Snarky Cinema

Snarky Cinema: Adventures in Live-ish Blogging “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”, or “HOLY COW SANTA CLAUS IS A JERK IN THIS MOVIE”

Posted on December 21, 2011. Filed under: Snarky Cinema |

Hello children. Merry Christmas to those of you who celebrate it, and Happy Festivue to the rest of you.

Today is my 21^st birthday, and I had my first actual honest to goodness alcoholic beverage tonight. (I’m not joking; aside from accidentally drinking out of the wrong glass and a sip of Miller Lite I haven’t ever had anything, ever.) First I tried the wine my parents drink, which I don’t like, and straight whiskey, which I really, really don’t like, and a Mike’s Hard Black Cherry Lemonade, which I really liked. And yes, I did get buzzed. But only just.

Tonight 1/2 of my family is watching Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer in all of its stop motion glory. This is a traditional Christmas movie for my family; as such we have watched it for the past 2-ish decades. I loved this movie when I was little; Rudy was suitably cute and adorable and the Abominable Snow Monster scared the ever-loving crap out of me. Of course, as the years went by the elder members of the family, myself included, began giving the movie the MSTK3000 treatment because as it turns out there are parts of Rudolph that are unbelievably horrible for a kid’s movie, or any movie that isn’t propaganda for a hate group. As such, it is wholeheartedly deserving of ridicule. However, my Mom likes to watch movies without listening to a running commentary. Therefore, the running commentary is below. The time is off a little bit, but you should get the general gist of things. If you haven’t ever seen the Burl Ives classic, then look it up on Wikipedia or something because I’m too lazy to do the usual rundown on it.

00:23 Christmas seals don’t look like seals. They look like the expelled solid by-product of metabolism.

00:44 Mrs. Claus is trying to give her husband an eating disorder. If he wants to be healthy that’s his business.

01:49 I want to say, for the record, that I don’t recall the most famous reindeer of all.

02:21 Okay, so there are parts of this movie that are really problematic, but I really, really love the soundtrack.

03:08 What is Rudolph’s deal? I mean, flying reindeer is okay, but glowing noses is where we enter into the unacceptable? Also, recessive alleles don’t explain the wonky genetics going on in this story.

03:46 I like how Donner’s antlers move around. Because antlers totally do that.

04:15 Until the appearance of the Abominable Snow Monster, no one really makes it clear why Rudy’s nose is so horrible. It seems to come down to “because it is.” Which is actually totally realistic – people will hate you for completely arbitrary reasons. This is an educational movie.

04:55 Harnesses do not work like that. They aren’t necklaces – they have to actually attach to things…

05:22 Apparently Kris Kringle is the King of Jing-a-Ling. I feel like Jing-a-Ling would be in Asia somewhere, which makes sense given how much the workshop resembles a sweatshop.

06:32 When a studio eventually gets around to rebooting/remaking Rudolph, because you know they will, I want them to flesh out the backstory of the Abominable. What’s his story? Did a reindeer slaughter his village? Was he abandoned by his parents? Or – were they killed by reindeer? Is that why he hates Christmas – because he never had a family to enjoy it with? THE WORLD NEEDS TO KNOW.

07:27 Why do the elves have like 13 guys physically building the toys but only one guy painting? How is that an efficient distribution of resources?

08:11 Apparently the North Pole is a communist dictatorship. Poor Hermie just wants to be a dentist, but the man won’t let him.

09:07 Donner: “There are more important things than comfort. Like self-respect!” World’s Greatest Dad, ladies and gentlemen. Yeah.

10:56 “Ho-ho-ho, ho-ho-ho, we are Santa’s elves!” So not a communist dictatorship – just slave labor.

12:04 So the elves make a lovely song for Santa, rehearse it and everything, and sing it for Santa. Who responds with “Needs work. I have to go inspect the reindeer now instead of validating the hard work of my slave labor work force.” Fantastic.

13:21 I really like Hermie, but it takes a special mind to strike off on one’s own in the middle of  the North Pole without any food or supplies at all whatsoever.

13:55 Comet: “My name is Comet, and I’m not just your teacher, I also want to be your pal.” Creepier words have definitely been said by an authority figure, but dangit that’s still creepy.

15:16 Clarice is the first person in the movie to accept Rudolph without any reservations. I feel like this says something about true love and how it conquers all, but I also feel like this says something about how much of a jerk basically everyone else in this movie is.

15:57 Rudolph is a flying prodigy. But apparently this does not outweigh having a flashlight on your shnozz.

16:23 The reindeer react to Rudy’s nose with horror and shock. I just want to remind everyone again – flying reindeer. You’d think the fantastic wouldn’t be that big a deal. Also, it’s only a big deal to the people in Christmas Town. Cornelius is fine with it, Hermie’s fine with it, Moonracer is peachy about it. So what is it with the Christmas Town folk?

16:47 Santa: “Donner, you should be ashamed of yourself!” I’m a little curious as to how, exactly, this would be Donner’s fault. At the very least is should also partly be Rudolph’s mom’s fault, because ½ of that genetic material was hers. Also, why doesn’t Rudolph’s mom get a name? What is up with that?

20:27 Hermie: “What d’you say – why don’t we be independent together?” I don’t think Hermie understands what independence is.

21:56 Abominable Snow Monster! (ASM from here on out.) Who is now magically bigger than a mountain. The scaling on this movie could use a little work.

22:31 Yukon Cornelius doesn’t always drink beer, but when he does, it is out of the skull of the Dos Equis man. When Chuck Norris eventually dies, it will be by the pickaxe of Yukon Cornelius. Yukon Cornelius once visited the Virgin Islands. There were no survivors. #yukoncorneliusfacts

23:17 Yukon frequently tosses his metal pick up into the air into the snow, and then licks it. Let me repeat that – he licks his metal pickaxe that has been hanging, uncovered, on his belt, before being thrown in snow. It’s like he’s never heard of A Christmas Story.

25:27 I think Yukon’s dogs might be the smartest characters in this movie.

26:37 I think events later in the movie prove that the ASM does not, in fact, have one weakness. Yes it sinks, but I think we’re forgetting its weakness to being hit very hard in the head with a falling rock.

27:44 Not all who wander are lost, but I’m pretty darn sure our heroes are.

27:49 Oh, so NOW Donner feels bad about how he treated Rudy. Far after anything useful can be done about the situation.

28:56 I think “Charlie-in-the-Box” is the greatest euphemism for anything, ever.

29:23 Charlie isn’t accepted as a toy because his name is Charlie, not Jack. A) This is making an Everest out of a very poorly built anthill, and B) I think this could be solved by a very simple name change.

30:50 So in that remake, I want in depth backstory on the Doll. I mean, she looks perfectly normal. What exactly is her deal?

31:10 There’s a water pistol that shoots jelly. That’s why it’s a misfit. Here’s my question: WHO LOADED THIS THING? My money is on the Pillsbury Doughboy, who, despite the name, clearly does not understand how weapons work.

32:19 The herald just played that little trill for King Moonracer’s court. I bring this up because while shopping with my roommate in Walmart the other day, I heard this trill from across the store and (very) loudly and excitedly informed my roommate that that sound was the trill for King Moonracer’s court and that therefore Rudolph must be playing somewhere in the storm. (My roommate, who is blessed with the patience of a hundred saints, ignored me and kept shopping for classroom supplies for adorable little snot-nosed schoolchildren. I still say we could have saved money by not getting them Kleenex. I made do with industrial grade sandpaper; so can they.)

33:00 King Moonracer wants our heroes to someday inform Santa of the Island of Misfit Toys so that Santa can help them. Here are the problems with that line of reasoning: 1) Hermie and Rudolph were so reviled that they fled Santa’s court. So why, exactly, would they have any clout at all with Santa? 2) Santa has thus far rejected a tiny, adorable little reindeer for the crime of having a blinking light on his nose. It’s kind of out of character for him to be all that warm and welcoming to a group of people whose only defining trait is that they all have a “defect.”

35:39 Santa wants Rudolph to find Donner, who is missing. Also missing are Rudolph’s mom and Clarice, but apparently they’re not all that important, as Santa specifically wants Rudolph to find Donner because it’s nearly Christmas Eve and he needs Donner to pull the sleigh. To clarify – sentient reindeer is missing; Santa wants him found not because his friend is missing, but because he needs said friend to provide manual labor.

36:36 Rudy’s folks are missing, and apparently have been missing for months. Rudy’s first plan is to look in the cave of the ASM. How, exactly, does that conclusion make even the remotest bit of sense?

37:15 I really wish that when I’m all grown up I have a laugh half as evil as the ASM’s.

39:05 I think Cornelius is psychotic. My first clue was the constant giggling while dropping a person-sized boulder on the ASM’s head.

39:17 Hermie is the world’s greatest dentist. In the space of 30 seconds he removed over a dozen teeth as half as large as he was. That’s pretty impressive for someone with no practical experience.

39:41 “Just walk right past the toothless ASM. It’s not like he is three times as tall as you and capable of crushing you with one hand.” Thank you, Hermie.

40:32 “They realized the best thing to do was to get the womenfolk back to Christmas Town.” I don’t even.

41:17 “Hey Rudolph, we’re sorry we basically drove you out of our society and stuff. And we’re sure that simply saying that is enough to make it up for the seasons you spent wandering without shelter or companionship, dogged by the ASM.” – All of the Other Reindeer

43:43 Remember kids, you can be as different as much as you want to be so long as you are useful to society.

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Snarky Cinema: A Nightmare on Elm Street

Posted on August 31, 2010. Filed under: Snarky Cinema |

This is a movie review, as you might have guessed from the title. I’ll  be doing these pretty much whenever I feel like I can be bothered. Occasionally they’ll be newish movies because my college is nice and shows movies a couple months after their release date in the basement of our technology center – for free. Which is good because a lot of these movies I wouldn’t pay to see.

A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010, directed by Samuel Bayer, distributed by New Line Cinemas)

Warning: If you actually, you know, care about spoilers, well…there are some below. Of course, if you don’t know what’s going on in Nightmare, then you’ve probably been living under a rock. And don’t have an internet connection.

For those of you who have been living under a rock, A Nightmare on Elm Street is a remake of the 1984 film, A Nightmare on Elm Street, which was directed by the master of horror himself, Wes Craven. In the original, a group of teenagers start dying in their sleep in gruesom, creative fashion after a psycho with knives for hands stalks and scares the crap out of them. In the remake, three teens die after they have some trippy dreams where they briefly encounter a creepy guy. Not really scary.

Here’s my main problem with this movie: in the dark theater, with about fifteen other people, as Freddy was running around slicing and dicing people (and I use that pretty loosely because there really wasn’t a lot of violence on his part, and technically speaking he only actually killed four people), I was falling asleep. I will say that again – while watching a movie about people being murdered in their sleep, I couldn’t be bothered to stay awake. The movie was just flat out boring. (Although the night was redeemed by the two guys sitting behind me playing MSTK3000. My personal favorite was when the protagonist of Nightmare said (exact quote) “I don’t know what’s real anymore,” and one of the guys behind me came back with “Well, maybe you should have made a totem, b*tch!” And when the protagonists couldn’t wake up: “Should’ve synchronized your kicks through all four levels, retards!” For those of you who haven’t seen Inception and don’t get those references, you should really, really watch it. I would not be surprised if it got best picture at the Oscars this year. Unlike Nightmare, which was so mediocre that it probably won’t even get a Razzie.)

There are a couple of reasons for this:

1.) While I am grateful that the screenwriters and directors refrained from taking each character and then giving them one trait that they would then ride into the ground for the rest of the movie or until they die (as most horror movies do), the fact is that that would almost have been preferable to the little to no characterization that actually happened in the movie. Almost everybody’s got a trait, yes, but all of the characters are pretty much interchangeable. All of the players are just so darn inoffensive and uninteresting. Nancy (played by Rooney Mara, who has done nothing of note but yet somehow has had her name thrown up in conjunction with the titular role in the Americanized version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), the intrepid protagonist, is an artist and one assumes the awkward shy kid. (She interacts so little with other characters that you kind of have to assume it.) Quentin (played by Kyle Gallner, who was fantastic as Cassidy “Beaver” Casablancas on Veronica Mars), the kid hopelessly crushing on Nancy, has meds that help him focus. Dean (played by Thomas Dekker, who played John Connor on Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles) likes Kris. Kris (played by Katie Cassidy, who has been in a lot of B-horror movies and was Liam Neeson’s daughter’s friend in Taken) likes Dean and was the one who did a lot of the expositing in the beginning of the film. Oh, and the dude that played Emmet Cullen in Twilight: The Saga of Robert Pattinson’s Hair was in this too. He died. I rejoiced.

All of the actors in this for any length of time are capable of playing (if not dynamic) then at least not-static characters. And yet I spent a substantial amount of this movie laughing at flat line deliveries and really not caring about who died.

2.) There is a fine, fine line between letting tension build and boring your audience with long, would-be tense scenes. Bayer doesn’t even know where that line is, let alone how to toe it. I will say that while I was just about spot on for when a jump-out scare would occur, Bayer did tend to put them in what would (for other people, at least) be slightly off from the expected place in a scene (ie, there is a scene where a character wakes herself up from a Freddy dream and goes to the bathroom to wash her face and wake up and what not, and darn it all if Freddy’s face didn’t appear in the bathroom mirror over her shoulder after she closed the medical cabinet. I was impressed by Bayer’s restraint in this instance. However, thirty seconds later she gets back in bed and I said (out loud) “Have fun waking up next to that face” and thirty seconds later Freddy rolls over and kills her.) This movie is maybe 0.097% jump-out scares and 87.3% exposition and tracking shots through dark hallways. And only 7% teens getting killed (counting the big long fight scene at the end, and (hihglight for spoilers) nobody actually dies during that fight. This is a bad, bad ratio.

3.) I know I’m spoiled, but I watch a lot of crappy made-for-TV Sci Fi original productions. And while the makers of those movies by and large don’t know how to write dialogue, cast people who can act, direct coherent fight scenes, or create anything resembling a clever or coherent plot line, what they do know how to do, and well, is come up with clever, outrageous, gruesome deaths and ever more interesting ways to throw gore around. As a professionally produced and budgeted project, Nightmare 2010 has no excuses for the pathetic kills in this movie. The stupidest (and funniest) death in the movie was when Kris got tossed around her bedroom like a ragdoll and then got sliced from sternum to navel. I think that they were trying to channel echoes of The Exorcist, but mostly I just thought it looked stupid and was pretty freaking hilarious. There are four deaths in this movie, and not a one of them so much as pays homage to the gore-soaked death of Johnny Depp in the original Nightmare (there’s a minor allusion to it once (and not during a kill), but nothing approaching the original). (*Highlight the empty space if you want to know how he died: He gets eaten by his bed (in his dream, but what happens in the dream happens in real life because every time I get bitten by a zombie or blown up in my dreams or stabbed by a monster I fail to wake up soaked in blood or in little itty bitty pieces or with a ravening taste for human flesh) and then what must be around 50 gallons of fake blood and gore gets regurgitated out of the bed. This scene kind of set the standard for gratuitous gore use until such delights as Saw and Hostel came out. That was a sarcastic “delights” because while I do enjoy scary violent movies, I do not enjoy toture porn which is what the latter editions of Saw and pretty much all of Hostel are.)

4.) Jackie Earl Haley is not Robert Englund (the original Freddy). Usually, I would be able to accept this and move on, but in this case it peeved me greatly. First off, somewhere along the line the decision was handed down that they would try to make Freddy 2010 look more “realistic” as a burn victim. I want to be clear here: the point of Freddy’s face is not to accurately reflect what the flesh and face of a burned man come back to life to haunt your sorry butt would look like. It is meant to scare the ever-loving snot out of you. As my roommate put it after she saw it: “He seriously looks like a mouse.”

You can judge for yourself:

These were actually the best pictures I could find out there in cyberland. They don’t really convey the depth of boringness and terror, respectively, that each iteration encompasses.

Haley just doesn’t capture the playful glee that Englund had. That makes me sad. And it makes Freddy a lot less scary.

5.) Today is just rag on Haley and Bayer day. One of the most striking things about Englund’s version of Freddy is that he is funny. (Admittedly, in a really, really dark way.) It’s not so much on display in A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), but in the sequels he will be quipping at you as he strangles you with your colon. We only get a couple of quips out of him during the entirety of Nightmare 2010. Granted, those are some pretty good quips, but there were not nearly enough of them.

That’s about it – this movie is just bland.

5/10 – bland

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