Cynical Cinema

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.

Watching The Kingdom confirmed a few suspicions for me. I have always suspected that everyone the United States trains for any kind of gun-related activity has the capacity to be Rambo. (The CIA, the FBI, the military, mall security guards.) No, more than that, my suspicion has been that not only are they all trained to be Rambo should the need arise, but also that they are all waiting. Just waiting for a chance to break out the headband and the M-16 and take out all their enemies in a hail of gunfire. I have also suspected that the FBI was the only agency in the U.S. with balls, and that they are held back from doing the real work by namby-pamby pansies in the upper echelons of government. No, more than that, I have always thought that were they given the chance, rather than being blocked at every turn, the FBI could have just shown up in Afghanistan and caught Osama Bin Laden within a week.

And now, here comes The Kingdom, to not only confirm my suspicions, but to hammer me over the head with these incontrovertable facts. Which is not to say The Kingdom is a bad movie. It isn’t. But it’s not a good one either. The thing is, it’s two different movies. It starts out as smart as Syriana, and ends as dumb as well…Rambo. The beginning of the film makes you think you’re in for an intense, political, smart movie about terrorism and the relations between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. It opens with a bang, so to speak, as a suicide bomb attack blows up an American softball game in Saudi Arabia. This is truly shocking, with men, women and children all being slaughtered. It’s an upsetting scene and a reminder of what terrorism is the world over. Also shocking and captivating is the subsequent torture scene, where the Suadi guard who saved the day by killing the terrorists gets interrogated by his own army. He shot the terrorists, and therefore they could not be questioned. Maybe he is in league with them - making sure they are dead so they can’t talk. It is very effective, and promises an interesting subplot. Since American citizens (and one FBI guy) were killed over there, the FBI wants to send a small team of elite agents into Saudi Arabia to investigate the crime.

This takes place in movie world, where the people who are going to be sent in like elite FBI commandos are the same people who make their case during top-level government discussions. Either they are extremely high-ranking FBI officials who still somehow see active firefight duty, or they are elite commando FBI operatives who somehow have access to the brass at the Pentagon and the White House. Either way, it doesn’t matter, it’s a movie. So Jamie Foxx, Chris Cooper, Jason Bateman and the bizarrely cast Jennifer Garner show up in Saudi Arabia. There is a power struggle going on with the colonel in charge of the barracks that were attacked, the general of the Saudi Army who has assumed control over the investigation, and the newly arrived Americans. This could be interesting also. But it does not last long. Quickly, Jamie Foxx is able to convince the Saudi royal family that the colonel is the man for the job, and that they should be given access to the whole city.

From then on, all subplots are abandoned. That guy who was unjustly tortured? He comes along for the ride. He drives. The power struggle between the general and the colonel? The general just disappears. Now it’s just American commando rah-rah guns blazing through Riyadh. All four Americans are Rambo, especially Jennifer Garner, who rescues Jason Bateman from a particularly unpleasant fate in a very commando sort of way. Picture Jennifer Garner, the chick from Alias, cauterizing her wound by lighting gunpowder and then mowing down half of Afghanistan, a la Rambo 3. Are you smiling? Yeah, you should be. It’s asinine. So these Americans have been in Riyadh for five days. And they have solved the crime, located the terrorist cell responsible, and killed everyone involved. And America can’t find Osama? Geez. I hope they do, because capturing him would obviously involve car chases, rocket launchers, snipers, machine guns, machetes and would make for terrific TV.

The main problem with The Kingdom is that the cartoonish last half completely devalues the otherwise excellent buildup in the first half. The movie promises so much more than it delivers. A better movie of this nature is Collateral Damage, with Arnold Schwarzennegger. Now, I know what you’re saying. Really? You’re saying. But Collateral Damage was by no means a classic. In fact, I found it awful, you say. That is fine. But at least it delivered exactly what it promised. Terrorists blew up a family. The father of that family went after the terrorists. There was lots of action. The terrorists died. In the Kingdom, we think we are going to get something so much smarter and so much more interesting than Collateral Damage, that when all we get IS Collateral Damage, it’s that much more of a disappointment. It’s worth renting just for that first half, but prepare for disappointment in the second.