Christmas: Are they shoving it down our throats too early?

[The Count]

Christmas... Best summed up as that one time when Fin and Jake had a fleeting moment of empathy for the biggest loser in all of Oo.

 

[robodog]

Poor poor Ice King.

 

[fuzzygobo]

Now that Santy Claus arrived at Heralde Square at noon, most stores scheduled to open 8 pm tonight, the Black Friday Madness is mere hours away.

I'm avoiding the stores like the plague. I'm not a big fan of crowds, noises and traffic (yet I live so close to Manhattan, go figger). Nor do I want to participate in any stampede. Maybe if everyone eats a big turkey dinner, the tryptophan will kick in and people will fall asleep in the parking lots, and there won't be so much road rage of hyper consumers fighting to get the parking spot closest to Wal-Mart.

Well, I can dream, can't I?

 

[Drtooth]

I've been complaining about this for years, but can anyone make a freaking decent Christmas special anymore? Disney sure did with the Prep and Landing series, but everything else looks like cliche ridden, joyless toy commercials. Like I said in the Thanksgiving Parade thread, I wanted to see that Elf on the Shelf balloon get punctured and torn so as to never be able to repair them. You know, the same unfortunate fate that hit Spider-Man . Only because the thing we desperately don't need is another terrible Christmas special about Elves. Sigh... I miss Olive the Other Reindeer. That's why I like Christmas Episodes over Christmas specials. They at least tend to play with the cliches instead of slavishly following them. Heck, even Rudolph played with cliches, and that was one of the first ones.

But if there's something worse than formulaic, derivative Christmas Specials, it's those horrendously formulaic and derivative Christmas Telefilms. Now, I can't say I really like Christmas movies outside of the obvious Christmas Story, Christmas Vacation, and the first 2 Home Alones... but the horrible telefilms that absolutely pollute networks... they're all forgettable, they all steal plots from various other Christmas movies (and one even ripped off Groundhog's Day)... and they star celebrities that are so far off the Letter based list system, you can only describe them with letters from Dr. Seuss's "On Beyond Zebra." (I.e. This film stars a Thnad-list celebrity) And they just factory make them. UGH!

 

[D'Snowth]

Nobody seems to like those kinds of holiday specials anymore... and when I say, "Nobody", I mean that's apparently what the general public is saying. 'Cause, you know, networks always want to reel in the young crowd, because that's apparently the only audience that matters? And, like, Brad Pitt tried showing his illegitimate kids those old Rankin/Bass Christmas specials that he loved as a kid, but his kids hated them and thought he was crazy. So yeah, apparently, those kinds of specials aren't cool.

And like I've been complaining, there's TOO many of these holiday concert specials every year... it's the EXACT same thing year after year: hottest flavor of the month artist gets his/her own holiday special, they put on a concert with other currently relevent artists as performers... and oh yeah, throw the Muppets in there.

Now, as far as those TV movies go, I will confess that there is ONE of those movies that I actually DO genuinely like, and its ON THE 2ND DAY OF CHRISTMAS, mainly because Mark Ruffalo is really good in it, and he shows off his animated and energetic side in it.

 

[Drtooth]

To be fair, some of the Rankin Bass specials were legitimately good, but there's a lot of them that are just incredibly forgettable. I saw this one called "Cricket on the Hearth" that was based off a Dicken's story. It was easily one of the dreariest things I've ever seen. The whole message is that it's so gosh darn lucky to have a Cricket in your home. Really? If it was that lucky the heroine wouldn't have hysterical blindness after news that her boyfriend was drafted into war which lead them to miserable poverty. At the end of the special, everything only barely turns around, and the girl's still blind. But OH BOY! Was it lucky to have that Cricket. That's like getting run over by a car and being lucky to only have lost the use of your legs. If it was so lucky, it wouldn't have hit you in the first place.

I hate that rational, but that's off topic.

And really... Rudolph's Shiny new Year is one of the dumbest things I ever partially sat through.

Now, I'm only talking about animated Christmas specials here. Concert based specials are never meant to be annual classics, and are specifically meant to sell disposable Holiday CD's. But with the animated ones, they're trying to make these instant classics and coming up with pure garbage. I can't stress enough Prep and Landing is the best Christmas Special I've seen since Olive. They've made stinkers since the 90's, but you honestly never hear of any of those ever again. Seems this year they haven't actually made any more, but they're still showing junk like that Elf on a Shelf thing and The Flight Before Christmas. I was unfortunate to catch some of that and it was even drearier than that Cricket thing where everything goes to heck because the girl goes blind.

Actually, there was one I did like about abandoned toys trying to get home for Christmas, but I forgot the name of it. It had this funny bit where they the toys were hiding in fast food bags as giveaway toys, and then they get lost again, with the mother saying something to the extent of "They'll get REAL toys for Christmas." Considering that I collect kid's meal toys and get annoyed as heck that kids pretty much abandon the darn things.

 

[MikaelaMuppet]

What's a real bummer is that the first two Home Alone movies aren't airing on ABC Family's 25 Days of Christmas anymore.

 

[D'Snowth]

Makes me glad I got the Complete Collection set on DVD... though, after THAT was released, they went and made a FIFTH HOME ALONE movie, and I had to change the channel after three minutes (the shortest I've ever given a movie a chance), it was off to that bad a start, the acting was HORRIBLE!

 

[Drtooth]

I don't think the series really needed more than 2 films. I've heard one of the next two isn't really that bad and some like it, but I really don't bother with them.

On that subject, I do like the odd sequel to Christmas Story. Not the second one, but the one based on another story from the original book the first film was based off of. It's... weird, but not bad. THIS TV used to air it all the time. It has an indecisive title where it's either "A Summer Story" or "It Runs in the Family." You have Mary Steenburgen and Charles Grodin trying their darndest to imitate the original parents. I don't think I'd give the second Christmas Story the time of day, though.

 

[D'Snowth]

HOME ALONE 3 is seriously not as bad as people make it out to be; I think they just automatically hate it because it's not Mac Culkin, Joe Pesci, and Danny Stern... but the thing about #3, is that it actually brought an entire new cast of characters and situations rather than try to recast the characters altogether, which is why #4 failed so much, because they DID bring back the original characters, but they were all recast (though they got Harry's name wrong, and Marv was replaced with a femme fatale played by that lady who played Fran Stellanoskovichdavidavichski from DODGEBALL).