Holiday Movie MADNESS! Part Two

The madness continues, with more reviews for this holiday season. Notice I didn't say which holiday. You'll see.

I hope to get to SCROOGED, ELF and others as we mosey along, but for today we have the original MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET and MONSTER HOUSE.

Also, the wonderful Jenn Jarecki has a blog called Millie at the Pictures and she has published a write-up on 2012. It's more critical than mine, however, I find little in it that I can disagree with, and I share her desire for a disaster movie script with a bit more respect for the audience. Of course, we're the ones at a disaster movie, so maybe the first step is having the self-respect to not go to a disaster movie. It's a cycle, really.


MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET: REVIEW (1947)


The miracle isn't that Santa Claus is real, and working at Macy's. The miracle is that this movie works at all, and so well.

Even in 1947, the premise was as cloying as a hallmark card. The new Santa at Macys claims he's the real deal, and his ideas are so radical--"If Macy's doesn't have it, I'll send you to someone who does!"-- that they instantly capture the imagination and the wallet of all New Yorkers. And more importantly, they capture the imagination of little Susan Walker (Natalie Wood), who has been raised to believe in practical things, like taxes, realistic dolls and zero imagination. But after one visit on the lap of Santa, real name Kris Kringle (Edmund Gwenn), and she starts to wonder... what if...

Just writing that paragraph, it sounds all awfully syrupy and too cute. Somehow, it's not. It becomes wonderful and life-affirming, even though it the point of highest action occurs during a state competency hearing.

Maybe it's the economy of storytelling. Like CASABLANCA, made 5 years earlier, the movie moves fast and takes little time to get on with it. It takes a mere 10 minutes to get Kringle off the street and into Macys, and another 10 to set off the central conflict of the film, which is to basically make a believer out of an agnostic child. Also, a snippy faux-psychologist decides that Kringle should be locked up, because he hates him. And joy. And puppies. The point is, there are few scenes establishing things we already know, almost every scene propels the movie forward.

Maybe it's because, for all the talk of faith and belief, the movie stays grounded in realism. If you were to hire someone as Santa and later realize the address he gave is the North Pole, you call a doctor. That's what the people at Macy's do. On the same note, if you were a judge running for re-election, and face with the concept of declaring that, as a matter of law, there is no Santa Claus, you might balk at the prospect. That's what this Judge does here, when a small matter of whether an old man should be committed becomes a referendum on Christmas Spirit.

Maybe it's because for all of its Capra-esque sentiment, there's a healthy verneer of cyncism coating the whole thing. When Santa starts sending customers to other stores, the head of Macy's sneakily--and wisely-- embraces the tide of good will, correctly guessing that the people who think well of Macy's, even if they're not buying something today, will buy something tomorrow. And the Judge's political advisor, Charlie (William Frawley, who played 'Fred' on I LOVE LUCY), has a speech that sounds like the GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS, CHRISTMAS EDITION: :

"All right, you go back and tell them that the New York State Supreme Court rules there's no Santa Claus. It's all over the papers. The kids read it and they don't hang up their stockings. Now what happens to all the toys that are supposed to be in those stockings? Nobody buys them. The toy manufacturers are going to like that; so they have to lay off a lot of their employees, union employees. Now you got the CIO and the AF of L against you and they're going to adore you for it and they're going to say it with votes. Oh, and the department stores are going to love you too and the Christmas card makers and the candy companies. Ho ho. Henry, you're going to be an awful popular fella.... "

But mostly I think the movie works because of the performances. Maureen O'Hara and John Paine are pretty bloodless as a couple, but they play their archetypes well- the pragmatic realist versus the idealistic dreamer, although in this case it's the Parade Producer who is the realist and the Property Attorney who is the dreamer. Young Natalie Wood is very effective as the little girl, who is bright and thoughtful and sensible, as supposed to Tim Allen's hateful son in THE SANTA CLAUSE. The Judge and his advisor Charlie are pitch-perfect. But the best performance is Kringle himself, who somehow manages to embody the very soul of the season without any Santa Pyrotechnics. No cookies, no milk, no reindeer, no elves, and while he does wear the suit, he wears it in black or white. Just thoughtful good cheer in the shell of a carefully santizied version of a mentally ill man.

Spoiler Alert: It is very likely that Kris Kringle is not Santa Claus, but an old man living a delusion. However, as his doctor points out, he's not hurting anyone, and in fact makes the lives of everyone around him happier for doing so. The only time he lashes out is against the truly hateful psychologist, and even then, it's a mild smack with a cane. Only a jury of Scrooges would actually vote to convict this old man.

MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET wasn't revolutionary, mind blowing, or epic. It was a simple story, well told, worthy of being retold. That's enough to qualify as a Christmas gem. Just stay away from the remake.

RATING: * * * * (out of 5 stars).

P.S. Also, the 1947 trailer is hilarious: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IZr_SvCcXc


MONSTER HOUSE: REVIEW (2006)

MONSTER HOUSE is a perfect little creepy movie for Halloween. A pity it was released in Mid Summer 2006, and that it is currently December, thus making it a holiday movie out of joint. But, alas, Black Friday is when it was on sale at Walmart, so here we are.

An 80's throwback made with modern animation techniques, MONSTER HOUSE concerns a... well, a house that our hero DJ is convinced is alive. And evil. And is hungry. And tonight is Halloween.

It wasn't always this way. First, he was first afraid of his neighbor, Old Man Nebbercracker (Steve Bushemi), who was a cranky coot who literally scream, "You kids stay off my lawn!" One day DJ ventured a little too far, and Nebbercracker pitches such a fit that he keels over on his precious lawn, heart attack.

In a different movie that you've seen before, this little scare would become a heartwarming story about judging strangers, and that the only thing to fear is your own fears. DJ would feel bad, bring Nebbercracker some cookies, and learn some life lessons. But this is a movie called MONSTER HOUSE. In this movie, the only thing to fear is a giant freaking house eating you.

I'm usually a sucker for great animated movies and a terror towards mediocre animated movies, but here my love for drawings that move is neutral. The animation is fine here, but there is nothing about the story that couldn't have been done live action, except for the house, which would have been digital anyway. That isn't a complaint, just a comment. The kids' reactions play well, but I'm sure the live kids would too. The action never really leaves the neighborhood, and the inside of the house could have been a set. It's done well, but the animation neither adds nor detracts for me. Except for the house itself.

Fact: a movie called MONSTER HOUSE would be a bit of a rip-off to come all this way and not have there be an actual house that is a monster. Well, the house IS a monster, and it is one hell of a terror. A giant man-eating house may sound silly, but it plays like the better books of Stephen King, and more importantly, it just looks scary.



Show me a person who is not afraid of being eaten by a giant moving house, and I will show you a fool. DJ, after making the requiste rounds of trying to get adults to believe him, decides to take on the house with his best friend Chowder (Sam Lerner) and token girl Jenny (Spencer Locke), who they befriend after rescuing her from the house. Less lucky are some of the other adults, most of whom get chomped up in scenes that are easily as scary as anything in most horror movies. I'm not quite sure how Sony thought this movie would do well with kids of all ages, as it probably sent most of them running for the aisles in terror. But I'm glad they agreed to produce it anyway, since it has a wicked sense of humor, genuine scares and some sequences of real imagination.

The movie peaks at about 3/4ths through when the kids get swallowed but go down the wrong pipe and are still alive. With an actual trip inside the belly of the beast, the movie provides some insight into how the house came to be, and pulls off a neat trick by showing that you can a) plausibly explain why a house came to be haunted with malevolent evil and b) find pathos in such a situation. Neat.

Alas, that leaves the last act, a shrieking action climax where our hero must literally throw a lit stick of dynamite into the mouth of the house. The humor and spookiness drains away, and all that's left is basically a suburban variation on the ol' slay-the-dragon routine. It's not a fatal blow, but for a movie this clever, you'd expect more of a neat twist.

Still, for about 70 of it's 90 minutes, MONSTER HOUSE is good, scary fun. If there is a shelf for fun, overblown movies about suburban kids going on impossible adventures, it belongs right between MONSTER SQUAD and THE GOONIES.

For some of you, what I just said amounts to heresy. And yes, maybe MONSTER HOUSE is not as over-the-top and loony as those movies. But the effects are better, and there's less racism and homophobia. So, you know. That's a fair trade.

RATING: * * * (out of 5 stars)