Leapin' Lizards!

When I see Jennie Garth with highly shaped '90s eyebrows and Kelly Taylor college hair draped in the meaty arms of Costas Mandylor, you can bet I'm diving in.

Tubi, hold my Zima. 

Quick Plot: Someone is murdering attractive and successful blonds in the big bad city of New York (sure)motos, giving them silver tennis bracelets and rose bouquets before tossing them out the windows of their own high rise apartments. I say "someone" because despite this being a VERY specific modus operandi, the press and police can't seem to come up with a clever or catchy serial killer name other than "The Killer".

Meet Meg: an attractive and successful blond in the big bad city (that's sort of New York?) who, you guessed it, lives far up a building with a Chekhovian rarely working elevator. One night, Meg catches the eye of beefcake Paul. They laugh, dance, order room service they don't eat, and even attend a spoken word poetry reading set to jazz. "New York" in the '90s was wild!

And yes, minor spoiler: Paul is "The Killer", and while he though Meg could finally be the one to break his dirty habit of murder, it's not to be. He throws her out the window and moves on.

Luckily for Meg, her window just happens to be located over a perfectly sized ledge, meaning her fall is broken and she's left instead with some bad bruises and that all-too-common ailment known as selective cinematic amnesia. Grizzled detective Frank Lazaro (BILLY DEE F*CKING WILLIAMS) is on the case, with so much world weariness that you almost wonder if Morgan Freeman was taking notes. 

Falling For You is directed by TV veteran Eric Till, an uncredited director on A Muppet Family Christmas, and therefore, one of my (apparently uncredited) lifelong heroes. Based on a play, it unfolds with the kind of rhythm you'd expect from a television woman-in-peril thriller, though there's some slight relief in Meg seizing control of her own fate. 

Make no mistake: this is not Ms. .45 or even Mother, May I Sleep With Danger. It's an earnest, made-for-CBS primetime thriller without the ability to tap into any real sexy or scary energy. Still, when you watch a 1995 TV movie in 2021, one co-starring Lando Calrissian as every stereotype of a rebellious veteran cop, things are simply bound to be entertaining. 

High Points

We can make Kelly Taylor jokes until the next (hopefully) inevitable 90210 reboot hits, but let's be fair: Jennie Garth is an underrated actor. Yes, her California looks and tight little voice might have limited her ability to be cast as Lady Macbeth or a laboratory scientist, but when it comes to holding the television screen, she has that it factor, and it's more than on display here

Low Points

Is there any screenplay device cheaper than "randomly detailed amnesia that means our victim remembers most activities like how to apply makeup but not the face of the man who threw her out a window?"

Lessons Learned
You won't find many blonds at a punk club ... or "Vampire Sex Bars," as it were

There are only two people in all of Canadian Manhattan who read Robert Frost

There are surprise advantages to having a (literally) thick skull

Rent/Bury/Buy

If you're craving a heavy dose of the mid-to-late '90s, Falling For You will likely prove to be as satisfying as a bag of WOW Doritos washed down with an ice cold Surge (look it up, kids). The excitement of soft focus lighting might wear off quickly, so don't get too excited, but it's definitely a dose of a different time. You can find it on Tubi.  

Kibble & Kelly Taylor In Your Stocking: A Christmas Wedding Tail

When I think about holiday cinema, I often say to myself, "Muppets and cancer and snowglobes and miracles and handcuffs are nice and all, but you know what baby Jesus would've really loved to watch on cable between courses?" A talking dog voiced by Jay Mohr.

Amiright?

Quick Plot: Beautiful widow Kelly Taylor (I know, it's her 90210 name, but do you really think I paid enough attention to adjust?) is walking her golden retriever one day in scenic northern California when he falls for a prissy poodle (because in film, there is no other kind) and she falls for its widower and wine-making owner, played by the blandly good-looking Brad Rowe. Since IMDB doesn't even remember his character's name, I certainly can't be expected to.

It's October when they meet, and Thanksgiving when they get engaged, mostly because this is a Christmas movie so a Christmas wedding simply has to happen and apparently, it should occur less than 60 days after two seemingly intelligent and responsible parents have met one another. Even their gaggle of children--five in all--seems to get along well enough, prompting the audience to wonder where the heck any crumb of conflict will come from a good hour into the movie.

But WAIT! We forgot one key detail in the life of Kelly Taylor: she's looking for a job, a job that can only be found by her head hunter Tom Arnold, a job in none other than New York City, aka the alternate dimension of evil urbanites so warned about by family channel-ish films. Kelly has worked for such an opportunity her whole life, but taking the position of head curator for an art museum a day after getting married across the country...well you know, CONFLICT!

By now, you're probably thinking "that's all well and good Emily, but didn't you say something about talking dogs?" Of course Dear Reader, of COURSE there are talking dogs. CLEVER talking dogs, because what other kind of talking dogs are there? So clever in fact, that their very first talking dog conversation includes this classic put-down:

"This is an A and B conversation so C your way out of it."

Oh no prissy poodle DIDN'T!

Not to comic genius (in his own mind) Jay Mohr, who clearly read all his lines in one take on a Skype phone conversation with the director. Though the movie isn’t good, one could certainly derive an insane amount of joy envisioning all the behind-the-scenes highlights of Mohr, always smug and seemingly never happy, stooping the level of cranking out uninspired poop jokes as, you know, a talking dog.

That in itself qualifies A Christmas Wedding Tail as something of a horror movie, right?

Token Slapstick Alert

This being about dogs, the opportunities are endless:

-Thanksgiving dinner is ruined when dad falls in the pool and the turkey lands in grass

-Cake tasting ruined when dogs break into the kitchen and give the bakery owner an embolism

-Country club hunting is almost ruined when the dogs chase a stray and GET THIS: knock over the prissy manager

Sass Factor

During a wedding planner audition montage, Kelly & Dude cycle through a batch of stereotypes, including but not limited to a mob greaser, hippie, uptight Brit who keeps talking about the queen, southern hick (mysteriously hanging out in Northern California) who says ‘hootenany’ a lot, and most obviously, a fast-talking black woman who not only wants a leopard décor, but insists on making the grrrow cat sounds when explaining leopard décor

The Winning Line

“It is everything I’ve been working for but I’ve been working for the wrong things.”

At this point, you’re probably asking yourself what could possibly be the RIGHT thing. You start to worry, feel a drip of sweat form on your brow because MY GOD KELLY TAYLOR! You’re teasing us with the theme of this movie! Thankfully, she proves helpful:

“Family is the most important thing.”

Sigh! I was getting worried that the answer was going to be talking dogs.

Montage Mania

It’s a common occurance in this genre, but A Christmas Wedding Tail takes it a tad too far, with montages of the courtship, children playing, wedding planning, wedding planner auditions, wedding band auditions (complete with the token ‘dogs cover ears’ shot), and finally, a complete montage recapping the entire film just before Kelly makes her big choice.

Lessons Learned

A great way to establish character's quirks is to set a key scene at Thanksgiving and force each one to name what they're thankful for. Only then will it cement in the audience's head that amongst Kelly & No Name's children are a cook (who's thankful for "cooking!"), a computer nerd (who's thankful for "computers!"), bug collector (who's thankful for "bug collecting!"), sport (who's thankful for "sports!"), and silent creepy kid who "hasn't talked much since his dad died."

Small towns are like parasites

Post widowering, one shouldn’t talk about setting down, but GETTING down

Stocking Stuffer or Coal In Your Stocking?

A Christmas Wedding Tail (pun! Even though there are two tails so misused pun!) is so sweet that I received three cavities while watching it, though part of that may have come from Jennie Garth’s occasional lapse into dubbed baby voice or the fact that the biggest conflict is a beautiful woman trying to decide whether to take her high-paying dream job or marry a stud who owns a vineyard (i.e., the definition of a first first first world problem). But seriously, any film that makes the Brady Bunch look like the Mansons is seriously in need of some rabies.