Schlock-Mas: Day Two

Today's Feature: Moonlight & Mistletoe

Nick and his daughter Holly fight a real estate developer to keep their Christmas theme park open.

A long time ago, there was a guy named Nick. And Nick had it bad for Christmas, man. This guy had the spirit of the season leaking out of his jolly pores, which is both amazing and disgusting. He was so in love with Christmas that he tried to marry it, but that was illegal in the state of Vermont, so he settled for a human woman who loved the most wonderful time of the year only slightly less than himself, and together they opened a year-round holiday destination called "Santa-Ville", a place where Christmas never had to end. All year, every year, Nick and his beloved wife lived and breathed Christmas, and they were content.

Eventually, these two lovebirds knocked boots and made a baby, which they named Holly and immediately recruited to help them maintain their festive livelihood as their number one elf, and all was right in the world. Then one day Nick's wife died unexpectedly, and Nick withdrew deeper and deeper into the safe space that was Santa-Ville, growing more estranged from his neglected daughter as he disappeared into the role of jolly old St. Nicholas for the enjoyment of everyone else's children.

With the Christmas spirit having worn out its welcome for Holly, she went off to college and eventually made a career for herself in the big city, leaving Santa-Ville and her distant father in her past. But Holly finds herself drawn back into her father's holiday drama after he's injured by a runaway sleigh just after Thanksgiving, forcing her to return to Santa-Ville to help her old man during the park's busiest season.

That's the basic setup for Moonlight & Mistletoe, a movie made back in 2008 starring Candace Cameron-Bure, Tom Arnold, and Christopher Wiehl. I just watched it, so now I'm typing about it, and now you're reading about it. So... what kind of name is "Santa-Ville"? Pretty lame, huh? Seriously, that's the best name this doofus Nick could come up with? Santa-Ville. That doesn't roll off the tongue at all, does it? It's just so awkward. Why didn't he name the place "Christmas Land"? I know there's a movie called Christmas Land, because it nearly killed me last year, but it was only made in 2015, which means there was no reason why the brilliant writer of 2008's Moonlight & Mistletoe (Joany Kane, for whom writing Christmas-themed, made-for-television family movies is literally her entire career) couldn't have called her fictional theme park "Christmas Land". Any toddler could come up with the name "Christmas Land", so what's your excuse, Joany?

And what kind of name is Joany, while I'm at it? Who names their kid "Joany"? What the fuck is wrong with the person who saddles their poor newborn daughter with such a rotten name? I know, I know, I'm getting off-track. The writer's name doesn't matter. I'm sorry, Joany Kane. This is what happens, man. I get caught up in dumb shit like some random lady's name and I completely lose the plot. I'm supposed to be talking about this stupid fucking movie starring Tom fucking Arnold of all fucking people, and here I am wasting everybody's valuable time grumbling about the name "Joany". I really need to get out of my own head.

Arriving back home in Vermont, Holly immediately learns that Santa-Ville is failing financially, and her father has been unable to pay the bills for over six months. In fact, the only reason the local bank hasn't yet foreclosed on Nick's park is because the bank manager is a personal friend of the man and feels guilty about bringing down the holiday hammer on his delusional pal's dreams. For whatever reason, people just aren't coming out to Santa-Ville, anymore, and Nick's watching his entire life slowly crumble around him. His only employees are his oldest and best friend Earl, full-time lawyer and part-time Santa Claus, and local handyman Peter, who helps out Nick wherever he can. Both gentlemen are volunteers, because Nick can't afford to pay anybody anything. Peter moonlights as a crafter of artisanal nutcrackers, which he doesn't sell or even give away, choosing to just hoard them in his workshop like the lamest dragon guarding the lamest treasure.

Quick sidebar: I have to take issue with this whole nutcracker thing. Allow me to draw your attention to the small wooden figures at the bottom of this image:

Those are supposed to be nutcrackers. Those are the "nutcrackers" that Peter carves in his spare time. My issue lies in the simple fact that those things aren't actually nutcrackers. This movie seems to be confused as to what a "nutcracker" really is. Traditionally, nutcrackers, in this case decorative hinged lever nutcrackers, require precisely one thing in order to be classified as such, and that thing is a hinged lever located in the back of the figurine. Without that hinged lever, what you have is not a nutcracker, but rather a simple carved wooden figure. The figures Peter makes are solid wood, missing any moving parts, and are therefore not true nutcrackers.

They're not even particularly well-made for what they are, when you get right down to it. Every single figure bears the same basic cylindrical design, with almost no difference between any of them aside from their amateurish painted faces and uniforms, which do not hold up at all under any scrutiny. Often the figures seen in the film have crooked features and no clean lines, with colors bleeding into one another on nearly every figure shown. That would be fine if the character of Peter were portrayed as a simpleton, but everybody in the story hails his ridiculous wooden figures as the work of some quiet genius, with the eventual sale of his collection serving to save the park at the film's climax, so clearly something is very wrong, here.

These so-called "nutcrackers" are almost embarrassingly rendered, and I can't believe they were actually used in the movie. But these movies have incredibly small budgets, so I imagine the production designer had to take what he could get. It's just such a shame he had to settle for this garbage, because it makes the master craftsman Peter look like an inept fool.

Moving on, Holly quickly finds herself trapped dealing with her irresponsible father's problems over Christmas, trying to save Santa-Ville from utter ruin, and Nick just sits around, fake smile plastered on his face, convinced that his daughter will figure something out before it's too late, because he just can't imagine his life without his beloved holiday park. One night, after father and daughter eventually let the stress and years of unspoken frustration get to them, they blow up at each other airing their grievances as Holly prepares to return to her life and career in the city. Nick blames Holly for leaving, abandoning him and his dream when he needed her most, and Holly blames Nick for always treating her more like a helper elf than a daughter, seemingly saving his true affection for all of the children who would visit their home/theme park every year. leaving Holly feeling unloved and unwanted.

Later that night, Nick sits down with Holly and presents her with a very special box as a peace offering. Opening the box, he reveals a lifetime of memories with his late wife. Every little reminder note she wrote him, grocery lists and recipes, swatches of wrapping paper from hundreds of Christmas gifts, stacks of photographs and postcards, their wedding bands, and even the sprig of mistletoe under which he kissed the love of his life on the night they first met. His voice cracking as he tells the story of his shared life and love, he explains that he never meant to neglect Holly over the years, and that he foolishly believed she knew how much she loved him without him having to utter the words.

Nick realizes he took his daughter for granted, that his actions drove her away, and he wants nothing more than to repair his relationship with Holly, even if it means he eventually has to give up his dream of Santa-Ville, which he always saw as a tribute to his late wife, having built the place from the ground up with her by his side, his constant companion. Coming right in the middle of the movie, this scene is the key to everything, the emotional heart of the entire story. And Candace Cameron-Bure and Tom Arnold (shockingly) sell every poignant moment of the scene from beginning to end, with these two stubborn and emotionally wounded people coming together over remembrances of their shared pasts and forgiving each other because a lack of love was never a problem, only a lack of communication.

Holly remembers how lucky she really was growing up in kitschy old Santa-Ville, and she comes to share her father's dream of keeping their family business alive. Holly and Nick team up with Peter to commence a nostalgic campaign among the nearby communities, reminding the now-grown children from the '80s and '90s (now with children of their own) that the place where they made so many magical memories is still there, waiting for them to return and create new memories with their new families. The campaign works, and with a little help from Peter's aforementioned deformed not-nutcracker sales, they raise enough money to repay the banks and save Santa-Ville for the next generation of starry-eyed boys and girls who just want to escape for a little while into a dream of Christmas. And Holly and Peter fall in love, get married and start a family of their own at Santa-Ville, because I believe it's actually against the law for movies of this ilk to end without romance in full bloom.

That's Moonlight & Mistletoe, and it's just lovely. Tom Arnold doesn't humiliate himself in this movie, which shocked the hell out of me. I'm not terribly familiar with the man's acting outside of his infrequent appearances as Landford, Illinois' town dimwit Arnie on Roseanne, so I didn't know he was capable of displaying real human emotion on-screen. Well, maybe that's not entirely true. I did believe that he wanted to sodomize poor Edward Furlong in 2000's Animal Factory. Either way, I was pleasantly surprised by his earnest performance here as Nick, a kind-hearted man who had so much love in his heart he just had to share it with the world, often at his unfortunate daughter's expense. He even manages to be quite subtle at times, especially during the sequence when he recalls the night he met his future wife at a friend's holiday party, spotting her standing under the mistletoe, her face bathed in moonlight. (Hey, that's the title of the movie!) Did I say subtle? Subtle for Tom Arnold, I mean. Like soap opera subtle.

 And Candace Cameron-Bure is just built for movies like this. I swear this woman was conjured into existence by Hallmark Channel executives specifically to star in these things. She's a seasoned professional, and she makes this stuff look easy. But what about the other actors, I hear you not saying? Who gives a shit about the other actors? None of them matter. They're just set dressing, man. Tom Arnold and Candace Cameron-Bure carry this entire movie on their fucking backs, and they should be commended for it, because it's not well written. The script is okay at best, and just plain stupid at worst, but these two pros sell all of the hackneyed dialogue with aplomb, and somebody should send them some sort of reward in the mail for all their hard work.

Without these two actors, Moonlight & Mistletoe simply wouldn't work. The whole affair would collapse like a Christmas-themed house of cards. But luckily we live in a world that avoided that particular tragedy, and now we should all be thankful. At least the people who watch Moonlight & Mistletoe should be thankful. The people who haven't watched Moonlight & Mistletoe don't give a shit, and I wouldn't expect them to. They've got better things to do than sit through this crap. Unless they want to, of course. If you out there want to watch a middling holiday-themed, made-for-television movie starring Tom Arnold and Candace Cameron-Bure, then you should totally watch Moonlight & Mistletoe. Yule love it! Well, maybe not love, but definitely like. Yule like it!

VERDICT: NICE