Mainlining Christmas

Last year we made time to review a decent number of Hallmark holiday movies and found the recent entries quite a bit better on average than we expected. The best of the bunch was Hanukkah on Rye , a delightful classic romantic comedy I found funny and sweet. The movie received a bit of backlash due to what some viewers felt were stereotypes  but otherwise seemed to be well received, so it's not too surprising to see a new entry this year. What is surprising is the premise: rather than play it safe with another straightforward romcom, Round and Round is a time loop movie in the vein of Groundhog Day or Palm Springs, both of which are namechecked and discussed by characters in Round and Round as they try to figure out the temporal disturbance at the movie's core. I'll cut to the chase and reveal I don't think Round and Round is in quite the same league as its predecessor, but it's nevertheless a solid TV movie and - largely by default - probably the second-best Hanukk...

Here's another parent review for y'all. At some point earlier this year, my daughter decided that she was interested in the Minnie's Bow-Toons shorts that are available on Disney+. And I discovered that there's a whole dang animated Disney Junior universe. As far as I can tell, first there was a popular animated show for preschoolers about Mickey Mouse and friends called Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. Minnie's Bow-Toons is a series of shorts spinning off of that show. But after the original MMC stopped airing, it was retooled and returned as a new show in a similar style: Mickey Mouse Roadster Racers, which ran for two seasons before the format was changed again and it was renamed Mickey Mouse Mixed-Up Adventures. This spawned more sets of spin-off shorts, including new seasons of Bow-Toons, now called Minnie's Bow-Toons: Party Palace Pals. The latest season of Bow-Toons, Camp Minnie, changes up its format even further to focus on outdoor activities. There are even mor...

Despite not having a particularly complicated plot or premise, Sun Valley Serenade is the kind of movie that you almost have to see to believe. I say "almost" because, while there's a lot to like here, some dated stylistic elements hold it back from crossing that line into unconditional recommendation territory. It comes close, mainly thanks to the mid-movie sequences in which... well.... Okay, here's the thing: this movie occupies a very unusual place on the spectrum of movies best seen unspoiled. There's a delightful twist in tone and point of view that's entirely unintentional. Audiences in 1941 were already in on something that those watching eight decades later won't be, and it recontextualizes the movie in some fascinating ways. So, if you're a really big fan of romantic comedies from this era and have a high tolerance for musical numbers that are mostly video recordings of famous performers playing instruments (a substantial portion of this movi...

Often regarded as one of the worst, if not the worst, American sitcoms in history, My Mother the Car ran for thirty episodes between 1965 and 1966. The premise of the show is that the main character, David Crabtree (played by Jerry Van Dyke, the younger brother of Dick Van Dyke), discovers his dead mother has been reincarnated in the form of a 1928 Porter who talks to him through the radio when no one else is around. I should add this was written and produced by some of the greatest legends in television history - Allan Burns and Chris Hayward created the show, and James L. Brooks wrote for it. As explained by Burns in this clip , the series was envisioned as a satire of the sub-genre of '60s sitcoms built around an absurd fantasy gimmick (think Mister Ed or Bewitched), but something went wrong and the satirical elements were lost in production. In that interview, Burns blames it on the show becoming too cute, but I think the issue was intrinsic to the premise. The shows they were ...

While it's admittedly 1939's second-best Christmas movie about a woman down on her luck finding an abandoned baby that winds up changing her life for the better, Miracle on Main Street is still a solid, albeit weird, little film with notably progressive undertones. Moreover, those undertones are different than the likewise progressive ideas expressed in Bachelor Mother , the other film with that premise released the same year. But then there's actually a great deal separating them, starting with genre. Miracle on Main Street is a drama, a fact that does hinder its longevity - I'm finding comedies I'm seeing from the 1930s generally hold up, while dramas tend to feel dated. This stars an actress simply billed as "Margo," (her birth name was María Marguerita Guadalupe Teresa Estela Bolado Castilla y O'Donnell, so I can understand wanting to simplify it for film) who's pretty interesting herself. Born in Mexico, she moved to the US and worked began a ...

This movie should be much better known. Repeat Performance is a holiday fantasy/noir from 1947 about a woman who just killed her husband in self-defense at midnight on New Year's, wishes to relive the past year to change her destiny, and finds her wish is granted by the magic of the season only to learn that while the paths of fate can be traversed differently, the destination will always be the same. I don't feel too bad spoiling this, because the movie kicks off with Twilight Zone-esque narration that more or less spells all this out. So, this is basically a post-war fatalism entry for the holidays. Again, why in hell am I only just hearing about this now?!!! Okay, I can probably shed a little light on that now. First, if you're not thinking about the thematic and historical significance the holidays lend the movie, it's easy to gloss over them, as well as how much of the movie is actually set during the season. Second, the movie has some pacing issues: it drags a bit...

Christmas Holiday William Somerset Maugham, 1939 I had been reading a number of brand new holiday books that feel as though the authors hope they'll be turned into movies, so I felt like switching gears to try a much older book that was actually adapted for film. If you read our review of the movie , you may remember that Erin mentioned that a lot of aspects were changed in the adaptation. The largest is that in the movie, the main female character gets the most emotional development, and her story, told mostly in flashback to the ostensible point-of-view lead, gets the most screen time.  The novel, on the other hand, actually has a main character. Charley Mason is not an American GI with anger issues, but a British dilettante. His wealthy parents have pretensions of being knowledgeable about art, and at one time he wanted to be an artist himself. At the time of the novel, he's been talked out of that, and instead, he has been preparing to take over his father's safe, sensi...