CHRISTMAS AT CARTWRIGHT'S
An angel delivers the possibility of romance to a single mother working as a department store Santa.
(I am aware that I promised this event to begin yesterday, but other obligations got in the way and I was unable to start the festivities until today. This merely bumps up the schedule by one day, with things wrapping up on Christmas Day with a final review as well as a new podcast.)
Gender-bent Santa Claus. That's pretty progressive, right? Christmas At Cartwright's follows a single mother named Nicky (Alicia Witt) as she struggles to find work around the holidays, while trying to raise her precocious daughter whose name I forget. Becky? I think it's Becky.
Becky finds a coin with character actor Wallace Shawn's face on it, and she just assumes he's an angel sent from Heaven to help her mother fall in love with some random guy named Bill, which is assuming quite a bit if you ask me. After an unsuccessful job interview at the prestigious Cartwright's Department Store (open since 1911!), she finds herself stranded in the employees only area, and Wallace Shawn locks her in a dressing room until she agrees to dress up as Santa Claus and entertain all the little children who come into the store until Christmas Eve.
That's how she gets her job as the store's resident Santa Claus impersonator. She never turns in a résumé, and all of her coworkers just assume she's a dude, so I don't know how the woman is getting paid, but I guess the angel just took care of all the important details. And believe it or not, she falls in love with the head of the men's department, some empty suit named Bill. Seriously, I don't know if the movie ever shows this guy outside of a three-piece suit. It seems to be his one defining trait. That and the fact that his ex-girlfriend cheated on him, which is a running joke. This love interest has about as much personality as the mannequins in the department store.
And how does anybody confuse Alicia Witt for a man in that ridiculous Santa costume? No Santa Claus wears that much mascara, and the lip gloss seems like another dead giveaway. Not to mention her pathetic "man voice", which is about as convincing as a little girl doing an impression of her father in front of her friends during a sleepover. But I guess the angel took care of all that as well, making everybody in close proximity to "Santa Nicky" a blind cretin. He also apparently gave her psychic powers, because she knows exactly what every child who sits on her lap wants for Christmas, even divulging creepy details about their personal lives that would alarm any concerned parent in a regular movie, but this is a magical Christmas movie, so it's all good.
How do I know it's magical? Nicky's daughter willingly spends her recess periods at school with her teacher, who is tutoring the girl with her spelling, all so she can surprise her mother by reading her a story on Christmas Eve. That doesn't happen in real life.
You know how this plays out. It's a very simple formula, after all. Everybody loves the new Santa, then she's found out to be a cross dresser and she gets fired, then everybody realizes that they're okay with a cross dressing Santa, she gets her job back, and she finds her true love in Bill, as a viewer your heart fills with joy, and then the story ends, because absolutely nobody cares about what happens next.
That's Christmas At Cartwright's, and there's really not much to say about it. Is it any good? I suppose so. I never felt terribly insulted while watching the movie, and it even made me chuckle a few times, which is a point in its favor. It would have been nice if the script bothered to flesh out any of the characters beyond rough sketches, but films of this variety, shot quick and cheap to provide an infusion of the old "warm and fuzzies", are routinely made in this slipshod fashion, sacrificing character development for saccharine manipulation.
That just comes with the territory when you're watching made-for-television family movies on upper-tier cable and/or satellite networks, so I can't fault these movies for following the formula. Of course the fact that myself and millions of other people have come to expect two-dimensional characters in these movies is another, very sad fact of life, but that's an issue for another day.
The movie's okay. Perfectly fine, non-offensive, middle of the road family entertainment. If you can get past the fact that Alicia Witt is the world's least convincing Santa Claus, then Christmas At Cartwright's will serve as a fine distraction.
Becky finds a coin with character actor Wallace Shawn's face on it, and she just assumes he's an angel sent from Heaven to help her mother fall in love with some random guy named Bill, which is assuming quite a bit if you ask me. After an unsuccessful job interview at the prestigious Cartwright's Department Store (open since 1911!), she finds herself stranded in the employees only area, and Wallace Shawn locks her in a dressing room until she agrees to dress up as Santa Claus and entertain all the little children who come into the store until Christmas Eve.
That's how she gets her job as the store's resident Santa Claus impersonator. She never turns in a résumé, and all of her coworkers just assume she's a dude, so I don't know how the woman is getting paid, but I guess the angel just took care of all the important details. And believe it or not, she falls in love with the head of the men's department, some empty suit named Bill. Seriously, I don't know if the movie ever shows this guy outside of a three-piece suit. It seems to be his one defining trait. That and the fact that his ex-girlfriend cheated on him, which is a running joke. This love interest has about as much personality as the mannequins in the department store.
And how does anybody confuse Alicia Witt for a man in that ridiculous Santa costume? No Santa Claus wears that much mascara, and the lip gloss seems like another dead giveaway. Not to mention her pathetic "man voice", which is about as convincing as a little girl doing an impression of her father in front of her friends during a sleepover. But I guess the angel took care of all that as well, making everybody in close proximity to "Santa Nicky" a blind cretin. He also apparently gave her psychic powers, because she knows exactly what every child who sits on her lap wants for Christmas, even divulging creepy details about their personal lives that would alarm any concerned parent in a regular movie, but this is a magical Christmas movie, so it's all good.
How do I know it's magical? Nicky's daughter willingly spends her recess periods at school with her teacher, who is tutoring the girl with her spelling, all so she can surprise her mother by reading her a story on Christmas Eve. That doesn't happen in real life.
You know how this plays out. It's a very simple formula, after all. Everybody loves the new Santa, then she's found out to be a cross dresser and she gets fired, then everybody realizes that they're okay with a cross dressing Santa, she gets her job back, and she finds her true love in Bill, as a viewer your heart fills with joy, and then the story ends, because absolutely nobody cares about what happens next.
That's Christmas At Cartwright's, and there's really not much to say about it. Is it any good? I suppose so. I never felt terribly insulted while watching the movie, and it even made me chuckle a few times, which is a point in its favor. It would have been nice if the script bothered to flesh out any of the characters beyond rough sketches, but films of this variety, shot quick and cheap to provide an infusion of the old "warm and fuzzies", are routinely made in this slipshod fashion, sacrificing character development for saccharine manipulation.
That just comes with the territory when you're watching made-for-television family movies on upper-tier cable and/or satellite networks, so I can't fault these movies for following the formula. Of course the fact that myself and millions of other people have come to expect two-dimensional characters in these movies is another, very sad fact of life, but that's an issue for another day.
The movie's okay. Perfectly fine, non-offensive, middle of the road family entertainment. If you can get past the fact that Alicia Witt is the world's least convincing Santa Claus, then Christmas At Cartwright's will serve as a fine distraction.
Verdict: NICE
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