Cynical Cinema

“The whole garden is full of angels” 

Unfortunately here, I am not reviewing Brenda Brave.  Rather, I am reviewing the English-language DVD release of Brenda Brave.  And there is a difference.  Because I suspect that the dialogue difficulties come more from the translation of the film from Swedish to English for the dubbing.  The DVD of Brenda Brave, out November 25th from First Run Features, has no subtitles or other languages.  The only way to watch is dubbed into English, and I really think something was lost in translation.  The dubbing makes the actors look amateurish, the direction look weak, and the dialogue ham-handed at best.

And I suspect the direction was not as bad as all that.  Daniel Bergman has a considerable pedigree.  And no, I don’t think that simply being the son of Ingmar Bergman means that you will have the same level of talent.  I have seen, first-hand, how the apple has fallen far from the tree of say, Bob Dylan.  Because Jakob Dylan and the Wallflowers were terrible.  But at the very least, I would imagine that a certain amount of exposure to the film world thanks to your upbringing would make you capable of directing a movie in a competent way, at the very least.  And nothing about this one seems competent.

Brenda Brave is a short film (30 minutes) based on a story written by Astrid Lindgren, who is most famous for writing the Pippi Longstocking novels.  The film involves a young girl, named Brenda, who lives with her grandmother.  At the beginning of the film, she asks her grandmother to tell her the story of how she came to live there again.  And her grandmother, grudgingly, tells her the story, once again, of how she found Brenda in a basket with a note that said “take care of this baby”.  Everything about this film screams “Schmaltzy Claptrap”.  But again, I think the translation does not help, with awkward lines like “go to town, past the store, and sell this candy, then when you return past the store, go in the store and give them this note”. 

So Brenda lives this idyllic, if poor, life with her grandmother.  But when her grandmother breaks her leg just before Christmas, things look dire.  If she can’t get to town to sell her candy, they can’t afford a Christmas.  So little Brenda (who has to be about four or five years old, tops - she can’t read, and she is three apples high), takes it upon herself to bring the candy to the market and sell it to help the family.  So now we have the overly long set-up of the “what would I do without you” grandmother-granddaughter relationship, and we also have the tiny-child-sucking-it-up-to-save-the-day scenario.  Schmaltzy claptrap award, here we come!

Brenda sells the candy.  People think she’s cute, so she sells a lot.  I suppose she is cute, but I’ll bet she’s cuter in Swedish.  And she returns home to her grandmother (well, she calls her grandmother.  But really she’s the lady who found her in the basket.)  And they have a Christmas after all, and the little girl gets a doll with the same note that was in the basket when she came “take care of this baby”…aaaaaah!  Claptrap!  Then there are the prayers.  This is what indicated to me that a lot was lost in translation.  This is Brenda’s prayer, every single night, before she goes to bed:

“An angel walks around our house.  He holds two golden candles.  In one hand he holds a book.  Now let us sleep in Jesus’ name.”

This must have been translated, pretty much literally, directly from the Swedish.  Because in English, it makes no damn sense at all.  But again, I am blaming the translation.  And I suspect that, even in Swedish, this movie is pretty schmaltzy and simple.  I am just guessing that it’s better than this.  It’s heartwarming, it’s good for kids (although I bet they won’t be entertained), and it’s quick and simple.  But it’s also schmaltzy claptrap, and wins this week’s award!

“And His forgiveness blew their mind”

A Colbert Christmas opens with one of the most entertaining, funny Christmas songs I’ve ever heard.  Stephen Colbert, you see, has discovered that when you sing regular Christmas songs on television, you have to pay royalties.  So he has decided to write his own, which will be performed throughout the show.  The first one is a song he sings solo, a song about…the song he’s singing.  How you can log onto iTunes and pay to download it.  It’s lots of fun, and kicks off one of the very best Christmas specials I have seen.  From there, it moves on to the standard fireplace-and-sweater Chistmas theme, the way only Stephen Colbert can twist that one up.

The little bits between songs are OK, but the cheesy “hey, you want some chestnuts” bits get old after a while.  But the songs themselves are magnificent.  Feist shows up as an angel, singing a song about how due to an unusually high level of prayer volume, there will be some delays in answering your prayer.  Your prayer is important to us, and we will answer all prayers in the order in which they were received.  “Please continue to hold, an angel will be with thee…shortly”.  I love Feist.  Now, she does allow Elvis Costello to be mauled by a bear, and that upset me because I also love Elvis Costello.  But aside from that, her appearance is absolutely a success.

Toby Keith shows up, making fun of a lot of things.  Including himself.  Stephen Colbert has modeled his Colbert Report on Bill O’Reilly’s The O’Reilly Factor, in that it is delusional right-wing propaganda taken to the extreme.  No one in the music business represents delusional right-wing propaganda more than Toby Keith.  Remember that song he wrote about America sticking her big flag-painted boot up the ass of the rest of the world?  (Or something like that.)  This year, as he does most years, Bill O’Reilly has been spouting off on his show about “the war on Christmas”.  How people say “happy holidays” in the stores instead of “Merry Christmas”.  And he gets enraged about it, and turns to Focus On The Family for an opinion - oh, my.  It’s some hilarious, delusional television.

Anyway, that is the song Toby Keith performs.  The tune could have come straight from the teleprompter of Bill O’Reilly - “they took our Christmas, but we’re taking it back”.  The video involves several shots of massive, destructive bombings, Toby Keith shooting his assault rifle directly into the camera, and numerous references to the Statue of Liberty, the American Flag, and so forth.  Toby Keith has long been one of my least favourite musicians, partly because I took the side of the Dixie Chicks in that battle a few years ago.  But maybe I’ve got him all wrong.  If he can make fun of himself, Bill O’Reilly, American uber-patriotism, and country music all at the same time, and so cleverly, perhaps he’s OK.  Then again, that’s assuming he gets it.  He looks pretty darn unenthused through his whole performance.  But I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt here.  Toby Keith gets it, and it’s great.

Jon Stewart makes a brief appearance, (of course), to sing a song about Hanukkah.  It’s OK, but disappointing.  Stewart isn’t as funny on Colbert as he is on his own program.  But that moment is saved when John Legend shows up.  For those of you unfamiliar with John Legend, he’s one of those modern R&B artists who wins a ton of Grammys for his slick and cheesily sexy love ballads.  He gets angry when Colbert serves egg nog without nutmeg, and he performs an ode to nutmeg, one that sends up his own style of music while being funny, smart, and totally filthy.  It’s terrific.

Toward the end, after the Jonas Brothers have died in a horrible drowning accident and Elvis Costello has been eaten by a bear, the cast gets together to sing Costello’s “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding”.  It’s a great musical moment, and pretty funny too.  Then Costello is cut out of the bear’s stomach by Santa Claus (George Wendt) just in time to sing one last song with Colbert.  Again, a great musical moment.

But the best song on the DVD belongs to Willie Nelson, who shows up as a fourth wise man, bringing an offering of weed to the baby Jesus.  I lauged so hard at this part - mostly for the song but also beacuse of Nelson’s ridiculous get-up - that tears were coming down my cheeks.  This song features almost all of the best lines in the entire Colbert Christmas special - “and his forgiveness blew their mind”, “let not mankind bogart love”.  A magnificent song by a wonderful artist, and the best moment I have seen in any Christmas special.  Ever.

There are a few bonus features on the DVD, like the three “alternate endings”, which are clearly filmed after the fact and were never intended to be real “alternate endings”.  There is an “advent calendar” feature, where I guess the idea is that every day from December 1st until Christmas you can click on one of the calendar squares, and Stephen Colbert will appear to dish out words of wisdom, or to do something funny.  The best bonus feature, however, is another song.  “Cold Cold Christmas” is a country Christmas song performed by Colbert with a guitar, and it might be even funnier than the Willie Nelson tune.  What makes it so brilliant is that it really could be a country Christmas tune.  It seems totally real, except for the bitterness that comes out more and more as the song goes on.  Another amazing moment on a terrific DVD.

The cover of the DVD box for Noelle, out today from Paramount Home Entertainment, looks very promising.  A reverend is walking along.  Or is it a priest?  Minister?  Whichever one walks around all day with a white collar on, even when he isn’t in church, so that he can be identified as whatever he is for the purposes of DVD covers and such like.  I have looked it up on wikipedia, and they tell me that the guy in the collar can be either a bishop, a priest, or a deacon.  Once I watch the movie, I will fill you in on exactly what he is.  So anyway, this bishop, priest, or deacon is walking along a snowy, windblown road carrying a dark suitcase.  Superimposed above him is a creepy, chalk-faced girl who is looking down upon him, and upon us, with an expressionless face and a thousand-mile stare.

It reminds me of so many good horror movies.  And bad ones.  Like, The Omen.  Or The Good Son.  I’ll let you decide which of those was good and which was bad.  But I did reference one of each, in case you’re keeping score at home.  I’m not 100 percent certain that The Good Son had a picture like this one on the cover.  But I just went to grab my copy of The Omen from my bookshelf, and it…oh, I just answered the dilemma above for you, didn’t I?  Anyway, The Omen DVD cover features the young boy in the foreground, with glowing eyes, and Gregory Peck cowering with his wife in the background.  So there appears to be more fear on the DVD box for The Omen.  But that makes the cover for Noelle even creepier - this priest/deacon/bishop doesn’t even KNOW there is a freaky little girl stalking him!  It’s terrifying!

OK, I just got up and put on the movie.  As I did so, I went throught all of my horror DVDs.  Yes, I keep them all together in categories.  Horror goes below pre-1968 westerns which goes below kung-fu which goes below post-1968 westerns.  I AM that much of a nerd.  Anyway, I have no other DVD covers with similar pictures to the one on the front of Noelle.  So perhaps I’m making too big a deal about this.  Oh, just so you know, as I look at the cover again, there should be an umlaut over the “e” in Noelle.  But I don’t know how to create an umlaut.  Wait - isn’t there an umlaut in umlaut?  Not in this review, there isn’t.

The movie has begun.  It turns out the guy on the cover is a priest, and not a bishop or a deacon.  He has come to town to shut down a church.  He is some kind of catholic hitman, who shows up and shuts down underperforming churches.  Like that guy in mafia movies who strong-arms the owners of fish restaurants into abandoning their fish restaurants so the gangsters can buy up all the waterfront property and open casinos, and dens of ill repute.  Except that this guy is a priest, and he does this to churches.  Then he drives his car down a snowy road, and sees a little girl out his window.  The little girl from the cover of the movie!  It’s not a very effective scare, but it’s over pretty fast.  Now he’s talking to the woman who is bound to become the love interest in the movie.  If priests can have love interests.  Can they?  I guess I will find that out too.  But wait - the lady disappeared!  OK.  Back to the cover.

There is one thing on the cover of this DVD that is a little disconcerting to me, and to my desire to watch a creepy-kid Christmas-themed horror movie.  There is a little sticker that says “family approved”, with a picture of a dove.  On the back, the write-up makes a big deal out of the fact that this film was selected as a Dove Family-Approved Holiday Film.  I thought it was pretty damn cool of the people at Dove soap to get their brand name out there by sponsoring an award for horror flicks with a title as ironic as “family approved”.  But I was suspicious.  Maybe this is not, after all, the case.

I went to the ol’ Google.  And I typed in Dove Family Approved.  And I got to a website advertising Noelle (also without an umlaut - I guess the internet comes without them) where I was instantly assaulted by a pop-up of a lady with a questionable haircut explaining the Dove organization.  I guess it’s a group much like the Heartland Truly Moving Picture organization, which managed to get their logo onto the DVD box for Kit Kittredge:  An American Girl, which I reviewed a week ago.  I guess these internet organizations are all over the place, giving out awards for movies that families can watch together.  And sometimes those awards carry enough prestige to make it onto a DVD cover.  And it appears that I may have been wrong, and that this award was not intended to be ironic - this movie may not be a horror flick after all.

It now appears, 20 minutes in, that I was wrong.  Which is probably good.  Because I have yet to be scared by this movie.  I will now watch the rest of it, checking to see if it is indeed family-friendly.  And it appears as though it is.  Father Keene, you see (the walking guy from the cover) is a bit of a cold-hearted individual whose motives for shutting down this particular church are not exactly clear.  I am going to assume that the girl on the cover is actually named Noelle with an umlaut, although she has yet to make another appearance after her creepy roadside apparition.

For this, I will turn to the Dove Family Approved website for some help.  They say:  “It should be noted that there is some mild language in the film, and alcohol is consumed by both priests. Also, for those not of the Catholic faith, we note that Father Keene says that he hopes those who are not Catholic will find their way to “the one true church,” which has the potential to offend people not of the Catholic persuasion. However, it should be pointed out that Father Keene at this point seems genuinely loyal to his church and beliefs. The film does have some mature subject matter, including the story of an unwed mother, and a fight. A lady who says she doesn’t believe in the virgin birth receives quite a tongue lashing from Father Keene.”

I think I saw that “tongue-lashing”, and I must say it was rather milder than indicated above.  Father Keene appears to be falling for this woman, so I am going to go ahead and assume that priests can, indeed, have love interests in films.  And, one would assume, in real life as well.  There have been some scenes that involve the locals trying to perform in the nativity play, and they aren’t very good.  I think this is supposed to be very amusing.  Conflict arises when Father Keene and Father Simeon fail to see eye-to-eye about the shutting down of this church.  And then, Father Keene, of course, finds his redemption.

Redemption from what?  Well, a slightly cynical outlook on the priesthood, and the tendency to imbibe a little, I suppose.  This movie relies very heavily, as do most Heartwarming Pictures, on the eccentricity of the locals in the small town.  This eccentricity becomes pretty tedious before it finally comes out, full-blown, at Mrs. Worthington’s legendary local Christmas party. 

I need to make a point here - this priest is not just a cold-hearted cynic.  He is also a rotten priest.  He’s sitting in confession, and a woman comes in to tell him about the anger she feels toward the man who is cheating on his fiancee with Eleanor, the love interest in the film.  Eleanor is pregnant, this woman tells Father Keene, and this distresses her greatly.  Not only does Father Keene not bother to hear the end of the confession, he walks out of the confessional booth midway through to confront the poor woman, who is pregnant and not even engaged to the man.  How could she?

Umm…how could he?  I have watched enough Law and Order to know that the confessional booth is all sacred and junk.  Like, you as a priest can never repeat a single word that is said in that booth to any other human being on Earth.  Let alone running out in the middle of a confession to spill out everything you’ve just heard to the very person about whom you’ve heard it.  This is decidedly un-priestly behaviour, and although he does end up being redeemed for his cynicism and cold heartedness, he seems to get a pass on this ridiculous unpriestly behaviour.

Having watched this movie, and written this review, I am now inspired to do three things.  One, I am inspired to spend less time writing reviews after I’ve been drinking a little.  It seems like I have less ability to focus.  Secondly, I am inspired to get Cynical Cinema onto DVD cases, and I have created my own special category for films that are deserving of my newly-created award.  This film, Noelle, is the first recipient of the Cynical Cinema Schmaltzy Claptrap Award.  I was going to call it the Schmaltzy Claptrap That Insults Intelligence While Warming Hearts Award, but that would be too long for DVD cases.  And it has a lousy acronym.  SCTIIWWHA.  See?  Lousy.

And thirdly, I am inspired to watch The Omen.  I’m going to stop typing and do that now.  But look to the right, as the Schmaltzy Claptrap category should soon be full to bursting with reviews of movies that I have deemed deserving of my laurels.

Oh, two more things - Father Keene (David Wall) bears a remarkable (and disconcerting at times) resemblance to a young Robert Redford.  And that little girl from the cover of the DVD?  She has about nine seconds, total, of screen time.  And she actually IS a ghost.  But not the scary kind.

Last year, at about this time, Alliance Films released a box set called the Original Christmas Classics. It contained Christmas shows and movies with which we are all, I’m sure, familiar. The claymation stuff - Rudolph, Santa Claus Is Coming To Town, the Frosty movies. It was a really nice nostalgic set. This year, Alliance is releasing The New Christmas Classics on a similar box set on November 4th. This time, the content of the box is decidedly less familiar. George of the Jungle, Casper The Friendly Ghost, Gumby, and Fat Albert are not generally thought of as Christmas Classics. At least, not that I’m aware.

The first series in the box is Gumby. This is the first time I have ever seen Gumby, a show from the 1960s about a weird little dude made out of clay with a pointy head who travels into books with his weird little clay horse friend. In this manner, the two manage to travel through history, observing the events as they take place and in some cases affecting the outcome. The books they enter are sometimes classics, like A Christmas Carol, and other times they are books that have never existed. Like The Big Snow Hill. The first episode appears to have nothing to do with Christmas at all, it is about Thanksgiving and the Mayflower. The second episode sees the pilgrims landing at Plymouth Rock. This episode features some 1960s-style questionable history and attitudes toward Indians, and the theft of a bunch of corn.

Then there are episodes with no dialogue, that just see Gumby running around and falling into toasters and cement mixers and then putting himself back together. He and Pokey the horse visit fairy tales involving poor kings and princes and the goose that lays the golden eggs. There is an episode called In a Fix that involves a bunch of strange bird-like clay creatures that hop around. It is a genuinely bizarre collection of Gumby episodes, and of the 12 that are featured on this set, only three are even tangentially related to Christmas. The main theme of the Christmas episodes is Ebeneezer Scrooge, who keeps escaping from A Christmas Carol to wreak havoc on Christmas. Apparently the Grinch wasn’t yet the anti-Christmas villain yet in 1967, so Scrooge became the bad guy. He keeps trying to kidnap Santa, or at the very least discredit him. In one particularly memorable episode, Scrooge uses the word “humbug” as a verb, a noun, a preposition, an adverb, an adjective, and an epithet. Sometimes within the same sentence. Another great one involves a couple of little clay building blocks who drive a tank that shoots lasers. And then there are nine other bizarre episodes of Gumby that may appeal to stoners in some way.

The next series in the set is Fat Albert. And because every single cartoon, ever, does a Christmas episode that rips off A Christmas Carol, this one is no exception. The boys are trying to put together a Christmas pageant at their clubhouse, a shack in the junkyard. The mean old Scroogey owner of the junkyard wants to bulldoze the shack, and hates the kids, and is miserly with money, and is generally a nuisance. A young couple with no job and no money end up in the shack to have their new baby, because there is nowhere else for them to go. There is a Tiny Tim character named Marshall, the son of the downtrodden couple, and there are some standard Fat Albert style cheesy lines. “You remind me of school at vacation time - no class!” Of course, in the end, the old Scrooge sees the error of his ways, and all is mended. There are two other Fat Albert episodes on the DVD, neither of which has anything to do with Christmas. One is about a girl who is embarrassed about her poverty and her rundown house, and the other is about Fat Albert’s friends helping him with his chores so he can go to the zoo and feed an elephant.

Then there is George of the Jungle. This show is reasonably funny, for a kids’ cartoon, and the six episodes here are pretty good. But again, only two of them have anything to do with Christmas. Again, we get the Christmas Carol cartoon cop-out, as George is visited by three goats. Get it? Goats? The Goat of Christmas Presents? You see, he has tried to make Christmas happen for some irritating city girl who lives in the jungle. Not being familiar with Christmas, he gets overwhelmed by the Christmas spirit, and makes every day a Christmas celebration, much to the chagrin of his friends. He is visited by three ghosts. Three ghost goats. Who show him the error of his ways, blah blah blah, and everything turns out fine.

The other George of the Jungle episodes involve a crazy rash George can’t scratch, and a weird baboon who hogs George’s heroism for himself. Although he calls himself a marmoset, he’s clearly a mandril. He has the coloured nose and all. There’s one about a magical bathroom that gets stolen, and all the apes begin disappearing from the jungle. And then there is the George’s Birthday Present episode where George has his first birthday ever. A premise which is virtually identical to the one in the episode where he tries to provide Ursula, the annoying city girl, with her Christmas.

And that brings us to the final series in the box set, Casper. Not the TV series, but a made-for-TV movie called Casper’s Haunted Christmas. This is an 80-minute movie with the computer-generated Casper and his computer-generated uncles taking up residence in Kriss, Massachusetts. Get it? Kriss, Mass? Anyway, after a Randy Travis theme song and the appearance of a ghost who is clearly Slimer from Ghostbusters, we get into the movie. Apparently, some giant green ghost god will revoke the ghost licenses of the uncles if Casper doesn’t scare someone by Christmas. You see, ghosts have to scare people, and blah blah blah. At the very least, in this movie they make the point - Casper does, indeed, scare people all the time when they discover he’s a ghost. But in this case, it is scaring people on purpose that matters. He has until Christmas to do so, or the four of them will be banished to some dark-space purgatory for eternity.

This set-up takes about seven minutes. Which means that the next 73 minutes need to be filled with something. And that something is cheesy, awful jokes. Like the kind I used to see on Hallowe’en cards when we were forced to exchange them with our classmates in the second grade. See if these phrases make you laugh - smellular phone! Shocking days until Christmas! No? Yeah, me either. There is an incredibly painful few minutes of dialogue about “scare mail”, the “ghost office”, and the dead letter department. Basically, it is the same show that Casper used to be when it was a cartoon, years ago, only much worse. And with slightly better animation.

Overall, with a total of 22 episodes of various series in this box set, only 7 of them actually have anything to do with Christmas. Of the seven Christmas episodes, five of them are takes on Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. If you count the Casper movie, six of the seven involve three ghosts. And very few are worthwhile. But the box set could, conceivably, keep your kids entertained from December 1st all the way until Christmas.

Alliance Films will be releasing a ton of Christmas DVDs both this week and next. I suppose the idea is to get them on store shelves so people can see them for the next six weeks and then when Christmas comes they will remember what they saw and make that impulse buy. And that is what Elmo’s Christmas Countdown will be. An impulse buy. I can’t, for the life of me, imagine people making a trip to the store with the purchase of this DVD in mind. But then, when you get to the store with your small children, you could certainly do worse than this reasonably entertaining Sesame Street special. Not only does it involve tons of guest stars that the adults will know, but it also contains some humour that might even make those adults smile.

You see, there is an elf. Stiller the Elf. Appropriately played by Ben Stiller. He has a bizarre disembodied snowball as a sidekick, and tells a story about something called the Christmas Countdown…thingy…which was destroyed by Oscar the Grouch. In order to make Christmas actually come, they need to find the ten pieces of the calendar. Which is really an excuse to break the special down into ten mini-episodes. The first one involves Sheryl Crow singing a Christmas song. The second involves Anne Hathaway singing one with Big Bird about a Snuffleupagus. Other musical appearances are made by the incredible Alicia Keys, a very good Jennifer Hudson, the decent Jamie Foxx, and the unfortunate Brad Paisley.

Perhaps the best bit is one where Bert and Ernie are directing an episode where live actors play them. The live actors playing Bert and Ernie are Tony Sirico and Steve Schirripa from The Sopranos. I don’t expect any children in the world to recognize these two. But for adults, this skit is quite funny simply because you can’t look at Tony Sirico without seeing Paulie Walnuts from The Sopranos. And although the two of them never actually whack the real Bert and Ernie, (although it would make sense in the context of the script), I still felt the whole time as though it were a possibility. It is entirely possible that while it was on TV, I became far too invested in The Sopranos.

Other notable guest stars are Charles Gibson, who does the voice of a reindeer news anchor named Charles Blitzen. (Although, if you were trying to make an obvious pun like this, wouldn’t Wolf Blitzen have made more sense?) And Ty Pennington, that guy all the girls are hot for from Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, shows up to build some boats with the Count in a rather unfunny bit. The whole thing finishes strong, with Cookie Monster eating the Christmas Countdown…thingy…and ruining Christmas once again. Although one would think that this would mean the whole process would have to be repeated again, or perhaps it would mean that Christmas would never again take place. But then, they have hit the 45-minute mark on the special, and they had better have a happy ending. So Christmas comes anyway, Kevin James shows up as Santa, and he sings a song about Just Believing in Christmas and Miracles and Such Like.

All in all, I wouldn’t recommend Elmo’s Christmas Countdown to any adults without kids. Even the biggest stoner couldn’t really enjoy a full 45 minutes of this on their own. But if you have children, and they need some Christmas stuff that isn’t the old standby Rudolph claymation or the Grinch, you could do far worse than this DVD.

Paramount Home Entertainment is releasing Shrek The Halls on DVD November 4th. I sort of get it - it’s Christmas soon, and all these things are hitting the shelves a couple of months early because there are some crazy Christmas fanatics who want to load up on Elmo’s Christmas and Fat Albert’s Christmas and Shrek’s Christmas so they can watch a new one every day between now and December 25th. I guess. I don’t really understand the Christmas fanatics, and I also don’t understand most Christmas DVDs. Like this one. Shrek The Halls is a 22-minute made-for-TV episode that is, I suppose, a spin-off of the successful series of Shrek movies. It isn’t the Star Wars Holiday Special, in terms of being truly awful, but it certainly seems equally pointless.

It was pointless to make this episode. The main joke here, as it was with the last Shrek movie, is the lame “ogres fart and burp and eat gross stuff” joke. He’s farting. Get it? The baby ogres eat slime that smells gross. Get it? And then there is the same plot as there is in every Shrek movie. Christmas gets chaotic, Shrek gets angry, he fights with everyone, Donkey gets sad, Fiona admonishes her husband, Shrek feels bad, everyone makes up and everyone comes together in one big ball of happy. So…why was this even made? More to the point, why is this on DVD? It’s 22 minutes long. Why wasn’t this a special feature on the DVD for Shrek 3? Or thrown into the New Christmas Classics DVD alongside Casper, Fat Albert, Gumby and George Of The Jungle? How did this 22-minute clip merit it’s own DVD?

Frankly, I can’t understand how this even got approved for television. Here is a sample of the wittiness of this show - the song to close it all out:

“Shrek the halls with Puss and Donkey,
Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la.
Christmas time can be so wonky
Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la.”

If you couldn’t have written something like this when you were eleven, then you were a pretty slow eleven-year-old. And that means that even the slowest of eleven-year-olds will find this DVD unfunny, because they will recognize that it could have been written by a classmate. Or by some Hollywood writer with forty seconds to spare between takes on the set of Cavemen.

I am getting pretty sick of reviewing Madagascar. I reviewed it when it first came out on DVD, and I said it was “meh”. It then came out on Blu-Ray September 23rd, and I said it was “meh” with nicer pictures and a few more special features. And now, Madagascar, Holiday Edition is coming out November 4th, from Paramount Home Entertainment. What makes it a “holiday edition”? Well…there is a cardboard sleeve over the DVD with a red border, and what look to be Christmas lights. There is also a special feature called The Penguins In A Christmas Caper. So…Christmas edition, then?

No. Here’s the deal - that Christmas Caper short? It’s on the original DVD. And on the Blu-Ray. In fact, there are no new special features at all. Everything on this DVD was on the original DVD. Except for that red border and the Christmas lights. That’s the only new thing in this entire package. So why bother? Well, it puts it in a better location on store shelves in time for Christmas, and people might pick it up, but more than that - it calls attention to Madagascar 2: Escape To Africa, which hits theatres this Friday. So consider this a success, Paramount - Madaagascar 2: Escape From Africa is in theatres Friday. Tell your kids!

Paramount Home Entertainment is in the Christmas spirit. A little early, if you ask me. But they didn’t ask me. They just went ahead and released the Holiday Treats DVD today, October 7th. It’s billed as “8 heartwarming TV classics”, and it actually delivers. For although I have not yet become imbued with the Christmas spirit, and I will likely hold off on that until about December 22nd, these TV episodes stand on their own. I had just turned on the I Love Lucy episode to take a quick gander at the DVD, and I was joined by my nine-year-old stepson. And he forced me to sit there, through eight episodes of Christmas cheer. And, with the exception of the Frasier episode, he laughed the whole time.

There is an episode of I Love Lucy where Lucy and Ricky put up a Christmas tree while reminiscing about the birth of their child. Then The Honeymooners, where Ralph sells his bowling ball to buy Alice her Christmas gift, only to find out she bought him a bag for his bowling ball. The episode of Andy Griffith where they hold their Christmas celebration in the jailhouse. The Brady Bunch episode where Flo has laryngitis. A particularly funny episode of Taxi where Louie puts up his own mother in a poker game with his brother. The Family Ties episode where Alex is visited by the ghosts from A Christmas Carol. Then a truly heartwarming episode of Frasier and a silly episode of Wings that involves Fay throwing her late husband’s ashes out of a plane in a dustbuster.

I could have done without the Family Ties and Wings, but six out of eight isn’t bad. I would suggest saving the Holiday Treats DVD for Christmas, but it’s a gift that could well be opened before December 25th.