Day two of the HOLIDAY FILM REVIEW visits one of America's "favorite" families in their Christmas film effort and runs through a classic example of TV special overkill. Although the weather outside is frightful, The Movie Wag is always delightful.
HOLIDAY FILM NUMBER FOUR:
A Very Brady Christmas (1988)PM: I was inspired to do this...
MW: ...because you have a high tolerance for pain?
PM: I'd just had never seen it, but it's always in the holiday rotation.
MW: Other than watching the first series of "The Brady Bunch," I was never a fan of their various reunion attempts.
I can't even classify this as a holiday film. For the most part, there was nothing holiday-ish about it.
PM: Here's the story of a moneymaker for Sherwood Schwartz Productions.
MW: The first thing that struck me – and believe me everyone should live their own lives – but I couldn't get beyond the fact that Robert Reed is gay. Because he was very gay in this Brady reunion.
There is a scene where him and Florence Henderson are working out on bikes and he's wearing a halter top with a jogging suit. Add in his permed hair and I just think he was overly flamboyant in this film.
PM: It was so awkwardly filmed. They didn't seem like a family at all. There was not one of the Bradys that acted if they were natural.
Alice had some comic relief.
MW: Even though she wasn't working for the Bradys anymore, she immediately puts on her maid uniform and starts cooking.
PM: That was uncomfortable.
MW: I've always had issues with live-in help that has to dress the part. Alice was an odd character to me.
PM: So the story is Mike and Carol want to go on second honeymoon. Mike wants to go to Japan and Carol wants to take Mike to Greece...
MW: It's appropriate that he goes to Greece. Is it wrong?
PM: But instead of using the money for that, they decide to fly all the kids and their families home. And all the kids have mini-crisises to be resolved.
Greg Brady is a doctor, but has a porn star mustache. The scenes in his office even looked like a porn movie without the sex.
MW: There was one strange interlude where Greg is talking to his mother, but had to hang up "because I'm delivering a baby." Very awkward.
And Bobby is a race car driver. Right.
PM: They all had these "confessions" around the Christmas dinner table, but none of them were a big deal.
They had to even make up a stupid one for Cindy, who wasn't even played by the same actress from the series.
MW: At least she was hot. The 1980s dorm room she was in was very "Flashdance."
PM: The ending of the film made no effing sense. Mike goes to a building he has designed, and the unscrupulous builder has cut corners so it collapses.
MW: They call him in for no reason, and he goes into the rubble to rescue people. On Christmas Eve.
PM: He saves the workers, but then he is stuck. But Carol starts singing, and he walks out like nothing happened.
MW: It didn't look like he was more than four feet from the building's entrance. I think he came out because he wanted Carol to shut up.
FAVORITE MOMENT --
MW: Mike's flamboyance, which was shades of Paul Lynde, and the singing at the end, which was so weird. To sum up, this was too corny for words.
PM: It wasn't even corny to me, I just thought it was plain freakin' bad. It was painful to get through. Most painful to me were the flashbacks, which were just put in to remind the audience that this was "America's family." They only flashed back to the early seasons, before the show had Cousin Oliver.
RATING --
MW: 1/2 Bell. It was a perfect example of actors coming together to pick up a paycheck. They should have had their reunion in a bar and not put any of us through that. PM: 1 Bell, I guess because some parts where so bad they were good. But it was a long trek, even at 88 minutes.
MOVIE WAGISM: I would have had more respect for Mike had he come out of the closet. "Carol, I have a special Christmas gift for you..."
HOLIDAY FILM NUMBER FIVE: The Frosty Chronicles
PM: To finish our discussion, I dubbed these three Frosty the Snowman specials "The Frosty Chronicles."
MW: The trilogy of terror. The good, the bad and the badder.
PM: We started with the original Frosty, from 1968, which Rankin-Bass produced. Then we moved on to the sequel in 1976, also Rankin-Bass, called "Frosty's Winter Wonderland." And then Lorne Michaels, of all people, took over the franchise in the early 1990s for "Frosty Returns."
Frosty the Snowman (1969)MW: The first one, I absolutely love. It is flat out the best of the three. The animation was the best, you had Jimmy Durante as the narrator...
PM: Ah Cha Cha.
MW: He was a living cartoon character. He seemed natural for this show.
PM: The story is set up well, basically the song. He puts a magic hat on, comes to life, sun comes out and starts to melt him, he goes to the North Pole.
MW: There was an innocence to it. When Frosty comes to life he says "Happy Birthday" because he literally is born.
Another closeted gay man from the 1960s, Billy DeWolfe, played the villain.
PM: And that is where it works well, Jimmy Durante, Jackie Vernon as Frosty and Billy DeWolfe were these borscht belt-like entertainers, who needed no embellishment.
MW: It was magical and pure.
FAVORITE MOMENTS --
PM: They took archetype characters and made them fit into a simple but effective story – all in just a half hour.
MW: They were not forced, they were not contrived, they were just a naturally appropriate in the context.
RATING --
MW: Four Bells, perfect score. PM: Three-and-a-half stars. I will take a half star off for replacing cartoon voice legend June Foray – the voice of Rocky the Flying Squirrel – with another actress voicing the main little girl the second year the special was shown. Rankin-Bass gave no explanation and didn't credit the new voice. To this day, Foray says she doesn't know why they did that.
MOVIE WAGISM: As I always say to Frosty, "here's your hat, what's your hurry."
Frosty's Winter Wonderland (1976)PM: This is Rankin-Bass again, so it's a sequel. Jackie Vernon is back, and Shelley Winters – get it, Winters – plays Frosty's potential bride.
MW: I didn't get why they used Winters. She didn't really have a persona. They could have had anybody do it.
PM: Good ol' Andy Griffith was the narrator.
MW: Again, it made no sense.
PM: He kept popping in much more than Durante, because I think the story was harder to explain. And the way they animated his eyebrows was creepy.
MW: The kids looked like their eyes were dilated as well.
In this one, they basically create a woman for Frosty. Does he schtupp her?
PM: They were depicted without genitalia. They are snow people. As the kids were building Frosty's mate Crystal, and the camera panned upward, I thought perhaps they would put snow breasts on her, but they didn't, the G-rating won out.
MW: What brought her to life was Frosty's love.
PM: It had its moments, it just didn't live up to the first one.
MW: There was no reason to do a sequel to this. The first one is a timeless classic, and there seems to be no reason to expand upon it.
FAVORITE MOMENTS --
MW: Frosty smoked a lot more in this one. He was constantly puffing on the corncob pipe.
PM: The use of Andy Griffith. He kept popping up too much, and he bastardized the song for the purpose of the narrative.
RATING --
MW: 2 Bells. PM: Even though 2-1/2 is my barest recommendation, I will concur with your 2 Bells.
MOVIE WAGISM: I hear Frosty's wife is frigid.
Frosty Returns (1992)MW: Okay, the first one is great. There is really no need to make a second one. So what do they decide to do? Let's make a third one.
PM: It was so bad.
MW: The kids in this special all looked like the Peanuts gang.
PM: No wonder. Bill Melendez was the producer, he did all the Peanuts TV specials. A total rip-off of Peanuts.
Even at 25 minutes I was counting down the pain.
MW: Jonathan Winters was the narrator, but he was in miniature form.
PM: He was riding a snowflake. What was he, a sprite, a fairy? It made no sense.
MW: He was like the Great Gazoo. But he still looked like Jonathan Winters, dressed like a plumber. Again, why was he tiny?
The story had a much angrier tone to it. There were more adult parts in it, and it stole most of the innocence.
PM: They tried to make a "message" out of it about the environment, which is death to any kid's cartoon, much less a holiday special.
And John Goodman as Frosty, couldn't hold Jackie Vernon's frozen jock strap. He can't sing very well and none of the songs made sense.
FAVORITE MOMENTS --
MW: Again, I disliked the angry tone of it and the rip-off of Peanuts, plus the animation was horrible.
PM: My moment was the fact that the villain in the special invented a way to eradicate snow, which spoke to the environmental message. It occurred to me, though, that the guy would be a billionaire in real life.
RATING --
MW: Nöel, NO BELLS. PM: I guess I'll give it a 1/2 Bell for the invention.
MOVIE WAGISM: Given Jonathan Winters size in Frosty Returns, a well aimed fly swatter could have saved me twenty five minutes of my life.
CLOSING TIME --
MW: You always challenge me. It would be really easy to do the regular stuff, and we may yet find a holiday jewel. But it wasn't this year.
PM: The journey continues, and the holiday balcony is closed.
MW: I've got to catch the Polar Express.
