CHRISTMAS IN ANGEL FALLS
A guardian angel is sent to a small town in hopes of restoring its Christmas spirit.
Rachel Boston plays an angel named Gabrielle, an angel with a particular set of skills who meddles in the affairs of mortals at the behest of her supervisor, the archangel Michael (Beau Bridges), who really loves wearing long, flowing scarves for some reason. It's a bold fashion choice, and I gotta give him props for sticking with it. I guess the way he sees things, since he kicked Lucifer's ass straight out of Heaven, nobody can give him shit over his preferences in neckwear. The guy's earned the right to wear whatever he wants.
Michael has a special assignment for his favorite Christmas-obsessed angel this holiday season: travel to the small town of Angel Falls, which has slipped into a sort of Christmas-shaped sinkhole over the past few years, and lift the citizens out of their Yuletide depression before December 25th. He figures if anybody can pull off this particular miracle, it's Gabrielle.
So what, exactly, is wrong with Angel Falls? Why does everybody there hate Christmas? The town's paper mill closed a few years ago, and that was the area's primary employer, so now everybody has to commute to their new jobs in other nearby towns everyday, and they're really bummed about that. That's pretty much the only excuse the movie gives, which is a valid one, I suppose, but it's not terribly compelling.
There's no real unemployment problem in Angel Falls, since basically everybody who was put out of work by the shuttering of the paper mill has found new employment elsewhere. Everybody's just really depressed because they have to drive a little more each day to get to work. That's just life for a lot of people in this world, and they somehow still find the time to celebrate the fucking holidays without cursing the day baby Jesus was born.
Well, that and the community center was forced to close because the place was in such a state of disrepair that it had to be condemned, and apparently that was the only suitable location in town where the good people of Angel Falls could put on their annual Christmas pageant, and without the Christmas pageant, who even cares about Christmas? There's plenty of room in the town church to hold the pageant, but nobody ever even brings this up as an option. Or these folks could just do what the idiots in yesterday's movie did and put on their pageant in a fucking parking lot. My point is these people who used to love Christmas so much the spirit of the season was dripping from their fucking pores just gave up on the holiday pretty damned easily. What a bunch of quitters.
Luckily for the citizens of Angel Falls, angel Gabby's on the case, and she's gonna use every trick up her divine sleeves to open everybody's eyes to the true joys of the season, even if it kills them. Well no, not really if it kills them. I'm exaggerating just a bit, but Gabby does have this unnerving habit of stalking people around town, popping up in the background of numerous shots and watching them while they go about their daily lives, kinda like Michael Myers in the Halloween movies, only her appearances are not accompanied by a startling musical sting, which I feel is a real missed opportunity.
Arriving in Angel Falls, Gabby quickly meets local hunky volunteer fireman and hardware store owner Jack (Paul Greene), and she's immediately smitten, which is a big no-no for angels, since they're ethereal beings from a higher plane of existence, and not meant to intermingle with mortals. So Gabrielle keeps her feelings in check while she works with Jack to help lift the spirits of the people of Angel Falls for Christmas. But you know how this story ends, and we'll get back to it soon enough.
Gabrielle introduces herself to the town pastor, who's having a difficult time getting people to help him decorate his church since the two ladies who normally volunteer their time lost the Christmas spirit when they realized he was dating them both simultaneously, which was something of a scandal around town. The pastor tried to smooth things over, explaining that he wasn't looking for anything serious from either of his girlfriends, preferring to keep his earthly relationships casual since everybody knows the Holy Spirit is always going to be the pastor's bottom bitch, but that didn't go over too well with either of these ladies, who both dumped him and now can't bear to even be in the same room together.
Gabrielle attempts to mend fences with the pastor's jilted lovers, but one of them left town in disgrace and the other one lives on a Poinsettia farm, and refuses to sell her beloved flowers to the church anymore, for obvious reasons. Every year in times past, the church would be filled with cheerful crimson blossoms from... whatever this woman's name is, during Christmas Eve service, brightening the spirits of the parishioners while they would sing carols slightly off-key with cheerful grins stapled to their doughy faces. But now that she's been two-timed by Pastor Hot Pants, this scorned Poinsettia farmer won't share her flowers with anybody, hoarding them like a crazy person in her cramped barn each Christmas season, just letting them rot in this stuffy old place without letting anybody but her lay eyes on them.
What is it with the word "Poinsettia", anyway? Why does everybody ignore that second letter "i"? The name was derived from the surname of America's first ambassador to Mexico, Joel Roberts Poinsett, with the "i" and "a" tacked onto the end. So why do people ignore the presence of that letter "i"? If that second letter "i" isn't meant to be pronounced, then why the hell is it there in the first place? I've never pronounced the word "Poin-Set-Uh" and I don't recall ever hearing anybody else I've met pronounce it any other way. I think I'm the only person I know who pronounces it "Poin-Set-Tee-Uh", and the other pronunciation always sounds incorrect to my ears. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary claims both pronunciations are technically correct, so that solves nothing. I fear I shall always be frustrated by this damnable word. It shall vex me to the end of my days.
I guess Gabrielle eventually does or says something to convince the creepy flower lady to share her bounty with the church, but I didn't catch it. Come to think of it, I don't really recall Gabby doing anything of note in the town of Angel Falls, aside from spending a lot of time hanging out with Jack. Sure, she coaxes Jack into repairing the community center, a job which he claims will take many, many days and dozens of people to complete, but a handful of folks get the place up to code and ready to hold the Christmas pageant in maybe a day, so I don't know exactly why the damned community center ever closed in the first place.
The center has supposedly been condemned because it's such a hazardous place, but it takes five people with no real carpentry skills to make it look brand-new in less than 36 hours. And Gabrielle didn't use any angel magic to grease the wheels because she's forbidden from doing so, so that doesn't explain this miraculous occurrence. I guess it's just another case of plot convenience overruling realism for the sake of expediency. Of course, anybody looking for realism in a romantic drama about an angel saving Christmas in a depressed small town may be missing the point.
After a few weeks of just sticking around and smiling very broadly at everyone she meets, Gabrielle has brought Angel Falls together once again, united under the spirit of peace and goodwill in this blessed season, which should have more of an impact than it does, which is none.
The first half of the movie consists almost entirely of Gabby meeting people around town, all of whom have dumb little excuses for being such sad sacks this Christmastime, and they all can't help but tell their new angel friend that oh no, it wasn't always thus around Angel Falls. Once upon a time, about two years ago, everybody loved Christmas and everybody smiled and sang carols and held hands and whatever, and wouldn't it be nice if those days could come again? But alas, everything sucks now, and Christmas just bums everybody out for no good reason.
Why did the community center close? Because people stopped caring. But why did people stop caring? Because the community center closed. It's this endless feedback loop of cause-and-effect that doesn't make sense when put under any scrutiny. How did the fucking community center get so run down that it abruptly had to be condemned two years ago? This place was the social hub of the entire town, and they all just let it fall apart? Bullshit. Everybody pouts that the community center is closed, but nobody gets the bright idea to try fixing the fucking place up until an angel of the lord comes to town to tell them that they should try fixing the fucking place up. And that's all it takes to resurrect the spirit of Christmas in Angel Falls. Congratulations.
Michael's briefing Gabrielle on her mission like the souls of every man, woman and child in Angel Falls are in mortal danger if she doesn't save Christmas this year, and all she has to do is remind folks that they can do more than complain about things that are well within their means to improve. So the people of Angel Falls are just really fucking stupid.
But Michael's ulterior motive was for Gabrielle to find love with Jack, which is why Michael chose her for this task in the first place. So I guess any angel could have saved the spirit of Christmas in Angel Falls, and Michael just picked Gabrielle because he wanted her to fall in love with a mortal man, forsaking her divinity and becoming human, just to get her out of his hair. There are simpler ways to tell somebody that you don't want to hang out with them anymore, but this particular plan did the trick, since that's exactly what Gabrielle ends up doing. The story of Christmas In Angel Falls basically retells the plot of 1987's Wings Of Desire, only incompetently and with a holiday twist.
I just felt so alarmingly empty while watching this movie today. I tried to engage with the plot, I truly did, but it gave me nothing worth clinging to throughout its interminable run-time. Beau Bridges was fine in his role, but he's barely in the story, clearly looking like he'd prefer to be anywhere else, and Paul Greene would have made a great romantic lead in a better movie, but this story just gives him nothing to work with. His character is "generic nice guy" and the script fails to give the actor any compelling foundation to build upon, leaving him adrift in his many scenes with Rachel Boston, simply reciting insipid dialogue and smiling a whole lot.
And I don't know what's going with Rachel Boston, but she was absolutely terrible in Christmas In Angel Falls. I've only ever seen her in 2015's Ice Sculpture Christmas, but I remember liking her quite a bit in that movie. Here, she's just so distressingly absent from her every scene that I have no explanation for any of this. Boston has two modes in Christmas In Angel Falls: grinning, spinning forced exuberance, and "death mask" dramatic disconnect. Too many scenes hold a close-up on the actor's face, and she gives absolutely nothing to the camera, her eyes dull and unfocused, her expression slack, her voice a robotic monotone. I actually have a clip to illustrate this distracting technique of hers. Just watch this and tell me I'm wrong:
What the hell is that? Who delivers their lines like that? She's composing herself like a disinterested field reporter interviewing the guy running for state comptroller on the local news. And she acts like this consistently throughout the entire movie. What was going on in this woman's life that she thought a performance like this was permissible? It might be something I could ignore if she was a tertiary character in the story, but she's the fucking lead. Maybe if I watched Ice Sculpture Christmas again (fat chance), I'd see the same kind of performance, but I kinda doubt it.
Under normal circumstances, I'd say she just didn't like the script and couldn't find a way to connect with the material, but she's listed as an executive producer on Christmas In Angel Falls, so she was in a position of some power behind the scenes. She could have demanded changes be made if she didn't like something, and perhaps she did. Perhaps this is somehow the better version of Christmas In Angel Falls. Is Rachel Boston just a bad actor?
I hated this movie. I wanted to like it, but it wouldn't let me. I wanted to be friends with Christmas In Angel Falls, but the movie just pushed me down and kicked sand in my eye. The way I feel right now, I could use a friendly angel's help to rediscover my own Christmas Spirit.
Calling All Angels - Gabrielle's an angel. Spoilers!
Scrooged - The whole damned town is the Scrooge in this movie.
Christmas In July - The production designer just sprayed a bunch of white shit on the sidewalks and called it good, when it anything but. Beau Bridges was noticeably sweating in his outdoor scenes, but maybe that's just withdrawal symptoms. Speaking of Beau Bridges...
Slumming It - I'll go to bat for the man here and say that Beau Bridges is better than Christmas In Angel Falls. Sure, I hear you saying that he had no problem co-starring in RocketMan, but I'll go to bat for that movie, too. I will fight you.
VERDICT: I'D RATHER SPEND CHRISTMAS IN FALLEN ANGEL FALLS
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