DJ Tanner In Your Stocking: Moonlight & MIstletoe

Let's start by examining the box cover to Moonlight and Mistletoe:

Based on the framing, what might you think this film is about? A mismatched love triangle where Tom Arnold fights for Candace Cameron-Burke's heart, battling her blandly handsome hug partner? I'm an avowed hater of the floating head poster, but seeing the full bodies awkwardly photoshopped in positions that don't make any sense isn't THAT much better.

But relax, my little reindeer, for Moonlight and Mistletoe does not ask you to imagine Roseanne's ex-husband pursuing a bleach blond D.J. Tanner. Though you might not guess it from the bizarre cover, Cameron-Burke plays--hold your breath--a no-nonsense business woman who HATES Christmas (shocked gasp) because DAD Tom Arnold has spent his whole life playing Santa Claus.

By whole life, I REALLY mean whole life. Arnold runs one of those creepy year-round Santalands where IT'S ALWAYS CHRISTMAS! While this sounds like a charming idea to some, I've personally always thought such a business to be incredibly off-putting in a Twilight Zone manner. The people inside Snowglobe? Not. Healthy. Then again, I also work an actual job so perhaps it's just that I need a handsome man, fading C-list celebrity, montage, and a few commercial breaks to teach me the true meaning of the holiday.

Quick Plot: All her life, young Holly has had to work as Santa's head elf--not daughter--prompting an eventual move to Boston where the grown up and severely arched eyebrowed young woman acts as any single career gal by speaking on her blue tooth and eating Chinese takeout with chopsticks.

They're all the same.

Now that it's the holly-days, Holly heads home to the country to visit Dad--I mean, Santa--and his new head elf/wood carving assistant Peter. We first met Peter in the prologue where his family made a pit stop at the winter village and he had a two minute conversation with the fellow tween Holly about nutcrackers. Now grown up and handsome by bland family channel standards, Peter has spent the rest of his life carving said nutcrackers because he was always charmed by that elf he met and eventually decided to hunt down her father and work for him for free.

Nope. Nothing weird about that at all.

Being home for the holidays, in case you don't know, is REALLY hard for a career woman like Holly. There's the uncomfortable meetups with old high school frenemies, something Holly thwarts by asking said local if her high school sweetheart's husband still has acne (apparently they don't teach manners at business school). Frenemy's payback is to set Holly up with a handsome, dark-haired fellow city boy (cue ominous music) who works as a financial analyst (cue mustache twirl) and most nefarious of all, is quite eager to help Santa Arnold out with some new financial woes (might as well cut to lair filled with dead orphans stuffed inside dead puppies).

See, Santa doesn't exactly make big bucks, especially when he's played by Tom Arnold as a borderline mentally challenged doofus. Arnold has been ignoring the pile of bank bills, saving them as a Christmas present for his dear daugh--er, elf to deal with. Turns out, the village needs to make $50,000 by New Year's Eve to stay in business, otherwise--with the 'help' of the Evil Financial Analyst--the property goes to cruel land developers who hate Christmas and Deserve To Die.

I mean, they don't SAY that but as an informed audience member, you know the truth.

Also, Holly teaches her pops what a blog is and yes, the results are as obnoxious as you imagine. 

Lessons Learned

Never trust a man who opens his presents on Christmas Eve. It's like the Holiday In Handcuffs equivalent of twisting your Oreos!

Sorry doesn’t feed the cat

50 grand is a lot of money, so much in fact that it will make Candace Cameron-Burke's voice SOUND REALLY ANNOYING

Montage Mania

You can't make $50,000 in one month without one!

Stocking Stuffer or Stuffed With Coal?

You need a lot of eggnog to survive Moonlight and Mistletoe. That or a weird attraction to Tom Arnold. I’m not judging or anything (past crushes include Rick Moranis and Jon Lovtiz) but you know...I’m just SAYING it’s not a good movie. 

And crushing on TA is weird.

Surprisingly Tasty Breakfast Club Cheese In Your Stocking: Cancel Christmas

Is it possible that in the midst of all my cheese mining, there actually exists a made-for-TV Christmas movie I like without irony?

And it stars Judd Nelson?

As Santa Claus?

Quick Plot: We open quite suddenly on an empty  courtroom setting where a humorless 'board member' breaks the bad news to Santa: due to the increasing materialization of Christmas, Santa Claus will not be delivering gifts to children this year...UNLESS...

Cue Challenge!

The old man can convert two spoiled rich boys and a moody paraplegic to discovering the true meaning of the holiday without revealing his secret Santa identity. Conveniently enough, all three brats/kids attend the same ritzy private academy in Califor--

NO! What's this? A cheaply made holiday film NOT set in snowless & sunny LA? Can it BE?

Well sort of. See, the spoiled rotten Farley, his lackey Stephen, and Adam The Wheelchair Kid all live in the snowless & sunny... Atlanta. 

Which apparently looks  a lot like California, but comes at a lower budget.

Ah well. At least the film has a fairly original premise. Santa (played by Judd Nelson with the same creepily forced old man voice used by Corey Feldman in Puppet Master vs. Demonic Toys) takes a job as a school janitor with his chief elf Randall in tow. The Bert & Ernie-ish pair also rent a room above Adam and his single mom who oh-so-serendipitously teaches Farley and Stephen. Oh, and Farley's dad is ALSO oh-so-serendipitously single. Some people don't need cute talking dogs to be matchmade.

Broom in hand and aging Judd Nelson disguise in place, Santa slowly works his magic on his charges. The refreshing thing--and I'm being weirdly serious about this--is that these kids genuinely DO start to open up but not necessarily to the creepily enthusiastic janitor and his assistant (who aggressively laughs in a manner as terrifying as anything in Clownhouse). When Adam's teacher mom confronts Stephen about his follower status, the boy thoughtfully evaluates his actions and takes a stand for himself. Farley starts off as a token rich kid, but the film lets us see that he's really just still recovering from the loss of his mother in a way that's not overly trite. Meeting Adam helps to bring out the best in him not BECAUSE Adam is in a wheelchair, but more in a way that these two angry middle schoolers simply enjoy one another's company.

I don't mean to say Cancel Christmas is on par with Wings of Desire in its humanism, but considering so much of the sentimental tripe hauled out for the season, it's genuinely sweet. I don't know that I'll seek out more work from director John Bradshaw and writer David Alexander, but I'll be quite happy if I see their names pop up on something like this in the future.

Especially if, like Cancel Christmas, it involves a star wipe.

High Points

There's a kind of wonderful sequence where Santa steals an hour working as a mall Claus in order to get a feel for today's youth. Instead of having the kids recite their shopping lists, Santa asks them what they're giving their own parents this year. This subplot develops a little more and in all scrooge-less honesty, it's absolutely refreshing

Aforementioned star wipe. This film has a star wipe!

Low Points

While the ending is earned, there's something about the execution of Cancel Christmas' final scene that feels incredibly rushed and sadly lacking the cheer I was hoping for, almost as if the budget was star wiped out by the time they filmed it

Lessons Learned

You know you have an absentee dad when only the butler knows how you take your steak

That Kipling dude could write

If you go to or work at a private school, you will have no discernible accent, even if you live in Atlanta

Perpetuity means forever (and ever)

Montage Mania

Stephen fundraises the only way one can: montage

Sass Factor

The nearly insufferable Randall gets the zingers AND the chance to dress in drag, which naturally means a wacky complaint about wearing heels

Token Slapstick

Absent! It's a Christmas miracle!

Cool Cat Alert

It's kind of hilarious how relevant and hip Cancel Christmas tries to be. For starters, Santa is handed a cell phone that will ring when his tasks are completed, as if someone behind the screens realized there's no better way to look current than have your Santa Claus hold a cell phone. Even better is the forced "teen jargon" spoken by Stephen. Really the only words he uses are 'dude,' 'stellar,' 'stoked,' and 'off the hook,' but it's all spoken with such pointed scriptness  and constantly commented on by 'old' people

Stocking Stuffer Or Coal In Your Stocking?

Cancel Christmas feels like the kind of film your friend's good-intentioned but a tad behind the times dad might make. It's sickenly earnest, but until its final scene, the saccharine is far more tolerable than it should be. Perhaps I've just grown so tired of career women being schooled or quirky antler-wearing singletons finding love that this kind of movie--made with no irony and save for an opening shot of a Hallmark Christmas village, seemingly no cash grabbings--just feels oddly fresh and...well, NICE.

Okay, and a little sentimental but I'm only human.

Whoopi Cheese In Your Stocking: Call Me Claus

A new development in my life is the weird amusement I’ve found from gooey holiday cinema. If there’s a lesson to be learned at the end, then by golly, I can’t imagine why it doesn’t fit the criteria for reviews on the Doll’s House!

Quick Plot: Little Lucy visits Santa on Christmas Eve in the 70s (not the miniseries The 70s, although that did have the same director) asking only that he brings home her father from Vietnam for the holidays. Despite the fact that her head illuminates the Santa hat with a foreshadowing magic, Lucy returns home to learn that pops has died overseas. 

Bah Humbug.

Flash forward a few decades to an adult Lucy, now played by Whoopi Goldberg like every character Whoopi Goldberg has ever played. Lucy works as a grumpy executive at a shopping network, the kind of late night TV crack that keeps stoners entertained and midwest housewives broke. With the arrival of December, Lucy has to hire a new Santa Claus to hawk red velvet lingerie, something that proves ridiculously difficult in LA, where apparently not a single actor exists that can even mildly deliver a ho ho ho. Thankfully for her, the big man himself (Nigel Hawthorne; yes, Nigel Hawthorne) has just arrived in town to start shopping for a new replacement.

See, in case you didn’t know, every 200 years, a new Santa is trained to take over the job of delivering gifts to Christian boys and girls. If this doesn’t happen, the North Pole melts and the world ends.

Hey, it’s a new theory of apocalypse!

Due to her earlier hat magic, Lucy is the prime candidate for job but this being a made-for-TV Christmas movie, there has to be a whole lot of anti-career woman propaganda to spout off first. Understandably embittered by Santa’s failure to, you know, not kill her dad, Lucy is resistant to take on the lifelong contract/enslavement. Thankfully for children everywhere--and apparently, THE PLANET--Lucy’s boss makes her realize that wanting to turn Shop-a-Lot into QVC is evil, evil, eeeeviiiiiiiiiiiiil.

And yes, every time you hear the words “Shop-a-Lot,” you have to first remember that no, they’re not talking about the Johnny Depp movie and yes, Shark Attack in the Mediterranean is back on Instant Watch and you should get to it.

So yes, Call Me Claus is no Shark Alarm, but it’s not an overly painful exercise in gingerbread syrup. Goldberg is working on autopilot, because when you’re Whoopi Goldberg filming a TNT Christmas movie, not much more is required. But hey, even lazy Goldberg has her charms, though some of the supporting cast’s mugging (Taylor Negron, you weren’t funny in Nothing But Trouble and that trend continues) and the script’s insistence on cramming in dated pop culture jokes certainly makes some parts grate. 

By some I mean most.

High Points

Some of the home shopping network humor packs some gentle punches

Low Points

It’s bad enough to cast Broadway dynamite Brian Stokes Mitchell in a non-singing role, but plain offensive when a film that stars a fantastic singer instead opts to use one of the worst covers of my favorite holiday song (Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas) instead of just forcing it into his contract to perform

Lessons Learned

James Brown is almost as good as Daddy

Hindu people don’t even celebrate Christmas

Goblins are what happens when gnomes and leprechauns get drunk on the beach at night. I guess trolls happen during the day?

The Winning Line

Allow me to set up:

After little Lucy’s trip to meet Santa Claus, her family returns home to find two U.S. soldiers waiting at the door. Anybody who’s ever seen any movie ever knows what that means. Lucy, of course, hasn’t seen any movie ever so when she asks her mother what the news is, the response follows:

“It’s Daddy. I’m afraid he really IS coming home for Christmas.”

Sass Factor
It's Whoopi Goldberg yo! Her very NAME is sassy.

Montage Mania
How else can we express Lucy's change of heart than with a montage that lingers on still photos and such?

Stocking Stuffer or Stuffed With Coal?

Call Me Claus is harmless holiday entertainment, which ultimately makes it fairly dull. As I said about the similarly innocuous Snowglobe, one could always do worse when it comes to pained Christmas cheer, but that doesn’t really mean there’s any reason to watch it. It’s there, on Instant Watch, and when you need your Goldberg fix or Bruce Vilanch cameo, you can queue it up without killing too many braincells. I’m not saying you SHOULD, but you know, if you do, that’s that.

Horrible Non-Horror! The Cincinnati Christmas Edition

Drew Barrymore. Eileen Brennan. Jill Schoelen. Richard Mulligan. Pat Morita. Some guy named Googy Gress. 

GOOGY!

Could this be the greatest cast ever assembled for a Christmas movie?

Quick Plot: Young Lisa (off the wagon Barrymore) has no time for sleds and Barbie. See, she’s from Cincinnati (where, according to song, the girls are pretty, boys are feisty, and the town is natty...which sounds racist, though the town is completely white and therefore may indeed be really racist). Also in Cincy is Lisa’s flaky mom (Mrs. Peacock), minimum wage slave big sis, sis’s boyfriend Ted Theodore Logan, his chubby friend George (some guy named GOOGY!) and their smarmy boss, played in his glorious sleep by the phenomenal Richard Mulligan.

On Christmas Eve, a storm of Every Christmas Movie You’ve Ever Seen proportions strikes, causing a mini-car accident that sends Lisa into the magical world of Toyland. There she meets alternate versions of her Cincy pals, now rough derivatives of nursery rhyme characters. Evil boss (now named Barnaby) is attempting to marry Lisa’s not-sister (now Mary), much to the chagrin of her true love Jack (still pretty much Ted Theodore Logan). 

It’s vital that Jack be named Jack, primarily so that we get the line “Jack be nimble. Jack be dead!” at a key moment towards the end of the film.

Naturally, the only person who can help the young lovers is Pat Morita, aka The Toymaker (not to be confused with the homicidal craftsman of the same name in Silent Night Deadly Night 5). With magic toy soldiers, bottled up evil, and an incredibly terrible song that doesn’t even attempt to rhyme its lyrics, the little man spreads his glee throughout Toyland and inside the hardened heart of young Lisa.

Babes In Toyland is a bizarre and fairly hilarious television movie from the golden age of television movies that was the 1980s. Decorated with deflating balloons and mascots that look like their fur has been fading in a Hollywood warehouse since the ‘50s, the film feels more like an elementary school play than big budget special. I almost wonder if the actors thought they were simply rehearsing and didn’t know until later that there was film in the cameras.

That’s a wonderful thing.

You know what else is wonderful? The fact that Babes In Toyland is a musical. Kind of.

Listeners of GleeKast (that’s you, right?) know of my dislike for the modern crutch that is AutoTune, but Babes In Toyland certainly makes a case for it. Non-singing actors like Morita and Mulligan get through their brief musical interludes mostly by just shouting the lyrics. Hey, even the greats have to compensate somehow.

Lessons Learned

In Toyland, only the bride dresses up for a wedding. Guests are encouraged to wear the same clothing they’ve been in for the past week

Wooden soldiers aren’t much in demand anymore, and that’s appalling

The best way to fight evil is to be from Cincinnati. And to sing about it

Rent/Bury/Buy

Instant Watch was invented for one reason, and one reason alone: movies like these. Babes In Toyland is a cheap, awkward and not at all good holiday movie that drags in places and makes you laugh your ears off in others. In other words, it’s a tasty Christmas cookie that you owe it to yourself to enjoy. 

Santa Roll Call

As some of you know and others don't care about, I spent the last year or so contributing to Pop Syndicate, a recently renovated website that lost all its past content (and writers). The following article appeared in 2009 and since you can't find it anywhere else in InterWorld, I'm rerunning it here, with a few edits. Apologies for the deja vu.

As I sprinkle my sugar cookies in anticipation of a certain cheerful home invader’s arrival, it seems fitting to consider, judge, and rank some of cinema’s Santariffic incarnations. Naturally, we’re not talking about Tim Allen (although that’s a horror in itself) 

7. Wayne, Santa Claws

Unless you really dig C-movie actresses rubbing teddy bears over their artificial bodies to one electronically synched beat playing on loop OR have a serious fear of garden weasels, there’s not much to love in this John A. Russo directed “horror” from 1996. Yes, that’s the same man whose name graces the screenwriting credit of Night of the Living Dead, but he’s seriously etched his name onto the naughty list with this soft(er than a fleece blanket)-core porn/autistic community theater production of a slasher film about a lonely man harnessing a fatal crush on Debbie Rochon. His way into her heart? Donning aforementioned garden weasel, dressing as Santa, spray painting his costume black, drugging her children with sedative-laced hot cocoa, and strangling a few of her competitors for the Scream Queen Christmas Calendar. It’s far worse than it sounds.

6. Bill Goldberg in Santa’s Slay

Little known fact: Santa is a gambling man, child hater, and crappy curling player. 1000 years ago, he lost a somewhat cheated bet with a claymation angel an as punishment, was forced to bring presents to all the well-behaved Christian kids of the world. A millennium’s worth of ho-ing breeds an awful lot of resentment in a man, so it’s not overly surprising to watch him slaughter his way through Rob Zombie-esque strippers and grumpy old ladies the second his spell wears off. Former WWE champ Bill Goldberg has a sort of Bill Mosely on steroids feel that works for the ridiculous character, but this Santa loses a point for a) not being a well-written film and b) stabbing the kindly Jewish butcher, who by any logic, should be one of the only characters a disgruntled Santa tired of giving gifts would spare. 

5. Mike McGavin, Elves

I’ve probably discussed this 1989 bottom feeding flick with far more energy than the one time I watched it fifteen or so years ago, but one can’t draw up a Ho Ho Horror list without citing Grizzly Adams himself donning the hopefully dry cleaned mall Santa suit and battling (sadly sans costume) a genetically engineered homicidal Nazi elf. How can you not root for a guy with naturally pruned facial hair that puts all polyester beard to shame?

4. Rebecca, Cuento de Navidad

Roseanne Barr shocked the television waves with the in-your-face realism of her small screen family, but we also can’t forget her glass ceiling shattering insistence on donning the big man’s suit for some extra December cash at the Lanford Mall. Paco Plaza’s The Christmas Tale features a similar twist: a mysterious dark-haired woman clad as Santa Claus has stolen $2 million and now finds herself trapped in a deep and lonely forest ditch, where her only salvation is a group of ‘80s infused children with mixed morality. I’d hate to spoil this excellent little offbeat thriller (found on the Spanish series Six Films to Keep You Awake), so just know that Rebecca does get to prowl the lonely woods with a sharpened axe and serious lack of Christmas spirit.

3. The Chapman Bros.Silent Night, Deadly Night 1-3

Gifted with one of the easiest psychologically explained motives in slasher history (crazy grandpa’s insistence that Santa’s purpose is to discipline sinners; parents’ subsequent murder after cursing; an abusive nun wielding a switch at the sight of premarital sex) and one of the best one word mottos ever (PUNISH!), Silent Night, Deadly Night helped to set the popularize and polarize Christmas massacres for all time. Billy himself is something of a drip, but he does earn points for innovative slayings (including one involving a slay) and honoring the honor system by trusting “nice kids” and improvising presents. Yes, the knife you just used to kill a little girl’s older sister’s boyfriend may be a slightly inappropriate stocking stuffer, but it’s the thought that counts. Little brother Rickey is a little less effective as Old St. Nick (although his eyebrows alone could possibly steer eight reindeer solo). We’ll give him a pass for being an infant at the initial Chapman family tragedy, especially since he still managed to remember and recount that and the entire rest of Silent Night, Deadly Night to take up 60% of the running time of his first sequel.

2. Jack Skellington/Santy Claws, The Nightmare Before Christmas

When we really consider Jack’s Kringle skills in this stop motion animated masterpiece, we can’t be kinder than A for Effort, D for Execution (especially since all the kids seemed to survive--I mean...carry on). Mr. Claws, on the other hand, is kind of a pompous jerk with a sense of self-importance as big as his bloated waistline. Still, the little booted big man should be commended for cleaning up Jack’s mess with such speed and efficiency, not to mention introducing the concept of snowballs to Halloweentown. 

1. Harry Stadling, Christmas Evil 

He makes high quality presents. He’s a smooth dancer and thorough spy, but it’s Harry’s innocent yearlong yuletide spirit that really earns him the top spot. Sure, his standards for the Nice List are a little controversial (bad breath could be genetic and being “just darling” seems a little surface), but of all the cinematic characters to ever don a homemade wool jumpsuit, it’s Brandon Maggart’s Travis Bickle after too many candy canes from this 1980 low budget classic that makes the holiday. Although the stress of non-believers does eventually drive him to multiple homicide, Harry follows his own dream and is never happier than when donating a van full of handcrafted toys to a needy children’s hospital. He’s a taker of unworthy lives, but a giver of true joy.