Again I’m just really gonna repeat and elaborate on what Mark Kermode said about this recently, though I’d planned to watch the original again first so I can’t comment on how it compares except to say I’m sure I’d agree that this version is better. And it is because of Richard Attenborough. Just take the early scene where he tells the stuffy legal types about the Easter Bunny. He tells that story in almost exactly the same manner as you’ll find him in any given recent interview telling a story about Richard Burton or David Lean. He just leaves no room for doubt in Kris Kringle. These days there’d be no hesitation in nominating him for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar. The rest of the movie has its flaws but they won’t be discussed here. This is really one of the best this time of year. (sorry for the shortness of review … catching up …)

Well, as my first exposure to the wonder that is Eloise this time last year, I really came to this with my tongue not only in my cheek but practically threatening to poke a hole in the darn thing, lol. I wound up loving it. And last week I saw at the Plaza and I loved it even more. Second viewing of Christmastime … and I swear this might be my favourite Christmas movie ever. It’s absolutely full of everything I think Christmas should be, highlighted by the scene of Christmas morning itself, Eloise waking Nanny with the trumpet then starting the whole place singing “The Twelve Days of Christmas” in an hilarious contrast to the usual “clear the elevator” scene. It just leaves me absolutely beaming, completely excited about Christmas, even if I’m overexcited about it to begin with, I can’t compare with Eloise. I can only strive my best to be more like her

22nd December, 2006:

... because after over 36 hours without sleep, sometimes the brain can’t take anymore.

But seriously, within about 2 minutes of this movie you’ll know how you’re gonna take it. You can’t be too hard on a movie that warns you in advance. Personally, it told me I was gonna love it. Sofia Vassilieva as Eloise (10 playing 6) is ridiculously natural and completely irresistable, particularly in her random turns to the camera (“Afterall! I’m only six! For Lord’s sake!”); there’s Julie Andrews, Jeffrey Tambor and Christine Baranski in the background … as long as you’re not expecting cinematic innovation of the highest calibre, this is, to use one of my menu options this Christmas, the cinematic equivalent of cheese and pickled onion on a stick. When you glimpse it, if you want it, you’ve got to have it. I wanna be Eloise! Oh, and cute songs too!

Julie Andrews doesn’t succeed entirely slumming it in Cockney but she definitely has a way with children that I doubt anyone else could match. But it’s really all about Eloise, she wouldn’t have it any other way, and some may think that’s a terrible thing and that she’s an awful role model etc, etc, but I don’t care; this is one of those rare movies where I don’t even care about the plot. I couldn’t tell you. She lives in a hotel. It’s fun. It’s, y’know … for kids. And I love it. Any movie that makes me laugh the way I laugh when my cousin Fiona is around is good in my book. So, again, again! claps several times

... or, the blandest Christmas story ever told. I don’t think I’ve rolled my eyes more over a 90 minute period in my life. Around the hour mark I was literally just willing it to end. And honestly, I was really looking forward to seeing this movie – not least since I can’t believe I’ve still not seen it after 16 years, even through my Now and Then phase when I wanted to see just about anything those four girls had ever been in.

The formulaic nature of the story – it’s basically an It Takes Two style masked-remake of Miracle on 34th Street, 3 years before the real deal hit the big screen – is a given. What really put a sour face on me is the lack of care in the basic message it tries to force down your throat: that divorce is pretty much the worst thing that can happen to a child, which – and don’t get me wrong, I know it’s still an ordeal – is frankly bullsh*t.

It takes a real fairytale-type stance on the idea of step-parents (or in this case, potential step-parents) – that they’re basically evil no matter what they do – and I’ll admit, as someone who really had a hard time adjusting to one of those at the age of 5, I’m among the first to revel in that treatment of such creatures. But the way it’s done here? The mother’s new prospective partner really isn’t a bad person at the start. You actually see him trying to be a good guy, like with the cherry in the ginger ale; he just happens to suck around children. There’s a better story here if that’s the character they wanted to show. He’s literally subjected to comically cruel punishment just because he’s gonna be a stepdad. And I don’t know, honestly I felt that sucked. Sure, he flies off the handle and damns himself at the 11th hour; but the way he’s dealt with initially just really turned me off. I don’t know, I’m sure some will be rolling their eyes at me after reading that but if you know me then you know I always say what I think of a movie, and that’s what this one made me think on this particular day.

Thora Birch is wonderful. Like honestly even better than I’d thought. The scene where she marches back to Macy’s with the giant white muff on her hands to “fix a mistake” is probably the best work she’s ever done as an actress. But sometimes, even a talented cutie isn’t enough to save what is essentially an overstretched babbling (in a bad way, I feel I need to stress following Say Anything…) pointlessness.

There’s literally nothing to say about this one. Like, it even failed to be quite so bad as I’d been led to believe. But right from the dodgy opening credits, this is just a miserably cheap excuse for a Christmas movie. Harvey Fierstein should be absolutely ashamed of himself for stooping so low as he does here, but the rest of the cast aren’t much more excusable. When there are movies out there like Elf and The Grinch that effortlessly bear brute-force repeat viewings this time of year, stuff like this really should be pictured next to the word “waste” in the dictionary.

... or, the American, college-boy, Christmas version of Staggered (okay, that was Forces of Nature ... but the image of JTT in the Santa suit in the desert after being hazed definitely called to mind Martin Clunes in that movie)

Well, I was right about one thing, this is marginally more fun, not to mention slicker, than the TV movie of the same name that aired the preceding year. But we’re definitely in take-it-or-leave-it territory here, though that certainly makes Jessica Biel at least feel at home. The Santa run is a pretty unique, not to mention hilarious, sight. And I liked how the movie is less about Jonathan Taylor Thomas’ character learning anything in particular than about us and the people around him learning about how basically good a guy he is, that he just hasn’t been given an opportunity to show it. It really shouldn’t work; but again, I guess it’s the season, and I really can’t speak ill of it.

“I have told the truth. Whether you believe it is your choice, not mine.”

I kinda knew this would not only be good but also visually impressive with Catherine Hardwicke at the helm. I didn’t expect it, however, to completely cement her as one of my favourite directors. This is really quite a perfect movie, so perfect it really left me speechless. Of course, if you’re not a Christian, or haven’t been brought up with the Nativity story, the experience will be a different thing, though I’m sure the visuals are still sufficient for most and the religious aspects of the story aren’t dealt with entirely preachily. I can only speak as someone who was brought up with this, and though I’m not a church-going, god-fearing Christian or anything – I don’t identify with any specific religions, though I certainly love this one’s stories more with every year I live – this moved me exactly the way I wanted it to. To be that first shepherd, to witness something that absolutely brings you to your knees with its sheer purity and beauty, its complete lack of modern cynicism and skepticism, to just realise, we are nothing compared to This … that’s what this movie needed to be to impress me, it’s a big demand, and I can say picking my jaw off the floor, it succeeded.

The Nativity story has always for me either been rushed through school play style, shown in fragments as in carols or advent calendars, or shown as part of the grander story of Jesus’ life. Singled out, it allows for what I found to be the most powerful aspect of this production, and it’s the way we get to feel Mary’s loneliness at the start, we get glimpses of her thoughts, her fears, how frightening to be given this secret and feel unable to tell anyone. When Joseph finally believes, we get the same thing – there’s a wonderful moment when they walk past a man on the streets foretelling the birth of the Messiah and they share a look that’s just amazing. Having loved her in Whale Rider, I knew Keisha Castle-Hughes would be fine as Mary, but relative unknown Oscar Isaac is perfect as Joseph too.

The other thing this production does well at is not shying away from the bitter side of the story. As they say, God is in the details, and though it’s all mostly offscreen, we’re still “shown” things like Herod’s slaughtering of the children, the circumcision of John, a ceremonial slaughtering of a cow, even a small thing like Joseph’s manual gutting of a fish for a meal. Even the significance of the gift of myrrh is not overlooked at the end.

All I can say is, if you celebrate Christmas, you can do much worse than watching this to remember why you do it. I’m guilty as anyone for “forgetting” and I’ve had plenty of recent Christmases where out of guilt I almost consider not celebrating such are my religious views. But I love Christmas … and I love this story … and you really can’t ask for a better version of it than this. If anything it honestly made me want to believe more.

Holy Christ. Are Disney entering the Pantomime industry? ‘Cos if you’re demented enough to show this to your children, pray to god they’re smart enough that when, after the first dire musical number, “Cinderella”, as the imposter introduces herself, says, “Hello, I’m Cinderella,” they’ll cry, “Oh no you’re not!”

What you get: The Twelve Days of Christmas – Disnified. On the first day, it’s a “magical shell of the sea”, featuring shots featuring shells from the Little Mermaid movie which we’re lucky to see a dozen times. By the time they get to the 5th day, they already have to airbrush a floating CGI “emerald” ring into the magic carpet scene from Aladdin to make the song work. Yeh. You get a clip from Sleeping Beauty, stripped of its original classic Disney soundtrack. You get a rather lengthy, relatively untouched excerpt from Belle’s Enchanted Christmas, just to remind you how good Disney DTV things can be. You get an Ariel “read-a-long” storybook thing which really should be an extra on the DVD, not part of the movie … There are a handful of older shorts I hadn’t seen before which were slightly nice I guess but really only serve to accentuate how much of a mindless hodge-podge this mess is.

Now I know, I know, it’s a stupid direct to video thing and criticism is relatively moot, I shouldn’t be wasting my time even writing about it. Who needs to know about something so irrelevant? And if I hadn’t had a bunch of reviews to rush through yesterday afternoon, I probably would’ve saved this for another year, or even begun it and actually turned a movie off part-way for the first time in donkey’s years, lol. As it is, at least I can be thankful that this is another Christmas experience I don’t have to relive again.

But there’s one last thing that does make me feel like I have to write about it, draw attention to it, because the more I think about it the more it irks me. The segment of this compilation that really made me want to sling the TV out the window and renounce Disney for life was an early excerpt from Fantasia 2000 – The Steadfast Tin Soldier – destroyed by the fact it’s again stripped of its original soundtrack by Shostakovich, the piece it was specifically animated to, for the lord’s sake, replaced by the same rotten MIDI-ish score that these cheapest of Disney DTV productions are beset by. It amazes me how many people seem to be forgiving of this in the few positive reviews I’ve read. I can take the woodenly animated Princesses, the practically dead Princes at their sides, the cardboard cut out audience, even the read-a-long storybook. But to take one of their most artistically ambitious productions of the last decade and do that to it? Seriously, Disney should be ashamed of taking people’s money for this one.

Another big surprise here and an instant addition to my annual Christmas viewing (hmm, that list’s getting a little big there, lol :P) Two kids find a temperamental weather-making machine in the garbage at Santa’s summer home in L.A. Chaos ensues. And there’s a “boring weatherman”, kinda reminded me of bad guy Vince from “Alex Mack”, trying to find the origin of the unexpected snow storm they cause to get off the last day of school.

This is just so much fun all the way. Hallee Hirsh can pull a sorry face like I don’t know what, makes me cry instantly when she realises she’s “ruined Christmas” etc. It’s just a great Christmas movie, I don’t know what else to say.