Cynical Cinema

“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.

When The Love Guru hit theatres the same week as Get Smart, I had a bet with my colleagues about which movie would be bigger. Both opening week and in the long run. I picked Get Smart. They picked the Love Guru. I think there is something about Canadians that wishes success upon Mike Myers even when that success is neither earned nor deserved. Mike Myers has done five movies. Ever. So I Married An Axe Murderer, Wayne’s World, Shrek, Austin Powers, and 54. Then he made thirty-one sequels, either bona-fide sequels or ripoffs of his previous work. The Love Guru falls into the latter category, and it gets released on DVD and Blu-Ray tomorrow, September 16th, from Paramount Home Entertainment. And it’s dreadful.

It actually makes me cringe to write the following words: The best thing in this movie is Justin Timberlake. Ugh. I feel like showering now. But it’s actually true. He is reasonably entertaining as a French Canadian hockey goalie who is a whiz with the ladies. His overblown French accent and his idiotic love for Celine Dion are worth a smirk or two. But Mike Myers, as the Indian guru Pitka, is doing the same role he has always done. Basically, he figures that putting on an accent (in this case an Indian one) is funny enough to carry a movie. He then figures that Verne Troyer simply being a tiny guy is funny. And that having an elephant walk around is funny. Or that two elephants having sex with each other is funny. In this movie, none of these things are funny. They are obnoxious.

Jessica Alba, once again, plays the hot woman. Just showing up is enough for her, because she is hot. Just like showing up is enough for Verne Troyer, because he is short. And for Mike Myers as well, because he has an accent. Get it? This really is one of the worst movies of the year, with almost no laughs and definitely no charm. Skip The Love Guru. And wait until Mike Myers makes his sixth movie. Oh, by the way - I won the bet. By a large margin. The Love Guru cost 62 million dollars and made 32 million. Opening weekend, 13 million. Get Smart opened with a 39 million dollar weekend, and has made 129 million dollars so far. With a production budget of 80 million dollars. Case closed.