Virgins In Your Stocking! A Carol Christmas

There's a reason why Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol remains the most popular holiday themed novel, local community theater play, and plot outline for sitcoms come every December. It's a brilliantly appealing story that can be applied to any subject in any medium, be that a newspaper comic strip or Halloween Roseanne episode.

 

You start with a villain that demands hatred, say, a man who tosses cute bunny Muppets into the snowy streets of London or an executive that fires a family man on Christmas Eve. We have to DESPISE this person (or animated duck) as much as we pity the poor but kind Bob Cratchit.

Hence, who better to cast in such a role than Tori My Daddy Got Me A Lot Of Work Then Disherinted Me From His Will Spelling, otherwise known (to me, forever) as Donna Martin. A Carol Christmas (get it?) is yet another Hallmark stab at Dickens' novella, and since anyone alive today knows the story, allow me to instead present it by breaking down the character list:

 

Ebenezer Scrooge = Carol Cartman, a talk show hostess in the vein of Ricki Lake (does that reference date me? Does it matter when I'm going to refer to Carol as Donna Martin Graduates for this whole review anyway?) who treats her employees with disdain.

Bob Cratchit = Roberta, Donna Martin Graduates' long-suffering single-mom assistant struggling to balance motherhood with her high maintenance, low paying boss

Tiny Tim = Little Redheaded Girl daughter of Roberta. No limp. No crutch. No accent. No bother.

Nephew Fred = Big sister Lindsey who does that annoying family thing practiced in Holiday In Handcuffs of reading Christmas tales out loud while wearing ugly sweaters

Jacob Marley = Aunt Marla, played by Dinah Manoff (lifelong free pass for Soap and being Chucky's first victim), Donna Martin Graduates' overbearring agent aunt who made sure her niece was always the star, even if it meant swiping the Virgin Mary role from a kid with a dead mom at the annual nativity play

Ghost of Christmas Past = Gary Coleman. And yes: I'm just as angry as you are that he's not playing Tiny Tim.

Ghost of Christmas Present = William Shatne moodily coasting as if the entire shoot was purchased on a Priceline deal that ended up costing way more than advertised with taxes and insurance

Ghost of Christmas Future = A limo driver, not unlike the creepy dude in Burnt Offerings

Ex-(Almost) Fiancee

Tall, good-looking and dull do-gooder who works at homeless shelters (i.e., Karren Allen but less interesting). That being said, he's played by an actor I recall from Days of Lives back in the early 90s and my goodness, the man hasn't aged a day. So bonus points for casting a vampire

If you're being reminded of a much better Christmas Carol-themed comedy about a bigwig TV executive, his neglected sibling, homeless helping ex, and put-upon single mom assistant, I assume you have a working brain. Yes, whoever wrote A Carol Christmas was clearly inspired by Scrooged and no, it's not anywhere near as Solid Gold.

Also, it does that obnoxious Christmas movie-on-a-budget thing by taking place in California, thusly sparing the crew from the hazards/annoyance of fake or real snow. How convenient. And lazy.

 

As far as the movie goes, eh. Tori Spelling has never oozed charisma, and her bitchy career woman shtick never truly captures the nasty spirit we look for in a proper Scrooge. What's worse is her after-the-ghost reaction, which should be bursting with the holiday spirit in a manner that's either joyous (think Michael Caine's soft smiles) or insane (BILL MURRAY WANTS YOU TO SING GODDAMNIT!). As Happy Carol, Donna Martin Graduates smiles a little more, gives her staff a vacation to Hawaii, and raises her assistant's salary while offering her second house free of charge. Oh, and in my favorite character decision of all time, Carol announces that after years of turning down lucrative merchandising opportunities, she will now put her name on whatever clothing or cooking product proposed and donate the proceeds to charity.

I really hope there's a sequel where Carol discovers said goods are made under sweatshop conditions. The Olsen Twins could play the child laborers! It'd be meta!

Instead, we settle for blah humbug.

See what I did there?

 

Lessons Learned

You look pale when you’re dead

 

Pop is the sound of Gary Coleman bursting your bubble

There’s not much work for a middle aged actor who’s too small to be a jockey. That should explain Coleman's career choices (including A Carol Christmas)

 

Montage Mania

Donna and Boy Karen Allen enjoy a foggy courtship complete with wine drinking, picnicking, roller skating, and donating goods to a homeless shelter, all set to country music because how else can a TV movie convey falling in love?

  

Token Slapstick

One of Carol's employees just can't stop dropping things. It's hilarious!

  

Coal or Candy?

A Carol Christmas isn't unwatchable, but I can't think of any reason to watch it when Scrooged is playing on AMC or 90210 reruns exist on youtube. Spelling doesn't embarrass herself, but the movie never commits to its self-aware Hollywooddom, nor does it have the energy to truly be a Scrooge reborn. It is what it is, and while it's probably better than ex-roommate Kelly Taylor's A Christmas Wedding Tail, it's also less hilariously bad, making it just kinda there.

  

I think I need to put a little love in my heart now.

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.

Moldy Cheese In Your Stocking: Christmas With a Capital C

Allow me to quote something ridiculous from (cough) comedian Brad Stine: 

“Now conservatives and liberal mind-sets even see sex different. The purpose of sex from the liberal POV is to have pleasure. The problem is, that presupposition is wrong. There are many things our bodies find pleasurable, but the pleasure is a wonderful by-product to the actual purpose of the act. We find pleasure in eating, yet we don't consider the purpose of eating to be able to keep Krispy Kreme Doughnuts in business. No, the purpose of eating is so that you don't die!”

Totally sound argument, right? Don’t you wish this same brilliant mind wrote a book or, I don’t know, combined his standup comedy talents with a Christian rock band to create a TV movie about evil liberals trying to secularize Christmas? Don’t you wish it starred not Alec, not Stephen, not Billy, Not William (who I assumed was a separate Baldwin back in the day), not unrelated but far more awesome Adam, but DANIEL Baldwin?

Well kids, this Christmas With a Capital C (and please tell me there’s an easily titled adult film to be harnessed from that title) you can--but shouldn’t--watch Christmas With a Capital C.

Quick Plot: Welcome to Trapper Falls, a town of 4,000 Christians nestled in the heart of Sarah Palin’s Alaska and lorded over by Mayor Jefferson Darcy--I mean, The Ted McGinley Curse--I mean, Dan Reed. Every Christmas, the town spends a nice chunk of its budget presenting the annual nativity scene complete with hand-carved wooden magi. 

Every Christmas...until now.

Cue the ominous organ with the arrival of Mitch Bright, a big city liberal lawyer returning from San Francisco (where he graduated from Berkeley, of course) to his hometown to take the Christ out of ...

Ugh. I can’t even say it.

When I was in fifth grade, the big project for our art class was to sculpt a small clay bust, paint it, then hand it off to the teacher to bake in the kiln overnight for the color to set. We were excited to see the results, but the next day, Mrs. Jones reported that the janitor had accidentally turned the kiln off prematurely and as a result, our Michaelangelos in the making came out slightly shriveled, weirdly discolored, and as my friend once said about the Rugrats, as if someone had eaten them and vomited them back up.

That’s kind of what Daniel Baldwin looks like.

And yet, he’s one of the least sickening things in the movie.

Darcy--er, Dan, has a brother. A brother played by famed Christian comedian Brad Stine, a horrid little man who likes to whine about how sex isn’t for pleasure but procreation and Krispy Kreme doughnuts keep us alive (or something). Maybe that explains why the film sets up a romance between his character and a cute barista but then never seems to want to acknowledge that it might blossom, perhaps because there’s not a single audience member who would actually want to think about Brad Stine experiencing his holy procreational orgasm.

Christmas With a Capital C is, according to the end credits, “Based on the hit song by Go Fish Christmas With a Capital C.” As I’m sure The Christmas Shoes will soon reveal, that’s always a good thing, right? Especially when the song is aided or inspired by (gag) the standup of Stine, whose proudest moment of the film comes when he gets up on a table in a coffee shop to shout about how Christians started the United States of America (coughcough by killing a lot of Native Americans coughcough) and now they represent 98% of the country who believe Jesus is the reason for the season. Since that’s the case, we shouldn’t even try to pronounce the word “Hanukah” (it has two spellings, for goodness sake) or bow down to these “god haters” who have the nerve to drink coffee with soy milk.

Yup, Baldwin drinks coffee with soy milk and Stine takes it black, because he’s apparently a real man and his beard and Christianity prove it.

Lessons Learned

An Alaskan can hang outside in a t-shirt in the middle of December quite comfortably

Christmas is an awesome time of year. AN AWESOME TIME OF YEAR I SAY!

Stoning completely ruins your makeup

Seasons Greetings works for everybody. Except for jerks

Stray Observation

So the whole instigating plot device of Christmas With a Capital C is that there are some beautiful wooden statues of the full manger scene. When we finally see them, the wise men are certainly impressive. But let’s face it: Baby Jesus, kinda ugly.

Montage Mania
You KNOW we need a 'tear down the Jesus stuff to replace with cold secular images of holiday cheer' sequence

Token Slapstick Alert 
Having Mr. Darcy's son cast a skiier gives ample opportunity for falls

Stocking Stuffer or Stuffed With Coal?

I don’t mean to write this review as an anti-religious rant. I respect the right for everyone to celebrate (or not celebrate) Christmas in their own way, be that midnight mass or a trip to the movie theater. The problem is that Christmas With a C doesn’t respect that there is that “2%” (which trust me, is bigger) who get a whole lot else from December and more importantly, aren't aggressively close-minded and so dang ANGRY about it.

Or gross. These dudes? Kinda gross.

An Infinite (Kinda) Giveaway

It's the season of giving, my little elves and elvettes, and thusly do I present a new giveaway here at the Doll's House! In honor of the special and weird and brilliant web series Infinite Santa, someone's getting stuff!

Who is this Santa and what's so infinite about him, you ask? Well allow the power of the Internet to tell you:

Infinite Santa 8000 is an animated web series brought to you by the power team behind Drive In Horrorshow, told in 3ish minute or so installments on www.infinitesanta.com. Aside from being awesome, it combines four of my favorite things:

1. Post-apocalyptic survival

2. Santa Claus

3. Cartoons

4. Not costing anything

EVERYBODY wins! Except the unlucky saps stuck foraging in the future. But their pain is our entertainment so Merry Christmas!

For the full ongoing series, head on over to the official website where you can watch Santa's adventures AND finally find a way around glamour shots or Hallmark shopping. The Infinite Santa Store offers a mall-full of fun stuff available for purchase, including most seasonally, kickass holiday greeting cards.

Cocreator Michael Neel has generously donated some sexy swag to lucky reader, but I'm playing Black Peter (not really, cause you know, blackface) by making you folks work for it. 

So here lies the rules!

As evidenced by my monthlong quest to focus on Christmas cinema, I'm a fan of the genre, even when it's abysmal. What I want to know: what is your favorite December holiday film and why? It doesn't have to be horror-related, and I'll try my damnest to vote on the quality of your sales pitch rather than my own movie preferences. So no, JUST because you pick Silent Night Deadly Night 2 does not guarantee you the victory.

Just send me an email at deadlydollshouse at gmail dot com with a sentence or two explaining your pick and why it's so dang special. It can be film or TV-based, Christmas or Festivas or Chanukkah or Kwanzaka or whatever it is that happens around time of year and inspired somebody with a camera to make something good. Or terribly good.

Taking a note from the cruel landlord of The Christmas That Almost Wasn't or the overly sensitive St. Nick of Rankin & Bass' Twas the Night Before Christmas, the deadline is midnight on Christmas Eve.

The prize: Some Infinite Santa goodies, plus a DVD of my choosing and whatever other random physical objects I feel worthy of stuffing in a box. And yes, that could potentially mean that if Mookie is acting particularly scratchy that day or if Joplin's possession continues to be an inconvenience, you're getting a cat.

Barring any personal or government secrets, I'll post and respond to EVERYBODY's answers once the eggnog wears off and crown a winner as I eat Christmas leftovers. Happy writeupping!

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.