Category: Christmas

The Berenstain Bears’ Christmas Tree (1979)

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An annoying combination of anti-father propaganda and commercial for professional Christmas tree salesmen, The Berenstain Bears Christmas Tree somehow conflates wanting to have a bad ass Christmas tree with not knowing what is really important about the holiday.

Everyone knows they’re supposed to pay lip service to the idea that the whole point of the season is about giving, but how you can be credible handing out goodies to ungrateful family members if you’re having to do it underneath some stunted and deformed fir that looked looked like it did a tour in Nam and got hit with some experimental defoliant? Continue reading “The Berenstain Bears’ Christmas Tree (1979)” →

The Little Drummer Boy Book II (1976)

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The first time was for his Messiah! Now Aaron, the Little Drummer Boy with the biggest skills on the skins, takes on a mission that leaves him stripped of everything that matters to him, facing down an evil empire and spearheading the invasion to make everything right on behalf of one of the Three Wise Men!

The silver bells that were made to announce the birth of Jesus must be recovered at all costs! (See how easy we have it now when Simeon the bell maker could just announce it on social media instead of making a racket with his gigantic bells?) Continue reading “The Little Drummer Boy Book II (1976)” →

The Bear Who Slept Through Christmas (1973)

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“Don’t look for it, Taylor. You may not like what you’ll find.” This quote from Planet of the Apes kept going through my mind as I watched Ted E. Bear’s desperate search for Christmas.

In the Apes movie, Dr. Zauis tries to warn Taylor off of seeking to find the answer as to how a planet came to be where apes evolved from men, knowing that the truth will shatter Taylor. The Bear Who Slept Through Christmas fares even worse because Ted’s entire life is destroyed, yet he not only fails to realize it, he willingly embraces it! Continue reading “The Bear Who Slept Through Christmas (1973)” →

The Tiny Tree (1975)

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I know I grimaced as if the Grinch just ripped a Christmas-hating fart right in my face when the old badger told the two young forest animals at the beginning of The Tiny Tree that the Christmas story he was about to tell them wasn’t about toys or Santa. You don’t have to be Rudolph on a foggy night to see that absolutely no good could come of such a proposition. Just from the title alone, I was already concerned that this was going to involve a midget tree pining (get it?) to be a giant redwood and learning the valuable lesson that God made you just like he intended to because he hates your undersized guts! Continue reading “The Tiny Tree (1975)” →

A Family Circus Christmas (1979)

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It is well known that the holidays can cause or exacerbate feelings of sadness, loneliness or depression in certain people. And it isn’t just confined to the unfortunates watching A Family Circus Christmas either. The holiday blues also has the Family Circus itself awaiting Christmas on a knife’s edge, perched precariously between the illusion of the tranquil domestic bliss depicted in the creaky, unfunny decades old comic strip and the building pressure of the repressed mental illness much of the family exhibits during this, one of its three animated forays into the holiday special genre. Continue reading “A Family Circus Christmas (1979)” →

Christmas Rush (2002)

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Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. A cop gets trapped in a large building battling a gang of thieves all by himself! And his wife is one of their hostages! And it’s freaking Christmas time! Wait – don’t stop me! Because another entry in the cinema’s best genre of film, the Die Hard genre, is always welcome!

Christmas Rush (also known by the generic action title Breakaway which just screams “cable TV movie no one will ever remember 5 minutes after it airs on TBS”) wisely lifts everything that made the original Die Hard not only the greasiest movie ever made, but frankly one of the crowning achievements of 50,000 years of human civilization, and adds the few cool things that somehow didn’t make it into it – a little religion and go karts! And a forklift! And a kid needing a bone marrow transplant! And most fantastically of all, an insurance company handing out a $200,000 check as a reward for Dean Cain helping to destroy their mall! Continue reading “Christmas Rush (2002)” →

Shadow on the Land (1968)

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It’s Christmas Eve in America. The streets are filled with the usual hustle and bustle of a lieutenant colonel on the run from his own government. Churches are having their holiday decorating (nothing like waiting to the last minute) interrupted by Internal Security Force agents. Holiday travelers are being harassed at the airports by new regulations restricting their ability to fly across country. Even Santa himself is getting manhandled by jackbooted thugs during a roundup of folks who oppose the president’s agenda! Continue reading “Shadow on the Land (1968)” →