Just Another Christmas (2020)
So, this is what, at least some of, the Hallmark-style Christmas movie should be, and could be if they were created by people making an effort, for audiences with basic standards and realistic expectations of being entertained. With what, I imagine, was a fairly low budget, Just Another Christmas succeeds because it’s well written, professionally directed, and acted by actors and actresses actually, you know, acting. It doesn’t assume its’ audience consists of easily entertained pre-programmed performative consumers willing to ooh and aah over what they should, and deep down do, know is dreck, to the point of claiming that’s its’ crass cheesiness is what they like about it.
This Brazilian, mostly comedy, takes the familiar Groundhog Day trope and plays around with it in inventive ways. The film starts out as a well-made but formulaic farce before morphing into a far more interesting film. This may well be the Citizen Kane of Groundhog Day holiday romances.
Just Another Christmas came out last year and I probably missed it while suffering through Return to a Royal Christmas Wedding at Pemberly Part III; Gingerbread Miracle Angels on Ice. Never again.
Home For Christmas (2020/2021)
Norwegian awkward, po-mo, soapy rom-com that’s not as clever as it thinks you’ll think it is, though it is fairly well crafted for what it is, which isn’t much. It’s as if Showtime did a Hallmark. Not really my thing.
I made it through the first season but bailed early on in season two. I just couldn’t care less about anything that what going on. Your mileage may vary.
A Christmas Carol (1949)
This may be the closest we’ll get to witnessing a Victorian provincial touring company version of Ebenezer Scrooge, as character actor Taylor Holmes (who debuted on the stage in 1900) chews, swallows, digests, and regurgitates the scenery in an occasionally preposterous performance. Only the reassuring presence of narrator Vincent Price keeps affairs from veering entirely towards the ridiculous.
As corny as this heavily condensed early TV version may be, I still unspool it at least once or twice each season, that’s the strength of the combination of Price and Dickens
Duck the Halls: A Mickey Mouse Cartoon Special (2016)
Loved the backgrounds, hated the character designs (which verge on the grotesque at times), annoyed by the script, irritated by the voice acting.
Pet peeve alert
There are countless hours of footage, and hundreds (probably thousands) of pages, of Donald and Daisy doing wintery things in winter but in this current climate of retcons, reinventions, multiverses and deconstruction we’re meant to accept that they always migrate south for winter and Donald has never experienced the holidays. And not just Donald but none of the various related waterfowl in the Disney cannon.
I don’t expect strict continuity between cartoons let alone over decades but that’s just dumb, and avoidable. Just say Daisy likes wintering in Miami and Donald misses celebrating a trad Christmas with the rest of the crew and everything's fine. But the sheer hubris of writers these days essentially hijacking IP, admittedly at the behest of dismal Disney corporate drones, as if the characters weren't already fully, and in this case, perfectly formed and awkwardly forcing them out of character for ... reasons.
End of rant
I’m glad my kids were grown by the time this aired. I wish I cold peel the layers of animation off and just let the backgrounds run with the sound off.
Dr. Seuss’ The Grinch Musical (2020)
Theater people. There’s a reason they used to run them out of town.
It’s like a community theater kid’s program mutation of Cats (the movie!) and The Star Wars Holiday Special. Kill it, kill it with a flaming plum pudding or drop a roast beast on its’ head. Just make it stop and make those responsible understand that this sort of thing can never happen again. Take in all the way to the Hague if necessary.
The Walton’s Homecoming (2021)
Well, at least they didn’t make it a musical.
Not an improvement on the original in anyway, except perhaps for the families living conditions which have definitely taken a upward turn from the original. Everything is spacious and clean and, despite talk of the depression, there’s little evidence of actual hardship. The script has been re-written as to blunt the impact of the parts of the story it’s kept while adding nothing of merit in the new bits.
One very nice touch is that the film features an introduction and narration from original John-Boy Richard Thomas, I was hoping for a bit more quality and authenticity, seeing as it has real connections to the original. It’s certainly being tilted towards appealing to the CW’s core audience, but not so much as to be off-putting.
I imagine, if you haven’t seen 1971's Homecoming A Christmas Story, this will seem at least passable but, in comparison to the original it’s a noticeable step down. However, it’s also probably the most wholesome drama The CW has aired in some time so there’s something to be grateful for in that.
In the end it wasn’t at all bad, it does have some merits - in following the original to a decent degree and featuring more good than merely passable performances - and I didn’t have to hate watch it, as I feared I might. But, if I have a hankering for the story again next year, I'll be going back to 1971 to get it.
