It's time for lots of spiked eggnog and the ANNUAL HOLIDAY FILM REVIEW (the eggnog helps you get through it). This year, I'm splitting the five films reviewed by me (PM) and The Movie Wag, Ken Candela (MW) over two days as not to overstay the holiday welcome.

As always, under each film there is a general discussion, followed by favorite moments and the often imitated, never duplicated Christmas Bells rating (1-4). It was tough sledding this year, so here we go once more into the evergreen breach...

PM: Here we are again for our Annual Holiday Film Review. Sitting across from me is The Movie Wag, Ken Candela.

MW: Hello everybody out there in Holiday Movieland.

PM: And we are at The Parthenon Restaurant in Chicago's Greektown.

MW: Ken actually got in his car and came to the city.

PM: I love it when you refer to yourself in the third person. This is our fourth annual dissection of five Holiday films, so the folks can throw in something completely different in the DVD player during the next couple of days and get that holiday feeling.

MW: I must say this was a bumper "crop" of films this year, emphasis on the word "crap," I mean crop.

PM: With that in mind, let's start with the first one...

HOLIDAY FILM NUMBER ONE: An American Christmas Carol (1979)

PM: We always analyze a version of Charles Dicken's "A Christmas Carol," because there are literally 5000 of them out there. We could go over the various remakes for the next thirty years and not get through all of them.

This year we decided on "An American Christmas Carol," which stars Fonzie.

MW: Henry Winkler.

PM: It was a TV movie. It was probably at the end of the era of the golden age of TV movies in the 1970s.

MW: Yeah, there was no cable so the three networks had to come up with their own holiday collateral for the audience to digest.

PM: Which is not the case anymore. Cable channels like Lifetime, Hallmark and Disney they have taken up the banner of made-for-the-Holidays TV movies.

MW: This film is based on A Christmas Carol, with Winkler's Scrooge character doing business in America's Depression era. He had a different name, though.

PM: Ben Slade

MW: Ben Slade! The first thing that struck me was Henry Winkler's make-up. There didn't seem to be a reason to portray him as a much older man, and he had this really weird like "aging" make-up. Nobody else was made to look this odd through any kind of make-up, except him.

PM: I'll go one further. The timeline was way off in this thing. It was set in Christmas 1933. When he went back with the Ghost of Christmas Past, one of his last flashbacks was during the end of World War One. That was 1918 and he still looked young. So only 15 years go by and he's suddenly this old hag.

MW: Again, the make-up distracted me.

PM: They did use the Depression-era context well. The Scrooge character basically invented time payments for people.

MW: The repossession scenes were riveting, considering what we're going through now. It's almost sad that we're still dealing with this.

FAVORITE MOMENTS --

PM: The simplicity of it. They didn't overplay the story, they showed him as an apprentice woodworker becoming a businessman, and after the three ghosts showed up, that's what he had to pass along.

And of course, the cool African American guy, who was the Ghost of Christmas Future, dressed up in brilliant 1970s threads.

MW: The Superfly Ghost! It was a bit stereotypical, but well done for the time.

And of course, when he brought all the repossessed stuff back, without fanfare or overdoing it, that was a highlight.

PM: Where do you think this fits in A Christmas Carol pantheon?

MW: Well, in the context of the title "An American Christmas Carol," it stands on its own.

RATING --

PM: 3 Christmas Bells. MW: I have a feeling we're going to agree on a lot of these films, 3 Bells

MOVIE WAGISM: Not everybody ages to look like a old hag. Look at me.


HOLIDAY FILM NUMBER TWO: The Christmas That Almost Wasn't (1966)

MW: When you told me we're going to watch this, I remember as a kid it being advertised, either as a children's matinee in the local theater or as part of the holiday programming for WGN. It never looked appealing, it always looked dire.

PM: This was one of the most surreal Christmas pictures ever made, and we saw "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians" last year. This movie makes the Martian film look like "It's a Wonderful Life."

MW: The opening animated sequence told the whole story during the credits, which was weird.

PM: I read also that all the actors did the film in English, but they dubbed the voices in later. So even though the characters are speaking English, it still has that dubbed foreign film disconnect.

MW: The basic story is that the rich villain, Phineas Prune, hates Christmas. So he buys the North Pole to throw Santa out.

PM: You looked up that land mass, correct?

MW: Yes, the North Pole covers 1.58 million square miles. Not only was Prune able to buy it, he could also travel to the North Pole on a moment's notice.

PM: The plot was an odd combination of many Christmas films. There is the Scrooge angle with the villain, Santa worked undercover in a department store ala "Miracle on 34th Street" and even the gathering of miraculous money at the end had shades of "It's a Wonderful Life."

MW: Santa is depicted as one of the most depressed character I've ever seen. I mean I've always thought of Santa as bigger than life. Well, this one just walks around with his head down most of the film in a cowboy hat. He was manic depressive.

PM: He's a bi-polar Santa. The lawyer that helped him sounded like Phil Hartman's Lionel Hutz character from "The Simpsons."

MW: He looked like he belonged in Willy Wonka, he had that costuming.

There was songs in this film, but they made no sense. It seemed like the actors were making it up as they went along.

PM: Yep, there is an old theater term called exposition. None of the songs "exposes" any of the story.

The elves were bizarre. They looked like they raided a mental institution for them.

MW: Santa's workshop was also pretty sparse. They kept calling Mrs. Claus "Mrs. Santa," which was irritating. This seemed like an "Ed Wood" movie, it was that bad.

PM: It was directed by Rossano Brazzi, who also played Phineas Prune and was in the film version of "South Pacific."

MW: Well, he should have stayed there.

"FAVORITE" MOMENTS --

MW: It was the songs, they could have shortened the film by 25 minutes if it wasn't for the songs. I literally left the room during one song, I came back, they were still singing!

PM: When Lionel Hutz and Santa played with the toys in the department store, it was very strange. The scene went on for hours it seemed and was very uncomfortable. It also had no logical conclusion, with no reason to be in the film.

RATING --

MW: One-and-a-half Christmas Bells, I almost "wasn't" able to get through The Christmas That Almost Wasn't. PM: 1/2 Bell, only because it's so surreal there might be a laugh or two. Otherwise, fuhgettaboutit.

MOVIE WAGISM: Not only is Santa bi-polar, he's bi-NORTH-polar. Hyyyyy-oooh!


HOLIDAY FILM NUMBER THREE: Trapped in Paradise (1994)

MW: I'd never seen this before. It has Nicholas Cage, Jon Lovitz and Dana Carvey...

PM: ...as three brothers. Lovitz and Carney are on parole and Cage is their "moral" brother who pretty much wants nothing to do with them. Their mother likes what the criminal element gave her, she's actually pretty funny.

The two parolees find out inside the prison that a bank in Paradise, Pennsylvania, is easy pickings. They get Cage involved somehow, and they rob the bank on Christmas Eve.

The town of Paradise is so nice and close-knit, that the dim-witted brothers can't seem to leave, and soon they get accustomed to the warm folks there.

MW: I like Cage and Lovitz. But Dana Carvey brought this film down for me. He had this cartoon voice and he tried too hard to be funny.

PM: I have the complete opposite on this. Dana Carvey was doing a dead-on Mickey Rourke impression. He had his hair the same way, and the voice was perfect. I thought he was hilarious.

MW: Who remembers Mickey Rourke?

PM: It was 1994, so he still was around. It was Nic Cage who bugged me the most, with his Christmas hamming and constant gesturing. Give it a rest, Nic Coppola.

It was a funny movie, though, that made me laugh several times. I particularly liked Carvey wearing a bad Christmas sweater.

MW: I liked it too, I like small town depiction in films and they did a good job with it.

PM: Was it a holiday movie?

MW: It was set on Christmas Eve, there was the warmth of the town, so yes, I would call this a holiday movie.

PM: They didn't go far enough for me with the holiday theme. It could have been a better holiday film if they would have played the angle a little more.

The chase scene with the reindeer stalled everything, and I didn't like the ending.

It needed more use of Christmas as a redemption theme and they dropped the ball. Even when they signed a note "three wise men," it seemed too little, too late.

MW: Well, my test is always if I'll put it in my holiday rotation, but for this one, no. None of the films we've talked about qualifies.

FAVORITE MOMENTS --

PM: I thought the mother character was hilarious. She was played by Florence Stanley, who was on "Barney Miller" as Fish's wife and "Night Court" as one of the bailiffs who kept dying.

There was a scene where she was kidnapped by two ex-cons and she totally annoyed them by singing. Very funny.

MW: I'm neutral on it, and I was totally distracted by Dana Carvey.

RATING --

MW: Two-and-a-half Bells. PM: In the spirit of the season, I will be charitable and give it 3 Bells.

MOVIE WAGISM: I felt trapped watching Dana Carvey.

TOMORROW: Can we ever look at Mike Brady (Robert Reed) the same again? Join me and The Movie Wag for Part Two of "24 Frames Per Holiday."