Mommy Lightest

It cannot be said, nay SCREAMED, enough.

Judith Light is, and has always been, a national treasure. 

Quick Plot: Because director Bill Corcoran (last seen here with the Tara Reid screamer Vipers) loves us, we open on a sexy closeup of Ms. Light's lips purring out a beautiful first line:

What she doesn't specify is that the object of her affections was Nick, her grown son and only source of joy in Diana's life. She loves this young man so much that she wakes him up with a freshly frosted cake for his birthday. She loves him so much that she attends his court hearing and cheers him on as he loses. She loves him so much that she seduces his would-be landlord so the pending rental agreement can be nullified, meaning Nick has no other choice but to stay in Mom's house. 

It's, you know, not a very healthy relationship.

Furious when he realizes he's stuck at home, Nick packs his bags to crash with a friend, only for Jane to respond with a suicide attempt. She survives, and unwittingly leaves Nick even further away: he strikes a romance with hospital nurse Abby, who, as predicted by the cynical Diana, quickly gets pregnant. 

Diana tries everything to break up the young couple: faking prostitution records for Abby's background, hiring (and stiffing) an unhoused man to annul the marriage, and finally, paying off a pair of goons to just murder the poor girl. 

That wraps us back to the framing device of Diana's narration, coming from inside a jail cell because naturally, she's caught. But sweet Nick can't believe that his mother would do such a thing and in an act of true law and disorder, agrees to represent his own unstable mother in the murder trial of his own dead pregnant wife.

My gosh do I miss the era of making TV movie posters look like VC Andrews' book covers

Don't worry: the film has already established that Nick isn't a very good attorney.

Still, this is a wild, wild last act. Too Close to Home is based on the true story of a case I won't explain in detail as it may spoil the ending. But if this is your kind of jam, then spread it. Spread it well.

High Points

Seriously, I can never say enough good words about Judith Light. This is obviously a soap opera of a TV movie, but Light knows exactly how to command the camera as a juicy, needy sociopath

Low Points

It's inevitable in a movie light this, but there's simply no way Rick Schroder can summon the kind of obsession Diana has for him in Light's hands. Both Ricky and Nick are simply outmatched

Lessons Learned

A good son keeps an 8 x 10 glamour shot of his mother framed on his work desk

In the '90s, collies made excellent police dogs

Most girls don't dream of being proposed to the night that their boyfriends present falsified documentation of their past as sex workers

Rent/Bury/Buy

Too Close to Home is gloriously ripped from the headlines made-for-TV trash. I say that as a compliment. Find it on Peacock when you feel too clean. 

This Traffic Is Killer

 

They don't make 'em like they used to.

The "'em" in this case is obviously made-for-TV movies. We have LOTS, but there's something about the way 1970s America gave us these overly ambitious, incredibly dramatic and perfectly timed for commercial breaks features that just has an incredible charm. 

Quick Plot: It's a busy July 4th on the titular California Interstate 5. On this particular holiday in 1976, a 39-car pileup will take the lives of 14 motorists. 

These are their stories.

Well, about a dozen of those involved IN said pile-up. After an incredibly impressive opening stunt on par with the opening of Final Destination 2, Smash-Up On Interstate 5 turns the clock back 48 hours to tell us just how we got here, zooming in a few of the drivers who will meet some dramatic fate. It's a very '70s disaster movie collection that includes:

- June (Harriet Nelson) and Al (Buddy Ebsen), an adorable elderly couple trying to make the most out of June's impending cancer

- a gang of bikers who try to assault -

- Erica (Vera Miles), a later-in-life divorcee trying to find her way and stumbling upon a ridiculously romantic doctor-turned-trucker 

- Penny and Pete, a runaway couple who hitch a ride with Lee before turning a gun on him but killing -

- a baby-faced Tommy Lee Jones as Officer Hutton, who widows his young wife just as she gives birth the to child he'll never meet

- his brother-in-law and sergeant Sam (Robert Conrad), who wants to marry nurse Laureen (Donna Mills), who refuses to do so because Sam could die on the road and leave her a widow like her sister

Got all that? 

Based on the novel Expressway, Smash-Up On Interstate 5 feels unusual today, but probably fit quite well in the epic disaster era of its time. It's a star-studded ensemble piece that culminates in a giant action sequence and a surprising body count. To call director John Llewellyn Moxey a television veteran is like saying Cal Ripken Jr. had good attendance. This is a man whose career spanned four decades, including The Night Stalker and EIGHTEEN episodes of Murder, She Wrote. Not all heroes make it to the big screen.

But they can still wear capes

In truth, I'm not really sure what Smash-Up is trying to do as a movie. There's a certain kind of human discovery in getting to know a variety of strangers whose lives will be fundamentally changed (and maybe even ended) in just a matter of hours by a sheer mechanical accident. The day-to-day, how-we-got-here works better for some stories than others. I would have happily watched a full movie centered on June and Al navigating their relationship in the face of disease, while the troubled-runaway-meets-even-more-troubled-murderer did little for me (and this is technically a horror blog). 

So why even write about it here, you might ask? Well, the odds are somewhat higher that I'll meet my fate at the hands of a bad driver than masked machete-wielding supernaturally gifted maniac, so on that front, Smash-Up IS scary. And you know what? So is being a middle-aged divorcee fighting off the advances of Herb Edelman.

High Points

Seriously, Ebsen and Nelson are so touching as a couple with decades of love and the knowledge that things are about to end. It makes you understand why this kind of storytelling was so popular. When it works, it really, really works

Low Points

Maybe it's just the current state of the country, but the cop stuff (which takes up a significant amount of screentime) is far less interesting than the rest. Even the sheer manipulation of a woman giving birth while her dutiful policeman husband is gunned down summoned more of an eyeroll than frown

Lessons Learned

They don't teach screaming in lamaz

Nothing brings a couple back together like a smash-up!

Never accept a ride from Bad Ronald, even if you're fully armed

The Winning Line

[upon hearing hubby Al tapping out some Chopin on the piano] "You played that the first time we made love!"

I knew Buddy Ebsen was talented, but the ability to play a nocturne while having sex? That's coordination!

Rent/Bury/Buy

Smash-Up On Interstate 5 is far from a classic, but I found it quite entertaining. It's currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

Why I Love: Pee Ell Ell

It is, you might say, quite silly that a grown woman of 32 would find so much enjoyment in an ABC Family teen drama based on a popular series of YA novels. Granted, the popularity of Pretty Little Liars--henceforth to be known as PLL--is nothing shocking, as anyone who might have rolled their eyes at its proud (and true) claim to be 'the most tweeted show of all time!' can attest. 

These kids with their hashtags and hashbrowns and corned beef hash, amiright?

Anyway, I am (wo)man enough to admit that my week got a little brighter when I discovered Season 5 (or half season 2.5? Soooo many mysteries abound in Rosewood) has debuted. The excitement of learning how the show will continue to wrestle with/not actually address the morality of a teacher dating a student, what kind of blandly handsome yet shockingly inept policeman it will introduce, and answer the question of just how much white wine Laura Leighton can drink without reddening to her hair color will keep me entertained throughout the summer.

Need more reasons to watch? Try these:

The Show Is Literally Produced With An Addictive Additive

I've often said that the 'chunk chunk' (or 'dun dun', depending on your interpretation) gavel sound effect used on any Law & Order had to include cocaine. No, I don't know how that's actually possible, but you have to admit that it's either supernatural or illegal how hooked you are once you hear that transitional noise. Likewise, even when you're bored watching (cough cough) PLL, you almost always find your heart beating a little faster during any episode's final scene, usually one that involves some masked mystery man/woman/suburban army stabbing a doll to seriously intense music. 

This leads us to the next reason, namely...

DOLLS!

Guys, this show almost always has dolls, often in the form of creepy effigies of its main quartet and more often than not, super awesome like this:

Or this...

Even the Barbie-esque this...

You get the point. The show has dolls. They're occasionally unsettling and yet equally adorable. 

Best Coming Out Story Ever

Here's where I step away from the snark to say, without irony, that PLL handled a teenage character coming to terms with her (not straight) sexuality with more finesse and sensitivity than any other show that I've ever seen (a bow and shout out to Buffy, which took up this challenge gamely but still felt restricted by its time). In its first season, the character of Emily Fields (played by the 'she's so pretty I hate her' Shay Mitchell) cautiously came to accept herself as a lesbian in a believable storyline that never felt forced or movie-of-the-week.

Pretty Little Outfits

How the hell these girls, all of whom have boyfriends, extracurricular activities, and a network of genius stalkers find time to deep condition their hair and coordinate such intense ensembles is beyond me. But hey, if the end results include as many animal prints mismatched with other animal prints as evidenced by the stylings of Aria Montgomery, it's all worth it.

LOOK! It's--

Meg Foster! 

And the creepily ageless Kendra Dee Vampry Slay-rr!

And Mike Horton!

Wait. Is that Alex Mack?

Sassy grandmother Betty Buckley

And when in doubt, cameo by Mrs. Garrett

Female Characters That Don't Rely On A 'Thing'

With four female leads, it's easy to take a guess at what your characters represent. Surely there must be one slut (the Samantha/Blanche), one prude (Charlotte/Rose), one practical grump (Miranda/Sophia) and the one who ties them all together (Carrie/Dorothy)? Aren't all female quartets composed of the same parts? The beauty of PLL, and I say this WITHOUT sarcasm, is that each of the four girls ISN'T a stereotype. Sure, they were originally conceived in broad strokes: Spencer is the intense overachiever, Emily the athlete, Hanna the ditz with a shopping addiction and Aria the artsy one who unites them all with her arrival after spending a year in Iceland (it's a thing). But even by the end of its first season, it's clear that these girls and to a more uneven degree, the actresses who play them, are much more layered than that. Aria likes to draw and write, but those are just her hobbies. Emily is less the champion swimmer than a young woman who slowly comes into her own as she deals with her sexuality, complicated relationship with her parents, and overall confidence. Spencer is intense and awesome. Best of all is Hanna, a character that could have easily been the dumb blonde but emerges--with the genuine best actress Ashley Benson--as the most interesting presence on the show. 

Halloween Done Right

If you're going to do a Halloween episode, you best DO a Halloween episode. Give me teenage girls referencing classic fiction and cult cinema, give me terror trains-- actual Terror Trains. Like Roseanne and The Simpsons, PLL understands that the most important holiday of the year comes on October 31st...even if it airs some time in January.

Homage This

Aforementioned Halloween episodes are always nodding towards some classics (wink at the John Carpenter staging in Season 2 and the complete Terror Train parody of Season 3), but even regular episodes have incorporated some classic cinema in pretty neat ways. Hitchcock abounds throughout the series, though the end of its second season pays up with glorious taxidermied results. More recently, Season 4 took an entire episode and made it '40s style noir, filming in gorgeous black and white, sticking to rotary phones, and turning its 'teenage' cast into fast talking, hats-and-gloves wearing dames.

So there. I've said it. I love Pretty Little Liars. Judge as you wish. Or just start streaming the entire series on Netflix and see how far YOU get before realizing addiction is not always a bad thing. 

Did I mention this stuff?

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.