Mainlining Christmas

The only thing we knew about the animated show PJ Masks before turning on this episode was that it has a lot of toys targeted at the preschool set. The premise is that three kids turn into animal-themed superheroes at night (once they don the pajamas of the title) and defeat super-villain kids while learning simplistic morals. It's based on a series of French picture books, and the show is a collaboration between Canadian and French animation companies and is distributed in the U.S. by Disney. It's visually and structurally somewhat reminiscent of  Super Why . Each 15-minute story has a clear moral from the beginning and a repetitive structure that will have some kids yelling at the characters in frustration. In Gekko Saves Christmas, the villain Luna Girl is stealing all the Christmas decorations and presents. Catboy and Owlette easily stall the villain several times, but they need Gekko to take her hoverboard. He's too frightened of failing to really try to stay o

You know what I want? More than anything? I want a cut of this episode where every time they cue up the laugh track, we instead hear sounds of people weeping. Sobbing. Pleading for mercy. Because I honestly think that would be far more synchronous. It's what we, as the audience, are feeling after all. This episode was set in season six of the show, and I found it far more trying than the one we watched from season 2 (which was already pretty awful). The central plot seems to revolve around DJ and her high school boyfriend, Steve, who's just been accepted into a crappy college in Florida. That's all the way across the country, which leaves DJ shaken. He's excited, since it means he actually got into a school, but she's convinced it means he's not serious about their relationship. This escalates when he gives her a sweatshirt bearing the school's name for Christmas. Meanwhile, she spent a fortune on a leather coat he wanted. They have a fight, he accus

This was tough. Here's the thing - this is bad. Really bad, even. But, if I'm being totally honest, it was slightly less awful than I expected. That doesn't mean I liked it. In fact, I hated it. But I think I understand why the show caught on. This was, in short, quite a bit better than the episode of the rebooted "Fuller House" we saw earlier. That's not thanks to the writing. Although this one at least had some structure (Fuller House couldn't even manage that), the jokes were flat, and the emotional beats were hollow. It wasn't the characters, either - there was nothing about them that was in the least bit rounded. But... and it kills me to even give them this... I think this was well cast. DJ and Stephanie, in particular, were able to hit their marks (again, more than I can say for their counterparts in the new series), and the two actresses were adorable. The adult actors also managed to come off as somewhat charming, despite that the di

Krampusnacht: Twelve Nights of Krampus Edited by Kate Wolford, 2014 Premise: Twelve short stories about Krampus. Variously known as the Christmas demon, the punisher of naughty children, and the star of several recent horror movies, Krampus has been having a bit of a moment recently. Anthologies are generally hit and miss, and in attempting to please many tastes, this one definitely had some misses for me. It starts fairly strong. "Prodigious" by Elizabeth Twist straddles myth and contemporary fiction tropes decently with a young man who plays Krampus at a toy store. "The Wicked Child" by Elise Forier Edie follows with something akin to a fairy tale, blending aspects of St Nicholas and Black Peter. "Marching Krampus" by Jill Corddry was not short or funny enough for its thin "bratty sibling revenge" concept. "Peppermint Sticks" by Colleen H. Robbins has some strong ideas about a darker interpretation of Christmas elves, bu

If you're not familiar with Funko's line of Pop! figures, it's probably been a while since you've stepped foot in a Hot Topic. Or Barnes & Noble. Toys R Us, Target, Gamestop, Walmart, Walgreens... these things are everywhere. Usually in large numbers, too. These are vinyl figures, which is different than normal plastic for reasons that after fifteen years of collecting toys as an adult, I still don't remotely understand. They're stylized to look cartoonish and fairly uniform. The toy line stretches across more properties than I can count - if it is or has been part of pop culture in the past three decades, there's a very good chance it's been made as a Pop! figure (possibly with a dozen or so variants). As a rule of thumb, I don't pick these up. There's too many to bother with, and while I like the look of them well enough, they're not really the sort of thing I go after. I made an exception when I heard they were making this one,

Saving Santa is a 2013 direct-to-DVD computer animated movie that's something of a paradox. I suppose that's appropriate, since the movie is about "a time-traveling elf," but that's not the kind of paradox I'm referring to - I'm talking about the writing, which is at once utter crap and impressively nuanced. More on that in a moment. First, the plot. Bernard D. Elf, astonishingly only the second-worst-named character in this movie, wakes up late for an appointment showing off his new invention to the North Pole's tech company. He races across town and gets them to watch, but in the process momentarily blacks out the elf city's power. The time the grid's down is just enough for Neville Baddington (and that'd be #1) and his evil package delivery company to determine the cloaked location of Santa's operation. Unaware they're on their way, Bernard heads to his day job, shoveling reindeer dung out of Santa's stables.

A Christmas Prince is Netflix's new tween-friendly movie that proves the internet giant is capable of competing in the crappy made-for-TV realm typically dominated by Hallmark. Personally, I kept hoping a few characters from  A Princess for Christmas  would show up in cameos, but no dice. Maybe they can make a sequel where their nations go to war or something - I hear shared cinematic universes are all the rage these days. You should be able to figure out at least sixty percent of the movie from the title, but I'll throw you a bone. The movie opens to a montage of New York just before Christmas. I often find myself wondering if there are film companies that send people out every time it's snowing in Manhattan in December and start filming for the sole purpose of selling that footage to productions looking for generic shots of flakes falling in Rockefeller Plaza. There must be, right? Amber, the movie's protagonist, dreams of one day making it big, but for the tim