Fred Claus

Written at the time after suffering the film's release...

Sibling Revelry 

I know what you're asking: Is this a Christmas Movie where someone has to SAVE CHRISTMAS and do they?

Short answer: Yes.

Come to think of it, just about every Christmas Movie is about SAVING Christmas. From the Martians, from the Grinch, from Tim Allen, from adults, from the Gubernator, from just about everything, except all the right-wing nutters who really DO think there's a War on Christmas. Excuse me, Xmas.

The "SAVING Christmas" movie is so prevalent, it could be a genre all to itself. As long as you threaten Christmas verbally, physically, psychically or by omission, in the real or fantasy-sense, that's all that's required. How many movies or stop-motion animation specials can you name? Swell, I just came up with dinner-table conversation for this Christmas. And believe me, I looked at this blog's budget, that's all you're getting (I need the lumps of coal to heat the house).

So, in Fred Claus it turns out that Clement Moore didn't know a thing about Santa Claus' older, dumber, bitter brother. That's right, the Clauses had another son, who after the birth of little Nicholas, was left parched of his parents' affections. I mean, c'mon, how can you compete against a really cute fat baby whose first words are "Ho Ho?" It doesn't take long before Fred has transitioned from Promising To Be The Best Big Brother In The Whole World to throwing things at the little saint's head.

Fred goes off to the Real World, while Nick becomes an icon with a Factory-town at the North Pole with an indentured population of elves. Guess the North Pole is outside the jurisdiction of fair and best practices law. Anyway, Santa has built up quite the little illegal monopoly up there, plus there's the stress of reading every kid's mail, producing the specifically-requested toys for delivery and then shipping them all in one night on a twelve hour turn-around. Add to that, this year there's an Efficiency Expert (played by Kevin Spacey--when did he stop knowing how to be funny?) prowling around who seems determined to Shut Santa Down, though "Why" and "For Whom" goes unanswered (and the possibilities dance like sugar-plums in my head--China? Wal-Mart?).**

Then, Fred calls out of the blue, wanting to borrow money, and Nick is SUCH a Nicely Overwhelming Holiday Icon that he can't say no. Well, he does attach a rider saying that Fred has to work it off at the North Pole determining who is "NAUGHTY" and who is "NICE" and then condemning the former children to an unhappy Christmas. Despite this, Santa still has the snow-balls to say to his wife "I'm a Saint, sweetheart. Tough love is a little difficult for me!"

Not for me, sweetheart. "Tough" love is the only love this flick will get.

It's all meant to be whimsical, but one walks out wanting to "clock" a bell-ringer. The North Pole seems to have all the charm of a Wal-Mart town, with exactly the same sort of benefit-policy for their work-force. To determine who will be stamped "Naughty" or "Nice" Santa and his pint-sized voyeurs in the "Judgmental" Department have a magic snow-globe that they use to spy on every child's behavior. You think Homeland Security is a threat to privacy--you've never ever thought about peeping Santa. Just the emphasis that Santy sees you when you're sleeping and knows when you're awake (just like the NSA!) is probably not too jolly an idea to bring up during these liberty-crushing times, but Fred Claus makes it a key plot-point.

The cast does what it can, in its best "Tim Allen/Chevy Chase-in-overdrive" way, but it all amounts to hanging tinsel on a dead tree. Vaughn pulls off some nicely ad-libbed fast-talk. Paul Giamatti as Santa has a bit more sand to it than you might expect--but you just know the rest of the cast said "Hey, Giamatti's in it--there's gotta be something to this," so you have Rachel Weisz (as "Girl-friend"), Miranda Richardson (as Mrs. Santa), Kathy Bates as "Mom" Claus, all vamping, waiting for the movie to become better. And it doesn't.

Maybe next Christmas, kids.* Maybe instead of saving Christmas, someone should try to save the Christmas Movie.

* Okay, there is one scene that works. Fred decides to go to a support group for "overshadowed" brothers, and among them is Frank Stallone, Roger Clinton, and Billy Baldwin. That scene is genuinely funny, as the 'brothers" gamely mock themselves.

** Doesn't all this turning of childhood fantasy into a corporate metaphor a little creepy? Saving Christmas, Pshaw! How about saving childhood?

Knives Out

Thrombey-land
or
Ladies and Gentlemen Grieve in Different Ways

Mystery author Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plumber) is celebrating his 85th birthday in a big way. His family is celebrating at the quirky family home for the old man and—as with most family-gatherings—there are issues and squabbles. They all involve money, because Thrombey has been quite a success.

The first clue to that is that he's 85 and living in his own home, as opposed to a facility no matter how healthy he is.

The family Thrombey has done very well for itself: daughter Linda (Jamie Lee Curtis) runs a real estate empire with her husband Richard (Don Johnson), but that was done with a considerable loan from Harlan—their son Hugh Ransom (Chris Evans) left the party early after a tiff; oldest son Walt (Michael Shannon) runs the successful Thrombey publishing empire, but is dissatisfied with the elder Thrombey's resistance to selling the filming rights—he's joined by his wife Donna (Riki Lindhome) and son Jacob (Jaeden Martell); daughter-in-law Joni (Toni Collette), widow of late son Neil, has a line of beauty products and her own self-help business and is paying for her daughter Meg (Katherine Langford) to go an ivy league college.

Then, there's "the help"—housekeeper Fran (Edi Patterson) views the family with a jaundiced eye and maintains her helping attitude with a hidden stash of dope; caretaker-nurse Marta (Ana de Armas) is well-regarded by the family (even if they can't remember her country of origin) and much favored by Harlan for her good heart and her proficiency with the game "Go." After the party, Harlan, after talking privately with all the family members, retires at 11:30.

When Fran brings up his coffee, she finds his bed unslept in and undisturbed. Continuing to his attic study, she finds it very much disturbed and Harlan dead from a slit throat, bled out, his dramatic knife/letter-opener still in his bloody hand. The police think it's suicide and they are in the process—in the form of Trooper Wagner (Noah Segan) and Lt. Elliott (Lakeith Stanfield)—of interviewing the family about the events of that evening, with one addition. He is Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig, looking perpetually smug and utilizing the drawl of Shelby Foote), consulting detective of note (and "The New Yorker") who has been hired—by parties unknown—to determine if Harlan Trombley really did take his own life...or if it was done by the hand of another.

Like that double-conundrum, Knives Out is a multi-layered movie, not only in its plot, but in its timeline-juggling and presentation. There are complexities built on complexities: the mystery of Thrombey's death, which—at the beginning of the movie—is assumed to be one thing, which is called into question not once but twice for different motivations; the mystery of Benoit Blanc's benefactor as the detective is publicly seeking the truth of the first mystery, but privately is working on who hired him for the job.

He spends a lot of his time grilling the family members, not only looking for clues, but also for motivations about why he might be there. So he eyes the entire family like a smirking hawk, which, initially makes him an unwelcome guest and something of a detecting third wheel—he calms the family's fears by purring "My position here is purely ornamental."). But with the reading of Thrombey's newly-drafted will—"Think of it as a tax return by a community theater..."—the family gloms onto him to prove that Thrombey might actually have been killed, staged to look like a suicide, thus nullifying a will that would leave his family nothing.

And that's where things really get complicated. But, to say more would destroy the web of evidence, the suspicions and the dynamics going on amongst the suspected and suspecting family, as well as the timelines based on points of view that Johnson has intricately constructed like a jenga tower to tell a complicated story, while simultaneously building on it.

Now, the way Johnson has designed it, it puts some focus on the family members and the actors playing them. But, no one has more pressure put on them than the character of Thrombey's nurse, Marta Cabrera (de Armas). Of all the denizens of the Thrombey estate, she is the one closest to the old man, knowing him best and having his trust. She is also the most vulnerable—she's not family, but part of "the help." She has to be compliant and complacent, because her mother is an illegal immigrant and the Thrombey patronage keeps her employed and her mother safe. She fears any threat to that comfort, and the family, especially in the absence of the patriarch, is a hostile work-environment despite the smiles and the surface friendliness.

All the actors have a fine time chewing their respective scenery, but de Armas has the toughest role, playing someone "with a good heart" in a den of thieves while not looking like a victim but also looking competent. De Armas has to go through so many moods that swing back and forth like a pendulum, fading into the background, lest she betray something to the family. She must become simultaneously suspect and detective in order to protect herself and her family. It's a tough job, and de Armas pulls it off charmingly.

Knives Out carries out the time-honored game-plan of the mystery genre, but twists it in a gordian knot. to build audience expectations and then pulls the rug out from under them, staying ahead of the amateur sleuths who are trying to outguess the already-worked-out scenario. At the same time, it's a Christie-an exploration of the foibles and frailties of the upper crust, who are only too ready to break through and fall into the goo, and showing how far things can descend when greed is bad...not good.

Don't Make a Scene (Redux): Horse Feathers

The Set-Up:  Aaron Brown, the newscaster, said that while recovering from an early heart attack, he used Marx Brothers movies as therapy. 

If laughter is the best medicine, the Marx Brothers are a miracle drug. Decades after their movies were produced, they are still shining examples of humor that communicates over the passage of time. 

The four Marx Brothers--Groucho, Chico, Harpo, and Zeppo--made some of the funniest, if some of the most un-cinematic movies ever produced. You didn't need fancy camera set-ups. Just keep the boys in frame (if possible) and you had comedy gold. Their physical comedy and their crack timing with gags (unreproducible here, unfortunately) keep the routines laugh out loud funny. But they are also anarchic spirits in a corrupt world. Their heightened absurdity and tortured logic confuse the best-laid schemes of crooks and swindlers, while allowing the free passage of true love. 

That's how it worked in the movies, anyway. 

The Marxes were road-blocks to business-as-usual, and they could be counted on to disrupt any example of civilization known to man. Someday, I'll reproduce the first ten minutes of Horse Feathers*--my favorite Marx Brothers movie--but for now, the perfect zaniness of the "Swordfish" scene will suffice.

The Story: Huxley College is in dire financial trouble, so to guarantee its future success college president Professor Quincey Adams Wagstaff (Groucho Marx) goes to the local speakeasy to recruit football players to play for the college, students or no. But first, he has to get by speakeasy employee Baravelli (Chico Marx) who won't let just anybody in. 

Action!

 Nick: Hey, Bareveliii!
Baravelli: What do you want?
Nick: Watch the door for a few minutes and don’t let anyone in without the password.
Baravelli: Okay, what is it?
Nick: "Swordfish" is the password, do you understand?
Baravelli: Okay, I got it.
Nick: Well, what is it?
Baravelli: Password.
Nick: "Swordfish!" "Swordfish!"
Baravelli: Alright! "Swordfish!" "Swordfish!"
Nick: Ah! (Nick walks away in disgust)
Baravelli(under his breath): Biotsomoscowsindaroomfulafachdisipach!
(There's a knock at the door. Baravelli opens up a security door)
Baravelli: Who are you?
Professor Wagstaff: I’m fine, thanks. Who are you?
Baravelli: I’m fine, too, but you can’t come in unless you give the password!
Wagstaff: Well, what is the password?
Baravelli: Aw no, you gotta tell me! Hey, I tell what I do I give you three guesses. (Baravelli looks around to see if anyone's watching)
Baravelli: It’s the name of a fish.
Wagstaff: Is it Mary?
Baravelli: Ha! That’s a no fish.
Wagstaff: She isn’t? Well, she drinks like one! Let me see. Is it Sturgeon?
Baravelli: Hey, you crazy. A sturgeon, he’s a doctor, cut you open when you sick. Now, I give you more chance.
Wagstaff: I got it! Haddock!
Baravelli: That’s a funny! I got a haddock, too!
Wagstaff: What do you take for a haddock?
Baravelli: Well, sometimes I take a aspirin, and sometimes I take a calomel.
Wagstaff: Say, I’d walk a mile for a calomel.
Baravelli: You mean chocolate calomel, I like that, too, but you no guess it...
(Baravelli shuts the door on Wagstaff. Wagstaff knocks again)
Baravelli: ‘ey, whatsamatter, you don’t unnerstand English? You can’t come in here unless you say "Swordfish." Now I give you one more guess.
Wagstaff: "Swordfish"..."Swordfish"...I think I got it…is it "Swordfish?"
Baravelli: Ha! That’s it! You guess it!
(Baravelli opens the door for Wagstaff)
Wagstaff: Pretty good, huh?
Baravelli: Fine..you guess it…
(Wagstaff shakes his hand, runs inside and shuts the door. Baravelli knocks on the door. Wagstaff opens the security door)
Wagstaff: What do you want?
Baravelli: I want to come in.
Wagstaff: What’s the password?
Baravelli: Oh, you no fool me..."Swordfish."
Wagstaff: No, I got tired of that. I changed it. (Wagstaff slams the door. Baravelli knocks again.)
(Wagstaff opens the security door)
Baravelli: What’s the password now?
Wagstaff: Gee I forgot it, I better come outside with you…
(Wagstaff walks outside. The door slams shut. They're locked out. Both begin knocking on the door and kicking it.)


Horse Feathers

Words by Bert Kalmar, Harry Ruby, S.J. Perelman, Will B. Johnstone, Arthur Sheekman and the Four Marx Brothers

Pictures by Ray June and Norman Z. McLeod

Horse Feathers is available on DVD on NBC Universal Home Video.

* Eventually, I did do that...here:  http://bloggingbycinemalight.blogspot.com/2014/12/dont-make-scene-horse-feathers.html

Jojo Rabbit

Dann Sind Wir Helden
or
"Gesundheit" (Definitely Not a Good Time to Be a Nazi...)

Ah, satire.

You can't win with it. There are going to be people who say it goes too far and there are going to be people who say it trivializes horror and injustice and there are going to be people who say it doesn't go far enough.

Which means that it's pissing people off and that's just right. It's doing its job. Autocrats of all stripes do not like satire. And they won't like New Zealand director Taika Waititi's Jojo Rabbit, either. 

That's alright. Autocrats don't deserve to have a good time.

Waititi might be new to some, his most popular movie being Thor: Ragnarok, which brought a breath of fresh jovial air to the most atrophied of the Marvel Universe series, but his earlier works, Boy, What We Do in the Shadows, and Hunt for the Wilderpeople showed an anarchic sense of comedy and film-making that was fun, heart-warming, and refreshing. He makes darn fine films, even if the silliness in them might discourage one from thinking so.

But, Waititi's free-form adaptation of the first half of New Zealand author Christine Leunens' "Caging Skies" is one of those approaches where to go all out silly might be the antidote to a story that is, on the face of it, about cruelty, inhumanity, and the depths of evil that human beings and a complacent society can sink into.

"I am Jojo Betzler. I am 10 years old...today, I will become a man." That traditional line of a Bar Mitzvah is turned on its head, as Johannes (Roman Griffin Davis) is dressing for his first day on his way to becoming a man, thanks to a camp to train Hitler Youth, run by Captain Klenzendorf (Sam Rockwell). It is a dream of the scrawny young Jojo to do well at the camp for his ultimate dream is to be made part of the honorary guard to his hero, Adolph Hitler (Taika Waititi) himself. It should be a shoe-in, as the Fuehrer is already an imaginary friend of Jojo ("Heil me, man!") appearing in times of confusion and distress to provide simple advice that a 10 year old boy might understand ("People used to say a lot of nasty things about me: 'Oh, this guy's a lunatic' 'Oh, look at that psycho, he's going to get us all killed!'").

Johannes lives with his mother, Rosie (Scarlett Johansson) who is skeptical of his devotion to Nazism while maintaining a sunny disposition, despite her husband being missing from the household. Johannes thinks he's fighting for the Nazis in Africa, but his Mom remains mum.

The Hitlerjugend Camp is run—if that is the term—by Klenzendorf, a hard-drinking, not very competent soldier who has clearly been given an assignment he can't screw up, let alone harm the floundering war effort. He barks the rhetoric with a slightly cynical weariness, wears the uniform not too nattily (while secretly designing something a little flashier if highly unregulation), knows he's been benched from anything important, but is a good little soldier who does his duty ("Even though we're losing the war, everything seems to be going fine...").

Jojo does not have an easy time with the prospective Hitlerjugend. He can salute precisely, has a force-fed hatred of the Jews (of whom he knows nothing about and who take on mythic properties), but even the worst of best intentions does not necessarily translate to actions. When he is picked out to kill a rabbit by strangulation, he can't do it, and is mocked mercilessly by the trainers and his fellow acolytes, with a new name pointing out his weakness—"Jojo Rabbit".

Jojo runs away to the woods is consoled by his pal, Adolph. So much so, that, his brio renewed, he charges back to the camp in the middle of a grenade training class...

...and manages to blow himself up.

Needless to say, grenade training is suspended for the day and Klenzendorf is reprimanded and given a dressing-down by Jojo's mother, who puts Jojo's further training in Klenzendorf's hands, but, this time, but now restricted to the Hitler Youth headquarters.

Jojo spends some time in hospital and is distressed that his face is scarred up, making him look less Aryan and therefore "monstrous," making him feel further ostracized from his Nazi countrymen.

Jojo learns, though, to be independent because his mother is spending less time at home (she is secretly working for the resistance). But, he's also home alone more than usual. He begins to hear odd noises in the house, coming from within the house. A furtive investigation finds that, hidden in a storage section of his late sister's room, is a teen-aged girl named Elsa (Thomasin McKenzie). Jojo takes an immediate dislike to her because 1) he's scared of her, 2) she's a girl, and 3) she's in his house and 4) she's Jewish.

Elsa takes advantage of his confused terror, keeping him quiet about her presence—he and his Mom will be arrested, too, of course, for hiding her. So, an uneasy pact must be made between Jojo, Nazi-in-training, and "a Jew"—who has a name, a personality, and a vague resemblance to his sister. In the waning days of the war, with everything "going fine," Jojo must deal with his own "otherness" and be in close proximity to the most wanted "other" in his blighted country.

Heavy stuff. And the monstrousness and tragedy that is the yin and yang of the Nazi machinery and those who are caught up in it is not given short shrift in Jojo Rabbit. Terrible things happen and the pain and ache and villainy of it is made apparent and communicated appropriately.

But, despite this, the movie, generally, is funny as Hell.

Partially, it's because Jojo is a kid and a mass of misinformation, schadenfreude, and the inability to live up to the rhetoric. Combine that with the lampooning of Nazi doctrine where there is no room for doubt despite ample evidence to the contrary surrounding you and you have, not so much a comedy of errors as a comedy of dogma.

And therein the front of satire lies. Everything you know is wrong, yet you march on in the same goose-step anyway even if it's through a mine-field of your own making. Fortunately, the movie spends a great deal of time mocking the tenets of Nazism leading to such observations as Jojo's friend telling him: "It's not a good time to be a Nazi. Our only friends are the Japanese—and just between you and me, they don't look very Aryan." It may be a little UN-PC, but it's to the point. If it had been merely this, it would not be very successful. But, as it involves a change of heart and a valuable learning experience on the part of the protagonist, it's actually valuable and sweet.

And Hitler has never been funnier.