Christmas Movies!

by Katie Bruggeman

Christmas is the perfect time to hang out with your family, watch some holiday movies, and bury the seething resentment that you’ve carried with you since puberty.  Sure, you may have had a crappy childhood, filled with divorce and bad orthodontia, but once a year, in the darkest of days, comes Christmas!  People cover everything in electronic lights and fake wreaths, and there are tons and tons of presents.  ‘Tis the most wonderful season of all.

But, there’s also something a little weird about Christmas.  Your entire family is trapped in the same house for days, pacing around, trading the old habitual snide remarks, drinking egg nog from a can or white zinn from a box, and things get a little intense, what with all the talking and the memories and the debating about who got what when mom died, and then the cops come...

Anyway. Here are some Christmas movie reviews!

The Star Wars Holiday Special

This is a rare and TOTALLY AWESOME movie that stars Chewbacca’s family.  They’re celebrating their annual holiday, Lifeday, an occasion where all of the different alien species get together and eat Ton-Ton stew and communicate with each other on various implausible intergalactic ham radios.  It’s not exactly clear what happens in terms of story or plot points, but Bea Arthur does a really outstanding musical number in that one shady renegade bar where Han Solo shot the hulking alien bounty hunter.

Then Jefferson Starship does a song, which totally proves my theory that Jefferson Starship is from a different galaxy than ours, and came to Earth on a mythical, time-traveling spacecraft.  

There are lots of scenes when “Itchy,” Chewbacca’s father, and “Lumpy,” Chewbacca’s son, grunt at each other in indecipherable tones, because apparently they can’t speak English and they’re illegal immigrants, like Zach Braff. There are no subtitles so you just have to guess what they’re talking about.  I had no idea what was going on the entire time, but then again the whole concept of Christmas is a little lost on me.  Sure, it’s nice to celebrate with my family sometimes, but who the hell is this Jesus Christ that everyone talks about?  Is he friends with Luke Skywalker?  Is he Luke Skywalker?  I need another drink.  Since I’m bipolar, I have to drink for two.

Tim Allen Christmas Movies

It’s a proven statistic that Tim Allen plays Santa Claus in 85% of the holiday movies produced in the United States.  (Gerard Depardieu holds the world record, for acting in 93% of French holiday movies.)  Another statistic:  The Santa Clause 3 held the number one spot in box office numbers for three weeks in a row.  I guess that either proves that Tim Allen was born to wear a fat suit, or the American people are stupid and intellectually lazy.

In my opinion, there are plenty of actors that could do better in the Santa role than Tim Allen.  How about Christopher Walken?  He’ll do anything for money these days.  Mickey Rooney is fat and jolly as fuck.  Eddie Murphy—at least his skin tone is historically accurate.  What about John Madden?  Kirstie Alley?  OJ Simpson? 

I’d like to see Bill O’Reilly play Santa Claus, especially if they show a scene where Ol’ Saint Nick gets executed at gunpoint.  And then someone eats his reindeer.

The Polar Express

My question about this movie is this:  why didn’t they just have real people act in it?  They’re obviously going for the ‘hyperreal’ look, which is fine—plenty of pop artists in the 70’s attempted this, and made an astute commentary on the telegenic nature of postmodern culture.  But I’m pretty sure that the aesthetic of artists like Chuck Close wasn’t what the makers of Polar Express were going for.  They’re all, “Hey, look at all of this awesome technology!”  “That’s so lifelike that I’m going to jizz in my pants!”  “Fuckin A, dude!”

Despite the obvious enthusiasm and smug satisfaction from the ‘creators’ of Polar Express as they pat their own backs for their incredibly life-like animation, it gave me some really terrifying nightmares for weeks.  Mainly about getting raped by Tom Hanks.  Yuck.

Gremlins

I know what you’re thinking: “Gremlins isn’t a Christmas movie.”  Aye, but you forget, the whole story about that ill-fated Gremlin started on Christmas Eve.  Check and mate!

Like every other movie that was made in the 80’s, it starts in The Spooky, Mysterious Magic Shop that’s run by an Eccentric Old Man.  I think this is the same grizzled actor that plays the gentle shopkeeper in Garbage Pail Kids:  The Movie.

It’s Christmas Eve and The Alcoholic Yet Loving Father comes in to get the obligatory last-minute present for his neglected children.  He spots a strange and exotic creature!  While the Eccentric Old Man warns him of all the dangers that could be unleashed if he doesn’t follow the animal’s rules, The Alcoholic Yet Loving Father takes a swig off his flask and, with a twinkle in his eye, persuades the Eccentric Old Man to part with the mysterious Gremlin.  “Keep the change, ya filthy animal,” he says as he strides out the door, triumphant, unknowing of his hazardous fate.

Then there’s a montage where The Gremlin breakdances, sweeps the kitchen, takes the car out joyriding, and has freaky sex with a nubile Phoebe Cates.  Everyone falls in love with the Gremlin and he’s elected mayor of the city.  He and Phoebe Cates are married in a small ceremony at City Hall, and they buy a house on the river, next to a hobo shantytown.

Predictably, all hell breaks loose!  The Gremlin gives birth to some scaly, mean lizard wraith-aliens, and they form a rebel gang that terrorizes the elderly and children alike!  They burp noxious gases and set everything on fire!  The Alcoholic Yet Loving Father gets on a Greyhound set for Tulsa and doesn’t look back.  So long, suckers.  

This is when I stopped watching the movie, because it gets sort of shitty after that.  The moral of the story is: don’t put off Christmas shopping until the last minute, because a rebel lizard gang will destroy your whole city, and your erstwhile, binge-drinking life will seem like a wicked mistake.

Black Christmas

I actually went to see this by myself in the theater, one lonely afternoon, as the wind swept dead leaves around on the streets of Brooklyn and the hot dog vendors shivered in their fingerless gloves.  I shuffled in to the movie with the other unwitting psychopaths that paid $10 to see Santa chop and chainsaw people up into bits.  Merry Christmas, sickos!

I slunk on in there, sat down in my butter-stained seat, and promptly fell asleep.  I didn’t even see the opening credits.  I was really tired from working all night at the soup kitchen.  As The New York Times says, “Don’t Forget The Neediest!”

If I actually would have watched the movie, I’m guessing that a lot of sadistic murders happen and it exposes Christmas for the eerie holiday it is.  Santa has access to your house/sleeping children because you naively leave your chimney open, and he slides right in with his sack full of knives and various devices of torture.  You even lure him in there with cookies!  You’re living in a dream world, dude.

I woke up as the end credits to Black Christmas ran, and then I ate at The Olive Garden and burned down the Toys R Us in Times Square.  Take that, Santa!

It’s A Wonderful Life

And this is a wonderful movie!  I had never seen it in all of my 28 years, until I accidentally rented it at the video store last weekend.  (I was trying to rent It’s Another Eating Disorder, a Lifetime movie starring Judith Light.  Apparently one of my cousins has developed bulimia and I’m staying with her for a night in Minneapolis next month.  Lifetime movies are good for doing research about dysfunctional family members, FYI.)

Anyway, George Bailey is a guy that’s good in his heart and has the wanderlust of a thousand sweat-stained gypsies.  But, unlike gypsies, he doesn’t wander around stealing from innocent people and killing them.  Ahem.

George Bailey tries to shake the hard, fast pull of love, because he’s a loner and don’t you forget it.  Sure, he may be trapped in this stinkin’ one horse town, but someday he’s gettin out and seein the world!  Egypt, Wisconsin, the goddamn Panama Canal!  It’s true!  He keeps on talkin about it!

But then, like many of us, he meets a hot girl that’s dating someone else and he steals her away, thereby falling into the fickle escape of a life drenched with romantic distraction. He gives up everything that he once gave a damn about.  He and his wife cobble together a life and a home, but he’s a ticking time bomb, ready to burn something down at the drop of a hat.  Which I totally get, b-t-dubs.  A parapalegic psychopath taunts him relentlessly—something about real estate.  I don’t really know.

But, after watching this movie, I do know this:  love will make you give up your dreams.  It will destroy your confidence, rape your soul, and leave you hanging upside down from a railroad transom.  Bored mongrel children will throw rocks at you, and then move on to beating you with their baseball bats, and then some sticks that they find in the ditch.  You’ll rot and decay.  Birds of prey will slowly eat you.  Then an old county maintenance man will cut you down and toss you in the river, as if you were never born.

The moral of the story:  never, ever, EVER date anyone.




Visit Katie's blog, Dancing at Gunpoint, here: www.gstringsfororphans.blogspot.com

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