I can’t for the life of me explain why I loved this but I did. Had I time to watch it again before the year is out (not that I’ve much of an excuse – at 88 minutes it’s astounding how much it covers), it’s likely it’d be topping my end of year list, and along with Away From Her it’s one of two films I really think should be up for Best Picture at the Oscars in February though I know there’s not a cat’s chance in hell with either (not to say I might not get ballsy and switch them into my predix at the last minute).

It’s ultimately the work of a liberal smart and world-wearied enough to know that a lot of the politics he once fought for have today gone too far just like the politics of the “enemy” – to the point where there are a lot of people like the student here who are supremely intelligent but so jaded by cynicism they feel not only that the world is beyond saving but also that they’re “above” saving it … that the world doesn’t “deserve” their help because of the way it’s beaten them down.

It’s been said many times that one doesn’t need sex, violence, and coarse language if you actually have something to say. It’s amazing that this movie manages to be just as scathingly political a film as Brian De Palma’s Redacted while being resolutely, humblingly mature about it and giving time to the other side too. It kind of made me feel ashamed for having praised the starkly crude De Palma movie so much. This one leaves you really thinking twice over the cynicism about politics so many of us have not so much taken for granted as absorbed into a status quo. I think this is that rare thing of a movie that could change people – or at least make them think about changing … or indeed, just having an opinion to begin with.

Again, as with The Brave One – and in this case it’s even more bizarre ‘cos i love Cameron Crowe heaps more than Neil Jordan – I really didn’t come to this movie expecting the director’s signature to be such a notable presence. Crowe’s flair for the ethereal seems so honed in more recent projects like Vanilla Sky and Almost Famous that I really didn’t expect much if anything here but an enjoyably superior 80s teen comedy – at worst John Hughes, at best perhaps the same year’s Heathers.

But Crowe is really overwhelmingly present here in his first work as director, perhaps most particularly in the beautifully quirky ending. I don’t think I’ve ever been told “everything’s gonna be alright” in so unexpected a fashion, lol. Then there’s the singing in the car like Jerry Mcguire, the threat of a plane crash from Almost Famous again. Crowe really started as he meant to go on. This has its lulls but for a first movie, for a first viewing, there’s plenty to bring me back. It certainly made more of an impression on me than his last Elizabethtown.

... 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.