes, vague suicidal impulses, and a pudgy angel in a suit. Maddie gets to see a world in which she didn’t keep the agency open. The lives of the other characters are boring, and the writing attempts to make us believe that we should care, but no. They’re caricatures anyway, so being a different caricature

To even begin to entertain a serious discussion about the movie Santa Buddies , we must first explore the greater cinematic universe it inhabits, as well as the origins of that universe. And for that, we need to talk about Full House . Or more specifically, the star   of Full House , a golden retriever named Buddy. Buddy was a stray who was adopted and taught sports by his owner. He was so famous, he appeared on two shows starring Bob Saget, Full House and America's Funniest Home Videos . He even starred in a film adaptation of his life called  Air Bud . He died a few weeks after Air Bud 's sequel, but his legacy has endured. In total, there were two theatrical Air Bud movies, along with three direct-to-video sequels. Like most people, I haven't seen any of these movies, nor do I intend to. Rather than putting the franchise to sleep, Disney shifted the focus to the next generation. While I suspect the real Buddy was neutered, the theatrical version was more prol

This year, I am taking on The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries, a 674 page tome containing 59 individual stories about the Christmas season. Conveniently, it’s broken up into blog-post sized sections. This is section two. A Funny Little Christmas The Burglar and the Whatsit , Donald E. Westlake - Short and clever, got great style. Dancing Dan’s Christmas , Damon Runyon - Enjoyable. Nothing unexpected. A Visit from St. Nicholas , Ron Goulart - Cute style, decent use of irony. The Thieves Who Couldn’t Help Sneezing , Thomas Hardy - Solid tale, not really a mystery. Almost fairy tale style. Rumpole and the Spirit of Christmas , John Mortimer - Ugh. I guess youre supposed to enjoy the humor and ignore the horrid classism. A Reversible Santa Claus , Meredith Nicholson - Longest story so far, pretty enjoyable. These were mostly pretty fun, with a couple of exceptions. The Thomas Hardy piece was fine, I guess, but it was so different. It follows a man who is waylaid on the roa

Neither of us had actually, to our recollections, watched an episode of Moonlighting before today. Just to set a baseline. Our reactions: “That was really kind of good. Also dumb in bits, but quite enjoyable.” “Well, now I know why no one believed Bruce Willis would be an action star.” “I guess I see why it was so influential.” “Huh, the first episode was much better.” We’ve got two Christmas episodes to talk about, and yes, this first one was much better. It’s a good thing that the Netflix DVD sleeve explained that these characters run a private detective agency, because it is really hard to figure that out from this episode. The episode opens with the plot hook: a random dude gets killed by a bad guy he once testified against, but his wife and child escape. Said wife leaves her baby for safekeeping with no explanation in the apartment of a secretary who works for Maddie (Cybill Shepherd) and David (Bruce Willis). Said secretary brings the baby to work, and the main characters d

I'd like to begin with a thought experiment for those of you who haven't seen Home Alone 4 . I'm assuming that includes you, since - as far as I can tell - no one alive has actually seen this movie and only a handful have even heard of it. So then, imagine that, after the disappointing third installment  (which, to be fair, isn't really much worse than the first two), the Home Alone franchise didn't disappear entirely. Imagine instead that the IP transitioned to a made-for-TV movie aired on ABC. Now imagine that the character of Kevin McCallister, the protagonist from the original two, returned, albeit recast, along with every other character. Now ask yourself, how bad would you expect this to be? How abysmally awful, how utterly vapid, how monumentally stupid do you think a movie like that would be? What you're picturing right now is what we'll call, "The Expectation." Before we go on, you'll have to lower that expectation. Before we g