(Apologies in advance for the Jennifer Beals-related hijacking that takes place in the following article. Even though you should really be thanking me for exposing you to the most angelic smile this world has ever known, so I take it back. No apologies. Instead: you're welcome.)
(And no, this isn't creepy. Is it? No. No, it's not at all creepy. It's a purely innocent display of affection with no disturbing sexual undertones whatsoever. Enjoy it.)
THE NIGHT BEFORE THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS
A family must save Christmas when Santa Claus lands on the roof and loses his magic bundle.
I don't get this movie. I just don't get it. Let's start with that title. The Night Before The Night Before Christmas. So December 23rd, then? What an incredibly awkward title. It's not necessarily a bad title, just unwieldy. It's big and awkward, and it makes me very uncomfortable for reasons I can't quite explain. But as I said, it's not bad.
You wanna hear a bad title? 'Tis The Season For Love. That, my friends, is a bad title. Just fucking awful. You see that title, and you hear it in your head, in that goofy, insipid TV voiceover style that just makes you cringe. 'Tis the season... for love! And that's a real movie. It's so real, you guys, and it's recently premiered on the Hallmark Channel. I'm not going to watch it, however, because that title alone makes me want to punch orphaned baby elephants in the face, so I've chosen to avoid that particular "entertainment", at least for this year.
I should be talking about The Night Before The Night Before Christmas, I know. So I guess I'll start doing that now. This movie was directed by James Orr, and that name might not mean anything to you, but it means a little something to me. This guy co-wrote (with his long-time partner Jim Cruickshank) Mr. Destiny, a film I watched maybe fifty times when I was a kid. I just couldn't get enough of this damned movie. I adored it. Why? I never really gave it much thought, to be honest. It wasn't a great movie, not by any means. But I could watch it frequently, and it never wore out its welcome for me. But why? The performances are good all around, but nobody in this cast was going to win any awards for acting in Mr. Destiny. The film was directed well enough, not flashy at all, but not just a perfunctory "point-and-shoot" production. It's never boring, and it never loses my interest.
I suppose you'd have to call it "cinematic comfort food", right? Something you can just watch and not have to really engage with, not if you don't want to. You can just let the story unfold and enjoy it without reservation. There's no need for analysis, and no place for ambiguity. Mr. Destiny is just a straight-forward good time.
But it's more than that. What if? That's the question behind the film. What if we made a different choice a little earlier in our lives? How would that one choice affect the rest of our lives? What if we actually could go back and make that choice differently? Would we want to? Would we be prepared for the potential consequences of that altered choice? Those questions have fascinated and haunted me ever since the first time I saw Mr. Destiny. It's so funny to me that such a seemingly ephemeral 25 year-old little comedy that hardly anybody remembers would be the catalyst for years of introspective thought.
If I had Larry Burrows' chance to drink the Spilt Milk and alter my destiny, would I? I've asked myself that question many times since my first viewing, and sometimes the answer is "yes", and sometimes it's "no". These days, it's unequivocally yes.
James Orr made Mr. Destiny, and I'll always be thankful to him for that. He also co-wrote 3 Men And A Baby, but that's not important. You know what is important? Well, not The Night Before The Night Before Christmas, but who really cares? This movie stars Jennifer Beals, also known as "that woman with the most amazing smile anyone has ever seen in a motion picture". Is it just me? Am I the only one who feels this way? Her smile is vibrant, and it always has been. That's a detail that's stuck with me throughout my life. Look at it!
That singular smile was burned into my brain at a very early age, when I first saw Flashdance on HBO. I didn't remember jack shit about that movie for years. The plot? Gone. The characters? Nope. That smile? Oh yes. I didn't even know the actress's name until I was a teenager, because I never saw her in anything else until I watched Vampire's Kiss shortly after my 14th birthday.
Seeing Jennifer Beals smile in that film brought it all back. It was like a door suddenly opened in my head, and my brain was overwhelmed by golden sunlight. That smile was just a part of my psyche for years growing up, floating around in my thoughts without context like the Cheshire Cat's disembodied grin, and having it appear again in this movie I'd never seen before brought back a flood of fuzzy, half-imagined memories of this movie about a lady welder with a passion for the art of the dance. I didn't remember the movie's title, but found a copy of Flashdance at my local video store a week late and recognized the images on the back of the box. So I rented it, fully expecting to be blown away by this surely amazing motion picture.
Spoiler alert: I didn't really like Flashdance. At the time, I was surely let down by the lack of nudity, being a horny teenager. Sure, there was a bit of bared skin in the film, but not from Jennifer Beals, which directly contradicted my warped memories of her character moonlighting as a stripper to earn extra money to pay for dancing school. I didn't remember all the goofy interpretive dance sequences that made absolutely no sense to me. And I didn't give a shit about any of the characters, except for the dog. A few years later I even discovered that Jennifer Beals wasn't really dancing in the film's major sequences, which left me terribly disillusioned. The movie lied to me!
But I couldn't stay mad at Jennifer Beals. I couldn't stay mad at that smile. She kept popping up in stuff I watched throughout the 1990's, like The Search For One-Eye Jimmy, Devil In A Blue Dress, and Turbulence 2: Fear Of Flying, I wasn't watching these movies because Jennifer Beals was in them; that was purely coincidence. She was just in a lot of the movies I was going to watch anyway. Then she just slipped off my radar around ten years ago. She stopped showing up in the movies I was watching. She was still working, but I don't think I saw her in anything else until The Book Of Eli in 2010. And after that, I didn't see her again until this morning, when I started watching The Night Before The Night Before Christmas, which was also originally released in 2010.
I still don't get this movie. I don't know how to feel about it. It begins with Santa Claus leaving his melting-candle acid trip North Pole home on Christmas Eve, saying goodbye to his dear wife and his elf, Nigel Thumb. I say "his elf", because, much like in Santa Jr., this movie didn't have the budget to hire more than one little person to play an elf. As Santa's sleigh disappears into the endless night, Thumb realizes that he, being a complete fucking moron, accidentally sent the big guy out on his appointed rounds a full 24 early, having consulted the wrong datebook as he prepared the yearly toy-delivery schedule. That's seriously how the plot is set in motion. Santa's only elf forgets what year it is, and sends his boss out early.
And being early, the Christmas magic (once again, just like Santa Jr.) doesn't work properly when it's not Christmastime, so Santa's sleigh just falls out of the sky somewhere over Michigan, crash landing on the roof of the Fox family's house. The Fox family is... somewhat dysfunctional, with the parents often too busy with their demanding jobs to pay attention to their two kids, who just want a little attention every now and then. And their lives are turned upside-down with the unexpected arrival of good old St. Nick on their doorstep, all fucked up from falling 10,000 feet on his malfunctioning sleigh.
This family reacts in an eerily placid manner to this development, letting the unconscious Claus crash on their sofa and not calling the authorities, which literally anybody in a similar situation would do. This guy was probably trying to break into their house, and he can't wake up, so he at least needs a doctor, and the police wouldn't hurt. But no, these people just stare at the battered old man until he wakes up the next morning, with amnesia. Because of course he has amnesia.
So do they call an ambulance now? No. Instead the parents allow their young son to indulge in his fantasy that this strange man is the actual Santa Claus, and that he just needs somebody to jog his memory. Then Thumb shows up on their doorstep, fretting like nobody's business, and the rest of the movie primarily deals with the Fox family helping a brain-damaged stranger and his midget friend find a big red bag full of toys, while also learning a thing or two about the importance of family over their increasingly hectic professional careers, and maybe they even catch a bit of that Christmas spirit that's been going around.
In the end, Santa Claus gets his groove back just in time for Christmas, and the Foxes celebrate saving the day by throwing a private little holiday party, finally setting aside the time to just be a family for a while.
The Night Before The Night Before Christmas is fine. It's fine. Really, it's fine. I enjoyed it. I still don't know what to make of it, but I do know that I liked it. The plot is just so oddly inert to be truly compelling, spending far too much time accomplishing nothing in a perfectly amiable manner. At least a full hour of this movie is pure filler. The cast spends too much time at each location in their search for Santa's magic bag (heh), just kind of loitering for a few extra minutes until the story just arbitrarily moves forward. And this is after the first half of the movie wastes far too much time in the Fox family home, with the kids and Thumb exposing the amnesiac Claus to various Christmas-themed ephemera in an effort to jog the old man's memory.
There's no real villain in the film, and no great external threats to overcome, aside from Santa's amnesia, which is really treated more like a minor nuisance than anything major. Nobody just seems terribly concerned about Santa's missing memories, except for Thumb, and even then only in fits and starts. I think my primary concern with The Night Before The Night Before Christmas is that it all feels so harmless.
Santa crash-landed in Michigan and can't remember anything! Eh. His magic bag is missing, and if we can't find it then Christmas will be ruined!
Eh.
Little Billy Fox feels so lonely and neglected because his parents seem to care more about their careers than their own children!
Eh.
Little Jessica would rather spend her Christmas celebrating with her friend's family because at least Becky's parents actually make time for their kids!
Eh.
There's nothing to this movie. It's watchable. It's even enjoyable. It's fine. But it's only fine. As I said, I liked The Night Before The Night Before Christmas. I don't regret watching it. But I just don't get it. I don't get this movie. I don't get you, TNBTNBC.
VERDICT: NICE
I don't get this movie. I just don't get it. Let's start with that title. The Night Before The Night Before Christmas. So December 23rd, then? What an incredibly awkward title. It's not necessarily a bad title, just unwieldy. It's big and awkward, and it makes me very uncomfortable for reasons I can't quite explain. But as I said, it's not bad.
You wanna hear a bad title? 'Tis The Season For Love. That, my friends, is a bad title. Just fucking awful. You see that title, and you hear it in your head, in that goofy, insipid TV voiceover style that just makes you cringe. 'Tis the season... for love! And that's a real movie. It's so real, you guys, and it's recently premiered on the Hallmark Channel. I'm not going to watch it, however, because that title alone makes me want to punch orphaned baby elephants in the face, so I've chosen to avoid that particular "entertainment", at least for this year.
I should be talking about The Night Before The Night Before Christmas, I know. So I guess I'll start doing that now. This movie was directed by James Orr, and that name might not mean anything to you, but it means a little something to me. This guy co-wrote (with his long-time partner Jim Cruickshank) Mr. Destiny, a film I watched maybe fifty times when I was a kid. I just couldn't get enough of this damned movie. I adored it. Why? I never really gave it much thought, to be honest. It wasn't a great movie, not by any means. But I could watch it frequently, and it never wore out its welcome for me. But why? The performances are good all around, but nobody in this cast was going to win any awards for acting in Mr. Destiny. The film was directed well enough, not flashy at all, but not just a perfunctory "point-and-shoot" production. It's never boring, and it never loses my interest.
I suppose you'd have to call it "cinematic comfort food", right? Something you can just watch and not have to really engage with, not if you don't want to. You can just let the story unfold and enjoy it without reservation. There's no need for analysis, and no place for ambiguity. Mr. Destiny is just a straight-forward good time.
But it's more than that. What if? That's the question behind the film. What if we made a different choice a little earlier in our lives? How would that one choice affect the rest of our lives? What if we actually could go back and make that choice differently? Would we want to? Would we be prepared for the potential consequences of that altered choice? Those questions have fascinated and haunted me ever since the first time I saw Mr. Destiny. It's so funny to me that such a seemingly ephemeral 25 year-old little comedy that hardly anybody remembers would be the catalyst for years of introspective thought.
If I had Larry Burrows' chance to drink the Spilt Milk and alter my destiny, would I? I've asked myself that question many times since my first viewing, and sometimes the answer is "yes", and sometimes it's "no". These days, it's unequivocally yes.
James Orr made Mr. Destiny, and I'll always be thankful to him for that. He also co-wrote 3 Men And A Baby, but that's not important. You know what is important? Well, not The Night Before The Night Before Christmas, but who really cares? This movie stars Jennifer Beals, also known as "that woman with the most amazing smile anyone has ever seen in a motion picture". Is it just me? Am I the only one who feels this way? Her smile is vibrant, and it always has been. That's a detail that's stuck with me throughout my life. Look at it!
 |
| It's like watching the sun rise in the east... |
That singular smile was burned into my brain at a very early age, when I first saw Flashdance on HBO. I didn't remember jack shit about that movie for years. The plot? Gone. The characters? Nope. That smile? Oh yes. I didn't even know the actress's name until I was a teenager, because I never saw her in anything else until I watched Vampire's Kiss shortly after my 14th birthday.
Seeing Jennifer Beals smile in that film brought it all back. It was like a door suddenly opened in my head, and my brain was overwhelmed by golden sunlight. That smile was just a part of my psyche for years growing up, floating around in my thoughts without context like the Cheshire Cat's disembodied grin, and having it appear again in this movie I'd never seen before brought back a flood of fuzzy, half-imagined memories of this movie about a lady welder with a passion for the art of the dance. I didn't remember the movie's title, but found a copy of Flashdance at my local video store a week late and recognized the images on the back of the box. So I rented it, fully expecting to be blown away by this surely amazing motion picture.
Spoiler alert: I didn't really like Flashdance. At the time, I was surely let down by the lack of nudity, being a horny teenager. Sure, there was a bit of bared skin in the film, but not from Jennifer Beals, which directly contradicted my warped memories of her character moonlighting as a stripper to earn extra money to pay for dancing school. I didn't remember all the goofy interpretive dance sequences that made absolutely no sense to me. And I didn't give a shit about any of the characters, except for the dog. A few years later I even discovered that Jennifer Beals wasn't really dancing in the film's major sequences, which left me terribly disillusioned. The movie lied to me!
But I couldn't stay mad at Jennifer Beals. I couldn't stay mad at that smile. She kept popping up in stuff I watched throughout the 1990's, like The Search For One-Eye Jimmy, Devil In A Blue Dress, and Turbulence 2: Fear Of Flying, I wasn't watching these movies because Jennifer Beals was in them; that was purely coincidence. She was just in a lot of the movies I was going to watch anyway. Then she just slipped off my radar around ten years ago. She stopped showing up in the movies I was watching. She was still working, but I don't think I saw her in anything else until The Book Of Eli in 2010. And after that, I didn't see her again until this morning, when I started watching The Night Before The Night Before Christmas, which was also originally released in 2010.
I still don't get this movie. I don't know how to feel about it. It begins with Santa Claus leaving his melting-candle acid trip North Pole home on Christmas Eve, saying goodbye to his dear wife and his elf, Nigel Thumb. I say "his elf", because, much like in Santa Jr., this movie didn't have the budget to hire more than one little person to play an elf. As Santa's sleigh disappears into the endless night, Thumb realizes that he, being a complete fucking moron, accidentally sent the big guy out on his appointed rounds a full 24 early, having consulted the wrong datebook as he prepared the yearly toy-delivery schedule. That's seriously how the plot is set in motion. Santa's only elf forgets what year it is, and sends his boss out early.
And being early, the Christmas magic (once again, just like Santa Jr.) doesn't work properly when it's not Christmastime, so Santa's sleigh just falls out of the sky somewhere over Michigan, crash landing on the roof of the Fox family's house. The Fox family is... somewhat dysfunctional, with the parents often too busy with their demanding jobs to pay attention to their two kids, who just want a little attention every now and then. And their lives are turned upside-down with the unexpected arrival of good old St. Nick on their doorstep, all fucked up from falling 10,000 feet on his malfunctioning sleigh.
This family reacts in an eerily placid manner to this development, letting the unconscious Claus crash on their sofa and not calling the authorities, which literally anybody in a similar situation would do. This guy was probably trying to break into their house, and he can't wake up, so he at least needs a doctor, and the police wouldn't hurt. But no, these people just stare at the battered old man until he wakes up the next morning, with amnesia. Because of course he has amnesia.
So do they call an ambulance now? No. Instead the parents allow their young son to indulge in his fantasy that this strange man is the actual Santa Claus, and that he just needs somebody to jog his memory. Then Thumb shows up on their doorstep, fretting like nobody's business, and the rest of the movie primarily deals with the Fox family helping a brain-damaged stranger and his midget friend find a big red bag full of toys, while also learning a thing or two about the importance of family over their increasingly hectic professional careers, and maybe they even catch a bit of that Christmas spirit that's been going around.
In the end, Santa Claus gets his groove back just in time for Christmas, and the Foxes celebrate saving the day by throwing a private little holiday party, finally setting aside the time to just be a family for a while.
The Night Before The Night Before Christmas is fine. It's fine. Really, it's fine. I enjoyed it. I still don't know what to make of it, but I do know that I liked it. The plot is just so oddly inert to be truly compelling, spending far too much time accomplishing nothing in a perfectly amiable manner. At least a full hour of this movie is pure filler. The cast spends too much time at each location in their search for Santa's magic bag (heh), just kind of loitering for a few extra minutes until the story just arbitrarily moves forward. And this is after the first half of the movie wastes far too much time in the Fox family home, with the kids and Thumb exposing the amnesiac Claus to various Christmas-themed ephemera in an effort to jog the old man's memory.
There's no real villain in the film, and no great external threats to overcome, aside from Santa's amnesia, which is really treated more like a minor nuisance than anything major. Nobody just seems terribly concerned about Santa's missing memories, except for Thumb, and even then only in fits and starts. I think my primary concern with The Night Before The Night Before Christmas is that it all feels so harmless.
Santa crash-landed in Michigan and can't remember anything! Eh. His magic bag is missing, and if we can't find it then Christmas will be ruined!
Eh.
Little Billy Fox feels so lonely and neglected because his parents seem to care more about their careers than their own children!
Eh.
Little Jessica would rather spend her Christmas celebrating with her friend's family because at least Becky's parents actually make time for their kids!
Eh.
There's nothing to this movie. It's watchable. It's even enjoyable. It's fine. But it's only fine. As I said, I liked The Night Before The Night Before Christmas. I don't regret watching it. But I just don't get it. I don't get this movie. I don't get you, TNBTNBC.
VERDICT: NICE
No comments:
Post a Comment