Due to scheduling issues last week, some left-over Christmas films remained (and there’s still more for next year)—12 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS EVE (2004) has Steven Weber die on Christmas Eve, then learn from guardian angel Molly Shannon that he’ll get a second chance at life if he can shape up before the title time-llop ends. Unusual for establishing a limit to the looping, and for not having a romantic resolution (instead Weber ends a relationship that wasn’t working); Weber, unfortunately, isn’t strong enough as the Scrooge, but Shannon’s a hoot. “Is time relative? That is, does time warp back in on itself, and if so … why?”
CHRISTMAS DO-OVER (2006) is an interesting study in time-travel morality, as time-looped Jay Mohr at times justifies being a massive jerk by pointing out nobody will remember his actions the next day. he also shamelessly exploits his foreknowledge of the day to humiliate ex-wife Daphne Zuniga’s new boyfriend. Unfortunately, I don’t feel at all that Mohr’s learned anything by the film’s end—it still feels like he’s playing tricks to get what he wants, rather than learning a lesson (that may be why I remembered him losing Zuniga instead of winning her back, as it would have worked better. With Tom Thomerson, Ruta Lee and Adrienne Barbeau as in-laws. “Some of us have been here longer than others.”
IT HAPPENED ONE CHRISTMAS (1977) was a TV remake of It’s a Wonderful Life that mostly makes me appreciate the wit and craftsmanship Frank Capra brought to the original, as this has less of both. Marlo Thomas plays Mary Bailey (the sexism she’d run into in this era is largely ignored), Wayne Rogers is the man she loves and Orson Welles replaces Lionel Barrymore as the villain (unfortunately this was in the hardly-trying phase of his late career). Skip this and see the original instead. “This time, I’m not going to be the one.”
And now, children’s movies!
THE TIME CRYSTAL (1981) is a flop pilot in which a tween boy uses a magic crystal to travel back to the days of Akhenaton and help Tut succeed to the throne despite the schemes of usurper Vic Tayback (with Joann Worley and Hans Conried among the other “Egyptians.”). A weak Boys Own adventure.
By contrast, THE AMAZING MR. BLUNDEN (1972) is a good children’s fantasy in which eccentric attorney Laurence Naismith helps two 1918 children travel back in time 100 years to save a pair of wealthy orphans from being murdered for their money. Nothing new, but charmingly executed. “What on earth is that young man’s name? Well, no matter now.”
MY SCIENCE PROJECT (1985) is a teen comedy in which a trio of teens (Fisher Stevens is the only Name) attempting to pass science class discover the odd gadget they scrounged from a local junkyard is an ET time-vortex that sucks teacher Dennis Hopper into infinity, then fills their school with everything from dinosaurs to post-apocalyptic warriors to samurai. Forgettable, but I’ll give them points for making the female lead actually average looking (and not in the If You Take Off her Glasses She’s Beautiful way). “If I had my way, I’d be home watching cartoons.”
PIRATES OF THE PLAIN (1999) has treacherous pirate captain Tim Curry sucked across time to a modern-day Nebraska farm where he and a nine-year-old boy wind up finding buried treasure and defending the farm against Curry’s time-warped crew. A film which includes a pirate ship in a wheat field firing on a farmhouse deserves to be more fun than this was. With Dee Wallace Stone and Charles Napier as the kid’s mother and grandfather. “We adventurers have a language all our own.”
Are you doing alternate universes, too? Would ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ count?
Haha, never mind, I somehow skipped over the paragraph where you already talked about it. -_-
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