The Screengrab : a christmas story

Unwatchable #53: “Baby Geniuses”

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 20:30:00 GMT

Our fearless – and quite possibly senseless – movie janitor is watching every movie on the IMDb Bottom 100 list. Join us now for another installment of Unwatchable.

I’m a peaceable man by nature, and I know everyone has to make a living somehow, but I can’t help it: I really wish something bad would happen to everyone involved in making Baby Geniuses. I’m not talking about something life-threatening or even physically debilitating – I’m thinking more in terms of a flat tire, a tax audit or perhaps a visible soiling of pants at a high-profile public event. Actually, that last item probably did happen to one or two of the stars of Baby Geniuses, given that they were actually babies. I suppose I can’t blame these tykes for their roles in the movie, so instead, let us hope their parents had the courtesy to pay for the inevitable psychiatric counseling these toddlers required.

Baby Geniuses is, as you might have surmised, a talking baby movie. At the time of its release in 1999, the Look Who’s Talking series had run its course and America was once again hungering for verbose infants. Apparently. The premise here is that babies have universal knowledge up until the age of two – they have all the wisdom of the universe, but it vanishes once they begin learning to talk. Baby scientist Dr. Elena Kinder (Kathleen Turner, speaking her unspeakable dialogue in the thick Transylvanian accent she inexplicably developed in the early ’90s) and her colleague Dr. Heep (Christopher Lloyd) believe that babies under the age of two are communicating with each other in a secret language, and they plan to crack the code.

One of the test subjects at their facility, wisecracking toddler Sly, manages to escape. He is pursued into a shopping mall, where he inadvertently switches places with Whit, the twin brother he never knew he had. Whit had previously been adopted by kindly couple Robin and Dan (Kim Cattrall and Peter MacNichol); now he is in the clutches of Dr. Kinder and Sly is living with Whit’s unsuspecting parents. When Kinder figures out what has happened, she sends her minions out to retrieve Sly, and the final third of Baby Geniuses transforms into a tired retread of Home Alone, complete with plenty of groin injury humor.

I don’t think this is too much to ask: if you’re going to make babies talk, give them something funny to say. Austin Powers quotes don’t count. Salacious innuendo is probably not a great idea. When one boy baby asks a girl baby to take her clothes off and the girl baby responds, “You could at least buy me dinner first”…that makes me a little queasy. Also, while the “trying on funny outfits” montage is, of course, always hilarious, it looks like the baby is being manipulated by marionette wires when he does the John Travolta moves in the little white suit. I’m pretty sure this is illegal.

As I said, I don’t actually wish death on any of these people – not even Dom DeLuise, who performs a repulsive tongue-wiggling maneuver that cost me several hours of sleep last night – but as it happens, the director, Bob Clark, was killed in a car accident in 2007. Mr. Clark will always be fondly remembered for A Christmas Story, and no doubt many males of a certain age retain some affection for Porky’s, so it gives me no pleasure to report that the director’s final credit was SuperBabies: Baby Geniuses 2. It gives me even less pleasure to contemplate the likelihood that said sequel is lurking in wait, higher up the list of…the Unwatchable.

Previously on Unwatchable:
54. Meatballs 4
55. A*P*E
56. Araf
57. Phat Girlz
58. Ed

The Screengrab Highlight Reel: Dec. 13-26, 2008

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 22:00:00 GMT

I tell ya what, Santa's work is never done. I'm about ready for a long winter's nap here, but before I nod off, there's a whole shitload of Screengrab posts for me to catch up on. And as usual this time of year, it's all about me. You've got your Mexican Santa, your axe-wielding Santa, your skanky Santa, and of course, the usual undignified begging I have to put up with from grown-ass adults (Dear Santa: Cinematic Comebacks We'd Most Like to See, Parts One, Two, Three and Four).

There's enough Christmas content here to choke a reindeer. You've got a sackful of 12 Days of Christmas reviews, from A Christmas Story to It's a Wonderful Life to The Muppet Christmas Carol. You've got a stocking stuffed with YouTube clips, including The Junky's Christmas, The Insects' Christmas and the 40 Inspiring Speeches of Christmas. You've even got the Christmas Unwatchable, The Perfect Holiday. But if you're anything like me, you're completely Christmas-ed out, so here are the posts I'll be curling up with before my long visit to the Land of Nod:

Tom Cruise, at Midlife, with a Freaking Eyepatch

Movie Audiences No Longer Necessary For Movie Success

Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler Pleases Mankind, Annoys Iran

Take Five: The Squared Circle

Scarlett Johansson Blows. Her Nose! Blows Her Nose!

Screengrab Presents: Cinema's Greatest Comebacks (Parts One, Two, Three, Four and Five)

The Screengrab's 12 Days of Christmas Marathon: "A Christmas Story"

Leonard Pierce — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 20:30:00 GMT

A strange concatenation of circumstances hit me today -- it's Christmas Day 2008 at 9:45 AM as I write this. One was obvious, and one was tenuous, but both had a deep impact in my consideration of this, the last film I watched several weeks ago for the Screengrab's 12 Days of Christmas Marathon and the last Christmas film I'll be posting about this year. The first was the discovery that a friend of mine, who hosts an excellent radio show in Chicago on the nexus of politics and popular culture, recently presented a special Christmas episode in which the central question was: has A Christmas Story replaced It's a Wonderful Life as America's most beloved Christmas movie?

On the surface, it's a pretty strange question. As often as it's shown -- and that's pretty damned often -- Bob Clark's endlessly re-watchable, terrifically funny tale of a young boy's Midwestern holiday misadventures in the late 1940s has never had the cultural ubiquity that Frank Capra's classic had during the years it was out of copyright. It can hardly be called contemporary anymore; it was made 25 years ago (as celebrated in a deluxe new DVD release that's highly recommended by this writer) and was set only a few years after It's a Wonderful Life. And the older film is a genuine four-star cinematic acheivment, directed by one of the towering talents of the Golden Age of Hollywood, made for a significant amount of money and starring some of the greatest screen stars of the day.

A Christmas Story, on the other hand, was directed by the guy best known for doing Porky's and who went on to direct tripe like Turk-182 and Super-Babies: Baby Geniuses 2. His previous holiday movie was the notorious Christmas horror flick Black Christmas. His stars were a seasoned TV pro, a veteran character actress, an untested child star, and two other kids who went on to have no career and a career as a porn star, respectively, with not a superstar in the mix. It didn't come close to delivering any message, any social meaning or psychological boosts of the sort that Capra's film was designed to instill. And, unlike the endlessly parodied and riffed-upon It's a Wonderful Life, it seemed to have little impact outside of its own: it was a singular thing, a ding an sich which could only be contemplated as itself.

And yet, if pressed, I'd agree: A Christmas Story really has supplanted It's a Wonderful Life as the go-to Christmas movie, very likely because of its singularity and uniqueness. Because it's been so endlessly parodied, the Capra film is hard to contemplate on its own, while Bob Clark's film is almost spoof-proof by design. For many, Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed will always occuply some other role in their minds, but Peter Billingsley will be little Ralphie Parker for all eternity. Darren McGavin and Melinda Dillon are so completely pitch-perfect in their roles that they will occupy them forever. And A Christmas Story's lack of ambition -- its small-scale determinance to do nothing but tell its simple story, so wonderfully crafted by Jean Shepherd, leaves it no chance to be bloated or hokey, simply funny and warm without cease.

The second, and more distant, event that influenced my writing of this entry was the death of Harold Pinter. What the news of the demise of a cerebral British playwright has to do with my appreciation of A Christmas Story might not be immediately apparent, but it's not as strange as it seems: Pinter not only pioneered the dysfunctional family drama which resonates so in the film, but he also was an early adopter of the comedy of discomfort and humiliation, with his use of the famed "Pinter pause" and the constant black comedy that can be wrought from embarrassment. Shepherd, writing in 1966 -- around the same time Pinter was doing much of his best work -- understood that sort of comedy perfectly: although his end result is heartwarming rather than soul-searing, almost all the laughs in A Christmas Story come from failure, despair, humiliation, defeat, and disappointment. It even culminates with Billingsley learning that most Pinterian of lessons: you can get what you want and still not be happy, whether what you want is a family or a Red Ryder BB gun.

12 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS RATING: An unquenchable 12 drummers drumming. There's simply no better holiday viewing to be had. Merry Christmas, readers -- and thanks for your support, as always.

The Screengrab's 12 Days of Christmas Marathon: Bad Santa

Yesterday's Hits: The Santa Clause (1994, John Pasquin)

Paul Clark — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Well, it’s the holidays again, and that means that Christmas movies are back in season. But while Christmas movies have long been an annual tradition, in the last few decades the market for new holiday-themed classics has grown by leaps and bounds. Gone are the days when scruffy little movies like A Christmas Story would do decent business in theatres only to become classics on video and cable. Today, Christmas movies are big business, and rare is the big budget holiday movie that doesn’t clean up at the box office. For my next three Yesterday’s Hits columns, I’ll be taking a new look at three of the biggest holiday hits of all time, to get you all in the spirit of the season. This week, I’ll begin with the 1994 blockbuster The Santa Clause.

The Santa Clause came after nearly a decade of Christmas movies that shied away from dealing with Santa Claus. While this might seem odd nowadays, there was a good reason for this at the time- 1985’s Santa Claus: The Movie was a massive flop, scaring the studios into making less fantasy-based holiday movies in the years to come. But by the mid-1990s, Disney decided it was time to bring back the jolly old elf, and The Santa Clause served up St. Nick with a twist on the old tale. After several established movie stars (Bill Murray and Chevy Chase, to name two) turned down the role, Disney turned to the star of the hugely popular sitcom Home Improvement, a former standup comedian named Tim Allen. The combination of Christmas and Allen’s big-screen leading man debut proved as irresistible to audiences as milk and cookies, and The Santa Clause became the biggest hit of fall 1994, spawning two sequels and propelling Allen to movie stardom.

The premise of the film certainly helped. Rather than beginning with its main character born as Santa, The Santa Clause took the novel approach of having its protagonist Scott Calvin (played by Allen) more or less inherit the job. In the film, if something happens to the current Santa, the next person to don the suit takes his place, with all of the side effects that implies. The Santa Clause’s best sequence takes place right after Scott finds himself thrust into the role of Kris Kringle, when we discover through his eyes the perils of the job- snarling dogs, home security systems, gifts that are too big to fit under the tree. And while Scott predictably finds himself turning physically into Santa, gaining 45 pounds in a week and growing a long white beard in a matter of minutes, the sight gags are fairly enjoyable nonetheless.

Unfortunately, the rest of the movie isn’t as much fun as the Santa material. Scott’s life in the temperate latitudes includes a well-paying job as a toy company executive and an ex-wife Laura (Wendy Crewson), with whom he shares custody of their young son Charlie (Eric Lloyd). Naturally, Charlie is jazzed about his dad being Santa, but of course none of the other adults believe his stories of when they visited the North Pole and went around delivering gifts. Laura’s new husband Neil (Judge Reinhold) just happens to be a psychiatrist, and he quickly concludes that Charlie is having trouble distinguishing between reality and fantasy, and that Scott with his physical changes is feeding his son’s delusions in order to look better in Charlie’s eyes. The resulting plot developments are too contrived to be effective, and they’re exacerbated by Reinhold’s awful performance, in which he comes off less as a competent doctor than someone who’s suffered a recent blow to the head.

Ever since Charles Dickens penned A Christmas Carol more than 160 years ago, there has been a fairly standard trajectory for Christmas stories and, later, Christmas movies- a character, or group of characters, overcome their self-centered ways by discovering the meaning of Christmas. Even Bad Santa’s Willie, the most dissolute of recent Christmas movie protagonists, ended up finding some member of the Christmas spirit through his unlikely mentorship of a (very strange) kid. The Santa Clause was directed by John Pasquin, who had previously worked with Allen when he directed numerous episodes of Home Improvement, and the movie feels and looks like a big-screen sitcom, with some easy laughs and nothing offensive to scare away audiences. Like most Christmas movies, it’s an okay way to take a break from holiday shopping or entertain visiting relatives. But as a movie, it’s really nothing special.

DVD Digest for November 4, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 15:00:00 GMT

This week is a big one for classic TV on DVD, plus an old-school sci-fi franchise gets the Blu-Ray treatment.

DVD of the Week: My pick this week is only applicable if you have a Blu-Ray DVD player, which exempts a number of Screengrab readers including myself. However, if you have a Blu-Ray player, nothing this week can touch the release of Planet of the Apes: 40 Year Evolution Blu-Ray Collection (Fox). Of course, even fans of the series acknowledge that the Planet of the Apes films are widely uneven. Yet unlike most franchise box sets which pile the lion’s share of extras on the classic films and leave little for the others, Fox has lavished plenty of care on all of the Apes films, regardless of quality. The biggest news for fans is the newly-restored cut of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, which went largely unseen since the 1972 studio test screenings. According to Screengrab’s own Scott Von Doviak, the new version of Conquest is much more darker and violent than the version that was eventually released in theatres. The set also contains a number of new extras, including new making-of featurettes for each of the sequels, a documentary on the evolution from Pierre Boulle’s original novel to the screen, and isolated score tracks for each of the sequels. In other words, everything that one could possibly need to satisfy even the most ravenous Planet of the Apes fan, although for the rest of all the movies are also sold separately.

For us non-Blu-Ray types, the big news this week is the release of the Fraggle Rock Complete Series Collection (Lionsgate), which collects all 96 episodes of Jim Henson’s classic HBO series in a massive 20-disc box set. In addition, the collection includes an exclusive new Fraggle Rock short directed by Cory Edwards, who will direct the upcoming Fraggle Rock feature film, which I hadn’t heard about until today. Other notable TV on DVD releases include: Batman: The Complete Animated Series (Warner), Futurama: Bender’s Game (Fox, also Blu-Ray), Little House on the Prairie: The Complete Television Series (Lionsgate), and Reaper Season 1 (Lionsgate).

The highest-profile recent release coming to DVD today is the big-screen update of the classic series Get Smart (Warner, also Blu-Ray). This week also brings the indie trifecta of Brad Anderson’s Transsiberian (First Look, also Blu-Ray), Luke Wilson in Henry Poole Is Here (Anchor Bay), and Jim Broadbent and Colin Firth in When Did You Last See Your Father? (Sony). And for the kids, there’s Alvin and the Chipmunks Special Edition (Fox) and Shrek the Halls (Paramount).

The annual onslaught of holiday DVDs continues this year with the A Christmas Story Ultimate Collector’s Edition (Warner, also Blu-Ray), although for my money nothing beats watching this over and over on TNT. Also of note this week is the re-pressing of two John Cassavetes classics, A Woman Under the Influence (Criterion) and The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (Criterion). Finally, there’s the Waterworld Extended Edition (Universal), in case that’s your kind of thing.

Finally, this week’s non-ape Blu-Ray only releases include Monster’s Ball (Lionsgate) and Universal Soldier (Lionsgate). And honestly, I’d be hard-pressed to come up with a more unlikely pairing. Satantango and Rush Hour? Pretty Woman and Irreversible? I’ll have to think about this one…

Holiday Trailer Roundup: Gremlins

Paul Clark — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 16:30:00 GMT

For many of my peers, A Christmas Story is almost certainly the greatest unironic holiday classic, but Gremlins is probably the ultimate wicked Christmas movie. For the two of you who haven't yet seen it, it's a sly fusion of the monster movie with an idealized Norman Rockwell-style vision of the small-town Christmas. In other words, it’s a perfect Joe Dante movie, one that plays to all his strengths as a satirist of comfortable Americana. Gremlins is the kind of older kids’ movie Hollywood has forgotten how to make- with fun characters and adventure for the younger crowd, and enough of an edge to make it endlessly rewatchable even for adults. Gremlins is great any time of the year, but it’s essential around the holidays, especially for the scene where Phoebe Cates recounts her tragic (and hilarious) Christmas story. What’s even more amazing is how convincingly wholesome Cates managed to be here, just two years after her immortal scene in Fast Times at Ridgemont High.