Cranky Lesbian

Look what the homosexuals have done to me!

Tag: Holiday Movies Page 1 of 2

A Magical Christmas Village: Marlo Thomas Practices Witchcraft

By

On December 1, 2023

In TV Movies

Marlo Thomas and Alison Sweeney in A Magical Christmas Facelift Village.

There’s a mother-daughter horror movie tucked within A Magical Christmas Village (2022), cloaked by spruce and tinsel. But until Hallmark develops a line of greeting cards and snow globes commemorating intergenerational trauma, it must remain suppressed. In its absence we’re left with another holiday romance between a hardworking single parent and a peripatetic professional, one that again culminates, as is often the case, in a public display of affection cheered by townspeople that seem to voyeuristically assemble specifically for that purpose. (That Brian De Palma hasn’t directed a Hallmark film is one of the great tragedies of his career.)

The players here are Summer Ashby (Alison Sweeney), a small-town architect, and civil engineer Ryan Scott (Luke Macfarlane of A Shoe Addict’s Christmas), whose job takes him around the country. She’s remodeling a city-owned building when he arrives in search of storage space for toy drive donations. It’s an odd request (who wants stuffed animals covered in sawdust?) until you realize her general contractor’s duties primarily consist of moving Christmas trees and adjusting speakers that play seasonal music. Their awkward introduction gives way to instant attraction and the usual ritualized Hallmark bonding over shared values.

Read More

Faye Dunaway Crashes A Family Thanksgiving

By

On November 19, 2023

In TV Movies

Faye Dunaway stuffs a turkey with dermal fillers in Hallmark’s A Family Thanksgiving.

There are those who will watch A Family Thanksgiving (2010) for the reassuring comforts of its adherence to Hallmark formula: nothing says the holidays quite like an ambitious, career-driven woman realizing the error of her ways in a festive family setting. A second, smaller group of us merely want to hear Faye Dunaway cry “Tina, bring me the carving knife!”, an opportunity that screenwriter Emily Baer senselessly squandered.

Minor consolation can be found in Dunaway’s Stevie Nicks meets Mother Goose wardrobe and ill-fitting wig, which might’ve been salvaged from a drag bar’s dumpster after a What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? revue. A Family Thanksgiving is also saucier than the average Hallmark offering, featuring both scatological humor and — heavens to Betsy! — sex. It’s not often you see the heroine tear off her love interest’s clothes in one of these movies, but don’t get too excited: it’s made less unseemly by a time-travel loophole that places the action within the bonds of holy matrimony.

Read More

Have I Got a Christmas for You: A Very ’70s Hallmark Take on Jewish-Christian Relations

By

On December 24, 2022

In TV Movies

Herb Edelman and Don Chastain pray in Have I Got a Christmas for You.

On the count of three, readers, let us sing in unison: “We wish you a Jewish Christmas, we wish you a Jewish Christmas. We wish you a Jewish Christmas and a goyish New Year.”

That’s all I could think of at the start of Hallmark’s unusual 1977 holiday television presentation, Have I Got a Christmas for You, which opens with Milton Berle tossing a few bucks to a bell ringer dressed as Santa Claus. Directly approaching the camera afterward, he begins his narration: “As you may have guessed, our story has to do with Christmas. Which, in itself, is not exactly unusual this time of the year. Except for one thing—it began some weeks ago in Temple Beth Shalom, at a board of trustees meeting.”

By then I was already nervous, I’ll confess, and half-expected a cut to an assembly of shadowy money lenders, even though Uncle Miltie grew up as Mendel Berlinger and was unlikely to lead us astray. “I was convinced it would end in disaster,” he admits, as we join a contentious meeting already in progress, with Sydney Weinberg (Jack Carter) making an unusual proposal: That the synagogue perform “a gesture of goodwill and thanks to our Christian neighbors” by covering for essential workers on Christmas Eve, as an Italian coworker did for him ahead of Yom Kippur.

Read More

Oy Gevalt: Hallmark’s Love, Lights, Hanukkah!

By

On December 22, 2022

In TV Movies

Mia Kirshner and Ben Savage enjoy Chinese food in Love, Lights, Hanukkah!

If Hallmark’s Love, Lights, Hanukkah! (2020) is your maiden exposure to Jews and our religious customs, you will think we’re unfailingly cheerful moth people, strangely drawn to lights. And, perhaps more confusingly, that we’re obsessed with rudimentary math. The film’s cozy Jewish family, the Bermans, spend an inordinate amount of time counting and beaming while staring endlessly at candles and electric menorahs, the balance of their energy devoted to gently bickering while schmearing bagels and eating brisket. There are evangelical Christians somewhere in the United States who reluctantly watched this and thought to themselves, “Oh, so that’s why they’re all accountants!”

Our first groan of “Oy!” arrives immediately: Hanukkah! opens with closeups of spinning dreidels. You would never guess from this movie that most children are not enthralled by dreidels and that few Jewish women collect and display dreidels like Precious Moments figurines. Or that it would be kind of odd for a grandma to excitedly announce that the gifts are beside the menorah—Hanukkah gifts aren’t akin to Christmas gifts and menorahs are not like Christmas trees. If they were placed too closely together, at least in my childhood home, it would’ve taken about two seconds before my brother and cousins accidentally set everything aflame with their roughhousing.

Read More

Jaclyn Smith Believes in Santa in The Night They Saved Christmas

By

On December 9, 2022

In TV Movies

Jaclyn Smith with her brood in The Night They Saved Christmas.

There is no greater ’80s holiday fantasy movie than A Smoky Mountain Christmas (1986), with its savory squirrel stew blend of witchcraft, fairy tales, backwoods orphans, country music stardom and poisoned maybe-lesbian pies. But once you’ve completed your annual viewing of that Dolly Parton classic, you might consider checking out The Night They Saved Christmas (1984), another family-oriented telefilm that will leave you staring at the screen in confusion, murmuring “What the jingle hell is this?”

Nearly as bad as Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, it essentially hinges on whether an oil company will slaughter Santa and his elves (who number in the thousands) for a shot at greater riches. But there’s so much more to it than that, nearly all of it bleak and depressing. The Night They Saved Christmas doesn’t only inspire ’80s nostalgia because of its sophisticated robot toys, parents on the verge of divorce, fashionable winter jumpers and references to Saudi involvement in American oil. It’s also a heartwarming reminder of our constant proximity to ruthless annihilation in the waning years of the Cold War.

Read More

Luke Macfarlane Romances Candace Cameron Bure in A Shoe Addict’s Christmas

By

On December 2, 2022

In TV Movies

Luke Macfarlane and Candace Cameron Bure in A Shoe Addict’s Christmas.

It seems like only yesterday that I sexually harassed Luke Macfarlane on this very site, but it was in fact almost 15 years ago. How time flies! Since then, Macfarlane has continued to work steadily as an actor despite fears that coming out would hinder his career. His heartthrob status is reflected not only in his popularity among Hallmark viewers but in his recent high-profile gig as Billy Eichner’s leading man in Bros (now streaming on Peacock or Amazon), which billed itself as a landmark gay film but may ultimately be remembered for a sanctimonious publicity strategy that was unpersuasive to theatergoers.

I respect Macfarlane for coming out when he did and was disappointed for him that Bros was upstaged by its own hype. Since I’m reviewing holiday telefilms at the moment, I decided to look into his Hallmark catalogue and quickly hit upon A Shoe Addict’s Christmas (2018). It stuck out for several reasons, including Jean Smart’s third billing in the cast and its ridiculous title. But what really commanded my attention was the identity of his love interest. Macfarlane was paired with… Candace Cameron Bure (No One Would Tell). Bure needs no introduction to gay (and gay-friendly) audiences, so I’ll assume we’re on the same page about why this seemed worth investigating. Let’s reluctantly bypass the “Which one’s the shoe addict?” jokes and get down to business.

Read More

Leave Holiday Baggage on the Luggage Carousel

By

On November 30, 2022

In TV Movies

Cheryl Ladd tends to Barry Bostwick in Holiday Baggage.

Inspirational only on the basis of its sprawling incoherence, Holiday Baggage is a film so invested in the idea of reconciliation that it doesn’t bother to evaluate why, or even if, its family should stay together. Trading jingle bells for warning bells as early as its opening credits—when director Stephen Polk’s name appears at least five times within 90 seconds—this is a festive tale that makes you wish divorce decrees could be stuffed in Christmas stockings alongside candy canes and Bonne Bell Lip Smackers.

Irrepressible scoundrel Pete Murphy (Barry Bostwick), a pilot, charted a course away from his family a decade ago, preferring flings with flight attendants in tropical locales to life with pediatrician Sarah (Cheryl Ladd) and their children in Chicago. Newly retired and eager to remarry, he is finally ready to formalize his divorce from Sarah, who agrees on the condition he reconcile with their daughters. That is easier said than done, partly because Pete has gone to such great lengths to insulate himself from the consequences of his actions that his body rejects the very concept of personal accountability.

Read More

Dolly Parton Decks the Halls in Unlikely Angel

By

On November 28, 2022

In TV Movies

Dolly Parton and Roddy McDowall plot her salvation in Unlikely Angel.

Even if you aren’t the type of Dolly Parton fan who finds A Smoky Mountain Christmas’s lesbian subtext to be as bountiful as the beloved entertainer’s talent—or other assets—you are likely to derive some amusement from Roddy McDowall (who last we saw in Flood!) sternly lecturing her about resisting “affection for the opposite sex,” as he puts it, in Unlikely Angel. That he does so as a slightly bitchy Saint Peter makes it all the better.

The two meet at the pearly gates after Parton’s bar singer, Ruby Diamond (“everybody says I’m a gem!”), dies in a car crash. Peter notes with some concern that Ruby was, overall, less than virtuous. Consulting his book, he elaborates: “All your life, you have done exactly as you wanted, gone where you wanted, said what you wanted. You have never thought of anyone else but yourself.” She doesn’t dispute this, nor is she shocked to learn that Uncle Clem hasn’t joined her mother and the rest of their family in heaven.

Peter offers her a chance to redeem herself by healing a grief-stricken family in the week leading up to Christmas. Ben Bartilson (Brian Kerwin, who I’ve loved since Torch Song Trilogy) has drifted apart from his children after the tragic death of his wife, devoting all of his energy to work. Young Sarah (played by future sex cult leader Allison Mack) and Matthew (Eli Marienthal) spend a lot of time alone, when they aren’t scaring off a string of nannies. Ruby’s deposited on their doorstep with little more than a suitcase, a guitar and an aw-shucks smile.

Read More

Christmas at the Ranch: Cowgirl, Take Her Away

By

On November 25, 2022

In Streaming Movies

Laur Allen and Amanda Righetti in Christmas at the Ranch.

There has never been a believable cowboy in a made-for-TV Christmas romcom. Wearing clothing that’s curiously clean and unwrinkled at the end of the day, their faces caked in makeup, these down-home characters with chiseled jaws model looks that were cheaply assembled in the aisles of Kohl’s. Christmas at the Ranch, a lesbian take on Hallmark and Lifetime’s seasonal offerings, strikes a blow for equality by treating Amanda Righetti’s rancher, Kate, no differently.

The rebellious daughter of wealthy Kentucky horse breeders, Kate has toiled for several years at Hollis Hills, a farm on the verge of bankruptcy after Meemaw Hollis (Lindsay Wagner) refinanced it under usurious terms to pay the medical expenses of her now-deceased husband. Meemaw and grandson Charles (Archie Kao) make such a big to-do about Kate repairing a fencepost on her own—a task less arduous than assembling a baby gate or IKEA shelving—that it’s easy to see why the farm is insolvent. Everyone’s too busy bringing each other warm beverages and exaggeratedly tipping their hats to actually work.

Read More

Thanksgiving Day: Mary Tyler Moore and Tony Curtis Serve a Turkey

By

On November 22, 2022

In TV Movies

Mary Tyler Moore spanks Jonathon Brandmeier in Thanksgiving Day.

Readers, I’m going to ask you to sit down before we continue any discussion of Thanksgiving Day (1990), because I’m about to say something that might upset anyone with lingering nightmares about Just Between Friends (1986). It’s as difficult to break this news as it is to receive it: Mary Tyler Moore wears a pink spandex leotard in this one, too. Not only that, we’re subjected to lingering shots of her scantily-clad tap dancing skills in lieu of excessive aerobics instruction. Scream and cry and hug Judd Hirsch about it, and then we’ll move on.

Even without those godforsaken leotards, you have to approach Thanksgiving Day with realistic expectations. NBC billed it as “the most unusual holiday movie ever” for a reason—it’s a big ol’ frozen turkey. Performed in the screwball style of Rue McClanahan’s Children of the Bride (1990), but without its pathos or crooked charm, we are left with little more than Moore’s exhibitionism and repeated gags about serving roast beef on Thanksgiving. Oh, and there’s a lesbian. Except, American television being what it was in the early ’90s, Moore’s daughter isn’t really a lesbian. She ends up with… Sonny Bono.

Read More

Page 1 of 2

Next

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén