Holiday Weekend Movie Nights
Muppets, Guardians, and Sequels, Oh, My...
We spent the Christmas weekend down at my parents’, and watched four movies during that span. Kate was a remote participant for two of them, streaming along back in Niskayuna, because she needed to be at work.
The Muppet Christmas Carol:
Friday night at dinner we were discussing movie options, and my dad suggested A Christmas Carol, which somehow neither of the kids had seen. He was pushing for the George C. Scott version, but I lobbied for this social-media favorite, where Michael Caine is doing Shakespeare and everybody else is a Muppet.
This is very good in a lot of ways, mostly involving either Caine or Gonzo reading actual Dickens. The songs aren’t great, though, and as this was made shortly after Jim Henson’s death they hadn’t quite sorted out the Kermit the Frog voice acting, so he sounds a bit wrong to me. Still a fun movie.
The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special:
Not really a full movie, but The Pip was a little under the weather and probably too tired and grumpy for a two-hour film, so we went with this after Christmas Eve dinner. It is silly and inessential, but we all laughed out loud at the Fountains of Wayne needle drop, so it served its purpose well.
A Christmas Story Christmas:
This is the sequel to the holiday classic about kids growing up in the 50’s, set in 1973, with Ralphie coming back to his hometown with his wife and kids after the sudden death of The Old Man a week before Christmas, and trying to provide the best Christmas he can to his family. Most of the child actors from the original reprise their roles for this, which is cool.
This is also largely inessential, but good enough at what it is. The one real weakness of it is a kind of lack of specificity— the original vividly evokes a particular era, but aside from a few bits of set dressing and some hairstyles, this doesn’t really feel rooted in the 1970’s in as authentic a way as the original.
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery:
The much-talked-about and very pricey sequel to the surpise Oscar nominee, bringing back Daniel Craig’s ridiculous accent and a star-studded cast of rish “disruptors” for a murder mystery on a private island. In the classic mode of a sequel, it’s bigger and zanier than the original, but still a fun mystery in a classic mode, with enjoyable hammy performances from most of the cast and some great cameos.
As is often the case these days, though, this movie is being damaged by the #discourse on social media. Not so much by the handful of vocal people who are hating on it, who are mostly not folks whose cultural opinions I care about, but more from the pro side, with people massively overrating the quality of the social commentary here. It’s a fun movie with a clever script and some stars who clearly had a blast making it, and that’s more than enough. It’s not remotely sturdy enough to bear the weight of analysis some people want to hang on it, and I hate that it’s being praised in ways that make me feel almost obliged to run it down. Please stop crushing the fun out of everything, thankyewverymuch.
And there’s our holiday media consumption. If you’d like more of this, here’s a button:
And if you want to add or object to any of my descriptions, the comments will be open, but I likely won’t reply in a timely manner because I’m going skiing: