THE TOWN CHRISTMAS FORGOT
A family are stranded during Christmas in a small town where the residents are struggling to get by.
Our story begins with the Benson family (rich bank president daddy Charles, played by Rick Roberts, ad executive mommy Annie, played by Lauren Holly, and their two children, tween daughter Buffy and small child Billy) driving around somewhere in the mountainous wilds of Colorado in the middle of a blizzard. They're hopelessly lost, there's no phone reception, and the car radio can't even find a signal in this misbegotten corner of the continental United States of America, so everybody in the car is a little on edge. Everybody's arguing, and it's all incredibly annoying, then the car suddenly just commits suicide, probably because it can't deal with this family's bullshit for one more minute and is hoping they all freeze to death out here in the middle of nowhere.
The luxury SUV gently rolls to a stop in the road, but Charles acts like they've just been in a major vehicular collision, whipping his head back and forth like an idiot, asking his family if they're all okay with some high, vaguely panicked tone in his voice. His family just looks at Charles like he's lost his damned mind for a moment, so he steps outside to "check on the damage", which is really just an excuse to get the hell away from his nagging clan for a few precious minutes, because as he pops the car hood and peers at the engine, it's clear he has no earthly idea what he's looking at.
That's the kind of thing guys do, isn't it? You may not know jack shit about how automobiles work, but you're going to pop that hood and stare at the engine, and probably even reach inside and wiggle a few things here and there, just to give the people around you the impression that you're not completely fucking helpless in this situation. Which, of course, you are, but never mind that. You might tap a few objects you don't recognize, then lean your head over and ask your companion to "try it now", and they'll turn the key, and nothing will happen, and you'll shake your head and wonder why that didn't work. Then you'll call a mechanic, and they'll fix your fucking car, and you can move on with your life. But instead of just doing that to begin with, you have to stand in front of your disabled vehicle with your dick in your hand for a few minutes, pretending that you know what you're doing, and just generally wasting everybody's time.
Charles does all of this, but can't complete the process with that phone call to the mechanic because, as I've already said, there's no cell reception. Instead, the family just sits in their car and waits for somebody, anybody to happen upon them and take pity on these poor, affluent souls. Eventually, a kindly mechanic named Coleman (played by Phillip Jarrett, delivering the single best performance in the movie) just happens to find them while out on a leisurely mid-afternoon drive on a desolate mountain road during a raging snowstorm, and he takes the Benson family to his hometown, an isolated hole in the wall aptly named Nowhere.
Nowhere has been suffering for several years now, ever since the coal mine closed its doors for good, and the town's longtime mayor, some sourpuss goober named Jeremiah, failed to attract any investors to open a ski resort on the mountain, an effort which would have surely saved the local economy. Now the town is slowly dying, with local businesses dropping like flies, and the remaining population mostly just sitting around, looking glum, drinking bad coffee and waiting for grim death to come and put them out of their misery. I'm not kidding. That's essentially what every adult male citizen of Nowhere does in this movie. They don't have time for hope or dreams or any of that mushy bullshit. They're just a bunch of sad sacks, moping all day long at the local diner, which is owned and operated by the mayor's chipper wife, Samantha Bee (not that Samantha Bee, just a coincidentally named character).
Samantha's been planning the return of Nowhere's big annual Christmas pageant, gathering a coterie of local talents to come together and put on a big show for all of the depressed, unemployed citizens. But whenever she posts any flyers advertising the pageant, Jeremiah comes around and tears them down, scolding his wife for daring to care about the well-being of her fellow citizens. The official explanation for this behavior is that nobody in Nowhere is in the mood to celebrate anything, since everything sucks forever now, and that "Christmas is for other people", whatever the fuck that means. Apparently, you're not allowed to do anything fun if your economic circumstances aren't ideal. You just have to wallow in misery and insist that everybody around you do likewise.
Jeremiah tried so hard after the coal mine closed to attract investors to make that ski resort a reality, but since he failed to secure any finances for his dream, he just gave up and decided to live a hollow life of despair in the ruins of his once-thriving hometown, and because he's a sad bastard, everybody else has to be a sad bastard, too. Them's the rules. But if you ask me, every time Jeremiah tears down one of those posters advertising the pageant, or when he catches his wife and her friends practicing their dance steps for the talent show, every time he wags his finger and tells the "wimmin folk" to abandon all hope and just stay at home and cook four-course meals for their unemployed husbands, he has a cruel twinkle in his eye that implies just maybe he's enjoying all of this a little. He seems to get a little kick out of dressing down his wife in front of other people, telling her that there will never be another Christmas pageant in this shithole town, not on his watch! I don't know how the lovely and kind Samantha can put up with this despicable dipshit Jeremiah.
Stranded in Nowhere for a few days until the proper parts to repair their car's engine arrive, the Bensons check into the town's only hotel and are appalled at the state of the place. It doesn't look that bad to me, aside from the lack of cable television, but I guess I'm not used to staying in five-star resorts like these spoiled pricks. This does lead to a funny moment, however. As his family continues to complain about their lodgings, Charles tries to get them all to look on the bright side, saying "as long as we keep our socks on and don't go to the bathroom, we'll be fine". Maybe you had to be there.
This guy Charles is a real weenie, by the way. Anytime he steps outside, he's dressed in like, seven layers of wool and still shivers and groans endlessly because he's just so cold. He's standing next to his young son Billy, who's just wearing a thin coat and no hat and looking perfectly comfortable, and this asshole is acting like his dick's about to fall off in this bitter cold. Was this a comedic choice on the actor's part? Because it's not funny. The movie never convincingly looks like it takes place in the bleak mid-winter, anyway. Exteriors are draped in blankets of cotton sheeting that are too wrinkled to maintain the illusion of freshly-fallen snow, and there was a moment somewhere in the middle of the movie where I clearly saw beads of sweat running down a character's forehead as he stood outside in a flurry of unrealistic snowflakes.
There's actually a moment during the last act of the movie when our protagonists are getting ready to leave town, and Lauren Holly gets fake snow caught in her eyes. So she squints painfully while she recites her lines, continuing the scene like a real professional, and it's the dumbest and funniest thing I've seen in at least a few days. Why didn't the director do another take of this simple scene? Or was this actually the best take he had? Was she weeping in agony during the other takes, her sensitive eyes irritated to the point of near-blindness by the dubious snow swirling in the air? Never mind the fact that this scene takes place under a crystal clear sky. Just forget about that inconvenient fact. The director wanted snow falling in the shot, and he didn't care that it made no sense in context, and if his lead actress suffered permanent vision loss, then so be it. Nothing will compromise the vision of the guy who directed You Lucky Dog.
There's no excuse for this level of incompetence.
After spending maybe ten minutes seething with rage in their cramped hotel room, the Bensons scatter to the four winds, having adventures and getting into shenanigans with the locals. Annie spends her time at the local diner, befriending Samantha and using her skills as a once-promising professional dancer (she performed on Broadway! Wow!) to help choreograph a performance for the Christmas pageant. Charles hangs out with Coleman, the town barber/mechanic/all around cool dude, helping him feed less fortunate souls at the town's soup kitchen. While out at the old coal mine delivering a warm meal to a local security guard we never meet named Virgil, Coleman falls through some rotten wooden boards and ends up trapped in the mine. Luckily, his new pal Charles is around to hoist him out of that hole lickety split (he knows a lot about knots since he owns a yacht), and they get the fuck out of that mine with a quickness, choosing to eat the cookies they initially brought for that ghost Virgil, because fuck that guy.
Shit, maybe they couldn't find Virgil because he fell in the mine, too. Maybe he was dying somewhere close by, too weak to call out for help, or perhaps even unconscious and desperately in need of help, but Coleman and Charles never bothered to look for him after their own little adventure. Rest in peace, Virgil. We hardly knew ye. In fact, we didn't know ye at all. Because we never met ye. But I'm sure ye were a decent enough sort.
Buffy just happens upon a band of surly young lads practicing their Christmas song for the pageant at the high school gymnasium while wandering blindly through town, and she falls in love with the gangly bass player over an afternoon while teaching them how to be better musicians, because that's just a skill she has. She even agrees to sing with them when they perform at the pageant, because she's also a trained singer? Sure.
Billy breaks into the town's closed toy store to play with some dusty old toys, and finds the store's owner is still living in the back of the place, eating cold soup and playing with trains, at least when he's not foaming at the mouth with rage when he recalls how much he hates that worthless bastard mayor for making all of these big promises after the coal mine closed and delivering on approximately none of them. Then Billy steals some coffee and a cookie from the diner and delivers them to this old codger (who looks a lot like Santa Claus, which will be very convenient later), and he calms down quite a bit, and the pair end up bonding over their shared love of elaborate toy train sets.
After Jeremiah swears up and down that there will never be a Christmas pageant in Nowhere, and that nobody is even interested in a Christmas pageant anyway, Samantha holds the pageant, and the whole town shows up for it, Jeremiah included. Thus the true impotence of the despised mayor is finally revealed. It's during this sequence that I realized the true reason for Jeremiah's attempts to prevent the pageant from taking place: nobody in this town has any discernible talent to speak of.
A little boy performs a "magic act" that is nothing more than walking out onstage holding a rabbit sitting in a hat, a rabbit we can all clearly see sitting in that hat, waving a tinfoil wand over the rabbit's head, then plucking the miserable rabbit from the hat and walking offstage to a smattering of applause. That's it. That's all this grinning homunculus does, nothing, and that's supposed to be a talent? Some bowlegged old lady chases chickens around the stage for ninety seconds. A nervous little girl shuffles slightly to the tune of "generic holiday melody #3". An old guy who can't juggle tries to juggle, fails, then exits, stage right.
While this is happening, Jeremiah sits in the audience, hand over his mouth, appalled expression in his wide eyes, and I know exactly how he feels.
But don't worry! Buffy and Tween Cweem take the stage to perform perhaps the single worst rendition of "Deck The Halls" I have ever heard in my rotten life. And the crowd loves it. They can't get enough of this crap. Then Annie and Samantha and a trio of gently swaying backup dancers perform an interpretive holiday dance to close out the show, and it's really fucking weird, and really fucking awkward and I think I kinda love it. Not to be outdone, Billy crashes the pageant with his creepy new friend, decked out in his dimestore Santa Claus gear, to wave to the crowd and wish everybody a very happy holidays.
Then Jeremiah gets onstage and tries and fails to sing "We Wish You A Merry Christmas", because he's officially become a believer in the most wonderful time of year once again, and the whole town joins in on the sing-along, and Charles chooses this time to take Jeremiah aside and tell the beleaguered mayor that since he's a big shot bank president, he's going to go ahead and give the chubby funster's town that $400,000 loan they need to break ground on the ski resort that will surely save Nowhere from economic ruin, and everybody's happy and a bunch of confetti falls on the gathered masses as they laugh heartily and rejoice at this most joyous Christmas pageant. Praise Jesus this wealthy family broke down outside of town, otherwise Nowhere would have been truly doomed.
That's The Town Christmas Forgot, and it's a cheap and tawdry affair, but I found myself enjoying it quite a bit. It's not exactly what you would call a "good" movie, but it's never really boring, and it made me laugh a few times, which is always a blessing. And I'm talking about laughing with the movie, not laughing at the movie. Honestly, when this movie began, I was worried. The first five minutes are pretty rough, and I was dreading the next two hours. But I quickly turned around on the whole endeavor, being won over by the quirkiness of the actors playing the people of Nowhere, just trying to put on a show to cheer up their fellow citizens during a time when they could all really use a reason to smile. Sure, the movie is often slightly ridiculous, but that's just part of its shabby charm.
Against all odds, I find myself recommending The Town Christmas Forgot. Go figure.
Scrooged! - The whole town is in a pretty deep yuletide funk, but Droopy Dog lookalike Jeremiah is the personification of that town's merry malaise, until the shocking ineptitude of the "talent" on display at the Christmas pageant shatters his fragile psyche and he decides he's a believer in the magic of Christmas once again..
Christmas In July - The town of Nowhere is just covered in fake snow, and it never looks remotely convincing. The actors all look uncomfortably warm in their heavy coats during the outdoor scenes, and that aforementioned sequence featuring Lauren Holly temporarily blinded by an errant "snow flake" and soldiering on with her lines is just madness.
Small Town Salvation - The Bensons are all sorta miserable when the movie begins, trudging along in their upper class existence of exclusion and isolation, but a few days spent in the economically depressed town of Nowhere convince them all to smile a little wider, and be a little more aware of the needs of others. They all learn a little something about the true meaning of Christmas thanks to their time spent in Nowhere, and they, in turn, enrich the lives of the local population. It's heartwarming fluff.
VERDICT: NICE
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