Post by rra on Dec 4, 2007 21:16:33 GMT -5
Found this over at the Agony Booth message boards...
Fred Claus (2007)
In the movie that proves even Santa comes from a dysfunctional family, Fred Claus tries to make a kid-friendly hero out of fast-talking sleazebag Vince Vaughn, who plays St. Nick's ne'er-do-well brother. Fred gets a shot at redemption when a corporate bureaucrat (Kevin Spacey) threatens the family business. An unappetizing mix of treacle and slime.
Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984)
Having grown up fearing Santa Claus as the punisher of bad children — not to mention having endured the shooting of his father and rape and slaying of his mother by a robber in a Santa suit — a traumatized young man finally snaps, dons a familiar red outfit, and goes on a killing spree, sparing neither the nice nor the naughty. Give this horror cheapie a few points for creativity, but it's still as rancid as leftover fruitcake.
Jack Frost (1998)
Not to be confused with the slasher pic of the same name about a killer snowman, though this ostensibly sweet family dramedy is nearly as chilling. Itinerant musician Michael Keaton had little time to spend with his kid, but after he dies in a blizzard and returns as a talking snowman, he and the kid have all the quality time in the world. Well, 'til spring thaw, at least.
Santa Claus: The Movie (1985)*
Whenever the major Hollywood studios spend eight or nine figures to criticize corporate greed and excess, someone is trying to sell you something. In this case, it was McDonald's, who signed what was the biggest product-placement deal to date with the producers, and whose brand is promoted frequently throughout the movie. Apparently, no one behind this $50 million movie — an astronomical budget at the time — saw the irony of making the villain an evil toy tycoon (John Lithgow) who takes advantage of the thwarted efforts of a misguided elf (Dudley Moore) to industrialize toy production at the North Pole. Just as unwatchable as it sounds.
Black Christmas (1974)
Actually, this pioneering tale of a killer who stalks nubile coeds in a sorority house isn't terrible, but it has a lot to answer for, having spawned pretty much the entire teen-slasher genre, as well as the subset of holiday horror films (Halloween, Silent Night, Deadly Night, et al). Directed by Bob Clark, who earned back a spot on the ''nice'' list nine years later by directing A Christmas Story.
Miracle on 34th Street (1994)
Richard Attenborough makes a pretty good twinkly-eyed Kris Kringle, but everything else about this unnecessary remake of the 1947 classic is off. There's a sour taste to the whole enterprise, from charmless moppet Mara Wilson (Mrs. Doubtfire) in the Natalie Wood role, to the part where Kris whacks a rival Santa with his cane, to the botched ending that loses the clever twist from the original film.
Toys (1992)
Robin Williams is all forced whimsy as a fun-loving toy mogul with a peroxide 'do and the surreal stylistic sense of a Magritte painting, but this fable about playthings perverted into military-grade weapons quickly curdles into something dark and heavy. It's like watching a potential diamond turn back into a lump of coal.
Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992)
The first time may have been forgivable negligence, but the second time starts to look like criminal neglect and an excuse to call Child Protective Services. Aside from the shift in setting, the sex change of the Creepy-But-Misunderstood Old Person, and a scary Donald Trump cameo, this is essentially the same as the first movie, only with less charm and more cynicism.
Ernest Saves Christmas (1988)
Only a movie centering on Jim Varney's lovable rube would be foolish enough to set a Christmas fable in Orlando. There's plenty of absurdity but few laughs in this story about how Santa gets arrested while trying to recruit a washed-up children's TV host to take over the toy-distribution business. Christmas must be in sorry shape indeed if it needs Ernest (here working as a cab driver) to save it.
Deck the Halls (2006)
In this unfunny odd-couple comedy, uptight Matthew Broderick is determined to have an old-fashioned, Norman Rockwell Christmas, while grotesque neighbor Danny DeVito wants to put enough lights on his house to make it visible from outer space. Both of these obsessives lose sight of the True Meaning of Christmas; by the time the story escalates into explosive mayhem, so has the movie.
New Year's Evil (1980)
Novel gimmick, poor execution. During a national New Year's Eve punk-rock countdown broadcast (when was there ever one of those?), a killer phones in to say he'll whack someone every time the clock strikes midnight in each time zone, with the hostess herself (Roz Kelly, a.k.a. Happy Days' Pinky Tuscadero) targeted for last. Alas, given its lack of creativity, inventive gore, or actual scary moments, this holiday slasher offers the same auld lang syne.
Jingle All the Way (1996)
Once again, the kind of Hollywood satire of holiday greed that undermines its own point with lavish, desperate, joyless, expensive spectacle. We're supposed to laugh at Arnold Schwarzenegger's no-holds-barred battle against other equally competitive dads to get his son the season's must-have toy, when all the boy really wants is more quality time with Dad, but who doesn't come away from this movie wanting one of those cool Turbo Man action figures for themselves? Bonus coal for casting as the boy Jake Lloyd, who would go on to help ruin the Star Wars franchise as the wee Darth Vader.
Reindeer Games (2000)
Ex-con Ben Affleck gets roped into a Yuletide heist scheme by femme fatale Charlize Theron and skeevy thug Gary Sinise. Not the finest hour for anyone involved, including director John Frankenheimer (The Manchurian Candidate, Ronin).
'R Xmas (2001)
Christmas can be a tense time for families. Take the couple played here by Sopranos vets Drea de Matteo and Lillo Brancato, who spend the holiday watching their daughter's school pageant, shopping for gifts, preparing heroin for their lucrative drug-dealing business, and scrambling to get ransom money to appease a kidnapper. Of course, for director Abel Ferrara, who specializes in New York City crime dramas (King of New York, Bad Lieutenant), this is just another dull day at the office. Gotta love the title, though.
How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000)
Everything the slim, modest Dr. Seuss tale was about — anti-materialism, austerity, simplicity — is belied by the garish, loud, vulgar, overproduced, look-at-how-much-money-we-spent production of this live-action version. That includes Jim Carrey's typically unrestrained performance as the titular green furry Scrooge.
Christmas with the Kranks (2004)
No list of bad holiday movies would be complete without Santa Clause franchise star Tim Allen. This time, Tim and wife Jamie Lee Curtis have the sensible idea to take a pass on all the decorating, caroling, and enforced merriment. Unfortunately, their fascist neighbors, led by Dan Aykroyd, won't hear of it, and they cow the Kranks into hall-decking conformity.
Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964)
Maybe one of the worst movies ever made, period, albeit enjoyable on an Ed Wood so-bad-it's-good level. Noteworthy for the presence of a seven-year-old Pia Zadora as one of the Martian tykes. And to think, it was all downhill from there.
Santa With Muscles (1996)
Hulk Hogan plays a fugitive from justice who dons a Santa suit, gets conked on the head, wakes up thinking he's the real Claus, and goes around doing good and reversing his lifetime of bad karma. Released in late 1996, the wrestler's yuletide comedy got clobbered by the contemporaneous release of Arnold Schwarzenegger's Jingle All the Way; guess the multiplex didn't have room for two sets of muscle under the mistletoe.
Eight Crazy Nights (2002)
Adam Sandler plays his usual boy-man, a drunken lout whose boorish behavior ruins both Christmas and Hanukkah for everyone in his small town — and that's just during the opening musical number. Don't think working in 2D animated form can suppress Sandler's fondness for crude humor, making fun of people's infirmities, or maudlin self-pity. Strictly for Sandler fans and holiday viewers who are feeling especially bah-humbuggy.
Surviving Christmas (2004)
Serial offender Ben Affleck (see Reindeer Games) at his most smug, playing a yuppie who, having nowhere else to go on the holiday, demands to spend it at his childhood home, no matter how much his childlike neediness inconveniences the family that lives there now. Shaggy paterfamilias James Gandolfini spends most of the movie muttering under his breath, as if wishing he could summon his Sopranos alter ego to whack this tiresome interloper.
*=I gotta review that turkey sometime.
Fred Claus (2007)
In the movie that proves even Santa comes from a dysfunctional family, Fred Claus tries to make a kid-friendly hero out of fast-talking sleazebag Vince Vaughn, who plays St. Nick's ne'er-do-well brother. Fred gets a shot at redemption when a corporate bureaucrat (Kevin Spacey) threatens the family business. An unappetizing mix of treacle and slime.
Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984)
Having grown up fearing Santa Claus as the punisher of bad children — not to mention having endured the shooting of his father and rape and slaying of his mother by a robber in a Santa suit — a traumatized young man finally snaps, dons a familiar red outfit, and goes on a killing spree, sparing neither the nice nor the naughty. Give this horror cheapie a few points for creativity, but it's still as rancid as leftover fruitcake.
Jack Frost (1998)
Not to be confused with the slasher pic of the same name about a killer snowman, though this ostensibly sweet family dramedy is nearly as chilling. Itinerant musician Michael Keaton had little time to spend with his kid, but after he dies in a blizzard and returns as a talking snowman, he and the kid have all the quality time in the world. Well, 'til spring thaw, at least.
Santa Claus: The Movie (1985)*
Whenever the major Hollywood studios spend eight or nine figures to criticize corporate greed and excess, someone is trying to sell you something. In this case, it was McDonald's, who signed what was the biggest product-placement deal to date with the producers, and whose brand is promoted frequently throughout the movie. Apparently, no one behind this $50 million movie — an astronomical budget at the time — saw the irony of making the villain an evil toy tycoon (John Lithgow) who takes advantage of the thwarted efforts of a misguided elf (Dudley Moore) to industrialize toy production at the North Pole. Just as unwatchable as it sounds.
Black Christmas (1974)
Actually, this pioneering tale of a killer who stalks nubile coeds in a sorority house isn't terrible, but it has a lot to answer for, having spawned pretty much the entire teen-slasher genre, as well as the subset of holiday horror films (Halloween, Silent Night, Deadly Night, et al). Directed by Bob Clark, who earned back a spot on the ''nice'' list nine years later by directing A Christmas Story.
Miracle on 34th Street (1994)
Richard Attenborough makes a pretty good twinkly-eyed Kris Kringle, but everything else about this unnecessary remake of the 1947 classic is off. There's a sour taste to the whole enterprise, from charmless moppet Mara Wilson (Mrs. Doubtfire) in the Natalie Wood role, to the part where Kris whacks a rival Santa with his cane, to the botched ending that loses the clever twist from the original film.
Toys (1992)
Robin Williams is all forced whimsy as a fun-loving toy mogul with a peroxide 'do and the surreal stylistic sense of a Magritte painting, but this fable about playthings perverted into military-grade weapons quickly curdles into something dark and heavy. It's like watching a potential diamond turn back into a lump of coal.
Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992)
The first time may have been forgivable negligence, but the second time starts to look like criminal neglect and an excuse to call Child Protective Services. Aside from the shift in setting, the sex change of the Creepy-But-Misunderstood Old Person, and a scary Donald Trump cameo, this is essentially the same as the first movie, only with less charm and more cynicism.
Ernest Saves Christmas (1988)
Only a movie centering on Jim Varney's lovable rube would be foolish enough to set a Christmas fable in Orlando. There's plenty of absurdity but few laughs in this story about how Santa gets arrested while trying to recruit a washed-up children's TV host to take over the toy-distribution business. Christmas must be in sorry shape indeed if it needs Ernest (here working as a cab driver) to save it.
Deck the Halls (2006)
In this unfunny odd-couple comedy, uptight Matthew Broderick is determined to have an old-fashioned, Norman Rockwell Christmas, while grotesque neighbor Danny DeVito wants to put enough lights on his house to make it visible from outer space. Both of these obsessives lose sight of the True Meaning of Christmas; by the time the story escalates into explosive mayhem, so has the movie.
New Year's Evil (1980)
Novel gimmick, poor execution. During a national New Year's Eve punk-rock countdown broadcast (when was there ever one of those?), a killer phones in to say he'll whack someone every time the clock strikes midnight in each time zone, with the hostess herself (Roz Kelly, a.k.a. Happy Days' Pinky Tuscadero) targeted for last. Alas, given its lack of creativity, inventive gore, or actual scary moments, this holiday slasher offers the same auld lang syne.
Jingle All the Way (1996)
Once again, the kind of Hollywood satire of holiday greed that undermines its own point with lavish, desperate, joyless, expensive spectacle. We're supposed to laugh at Arnold Schwarzenegger's no-holds-barred battle against other equally competitive dads to get his son the season's must-have toy, when all the boy really wants is more quality time with Dad, but who doesn't come away from this movie wanting one of those cool Turbo Man action figures for themselves? Bonus coal for casting as the boy Jake Lloyd, who would go on to help ruin the Star Wars franchise as the wee Darth Vader.
Reindeer Games (2000)
Ex-con Ben Affleck gets roped into a Yuletide heist scheme by femme fatale Charlize Theron and skeevy thug Gary Sinise. Not the finest hour for anyone involved, including director John Frankenheimer (The Manchurian Candidate, Ronin).
'R Xmas (2001)
Christmas can be a tense time for families. Take the couple played here by Sopranos vets Drea de Matteo and Lillo Brancato, who spend the holiday watching their daughter's school pageant, shopping for gifts, preparing heroin for their lucrative drug-dealing business, and scrambling to get ransom money to appease a kidnapper. Of course, for director Abel Ferrara, who specializes in New York City crime dramas (King of New York, Bad Lieutenant), this is just another dull day at the office. Gotta love the title, though.
How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000)
Everything the slim, modest Dr. Seuss tale was about — anti-materialism, austerity, simplicity — is belied by the garish, loud, vulgar, overproduced, look-at-how-much-money-we-spent production of this live-action version. That includes Jim Carrey's typically unrestrained performance as the titular green furry Scrooge.
Christmas with the Kranks (2004)
No list of bad holiday movies would be complete without Santa Clause franchise star Tim Allen. This time, Tim and wife Jamie Lee Curtis have the sensible idea to take a pass on all the decorating, caroling, and enforced merriment. Unfortunately, their fascist neighbors, led by Dan Aykroyd, won't hear of it, and they cow the Kranks into hall-decking conformity.
Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964)
Maybe one of the worst movies ever made, period, albeit enjoyable on an Ed Wood so-bad-it's-good level. Noteworthy for the presence of a seven-year-old Pia Zadora as one of the Martian tykes. And to think, it was all downhill from there.
Santa With Muscles (1996)
Hulk Hogan plays a fugitive from justice who dons a Santa suit, gets conked on the head, wakes up thinking he's the real Claus, and goes around doing good and reversing his lifetime of bad karma. Released in late 1996, the wrestler's yuletide comedy got clobbered by the contemporaneous release of Arnold Schwarzenegger's Jingle All the Way; guess the multiplex didn't have room for two sets of muscle under the mistletoe.
Eight Crazy Nights (2002)
Adam Sandler plays his usual boy-man, a drunken lout whose boorish behavior ruins both Christmas and Hanukkah for everyone in his small town — and that's just during the opening musical number. Don't think working in 2D animated form can suppress Sandler's fondness for crude humor, making fun of people's infirmities, or maudlin self-pity. Strictly for Sandler fans and holiday viewers who are feeling especially bah-humbuggy.
Surviving Christmas (2004)
Serial offender Ben Affleck (see Reindeer Games) at his most smug, playing a yuppie who, having nowhere else to go on the holiday, demands to spend it at his childhood home, no matter how much his childlike neediness inconveniences the family that lives there now. Shaggy paterfamilias James Gandolfini spends most of the movie muttering under his breath, as if wishing he could summon his Sopranos alter ego to whack this tiresome interloper.
*=I gotta review that turkey sometime.
