Okay, so I don’t celebrate Easter, and I don’t particularly subscribe to the principles of Schulz’s comic and its strong religious themes, but it doesn’t mean you can’t have fun with “Easter Beagle,” yet another classic Charlie Brown episode involving the gang and, what else, Easter! While Linus creates another sentient figure out of a holiday called the Easter Beagle, anxiously awaiting its gifts and bounty, Marcy and Peppermint Patty try to grasp the concept of coloring eggs while wasting food in the most disturbing of manners. Believe it or not, Marcie can’t figure out that you have to boil eggs before coloring them.
Tag Archives: Holiday
Christmas with the Kranks (2004)
I used to say that I’ve yet to see a film with Tim Allen that I found to be really bad. And somehow he rises to the occasion and stars in this. I should have kept my creed to myself. I got a big mouth. Either way, if you haven’t caught on by now, “Christmas with the Kranks” is yet another really shitty “holiday” film that’s a mere vehicle that delights in being idiotic, moronic, and shamelessly flaunts its inherent lapses in logic peppered throughout the story.
The Family Stone (2005)
Given enough time, “The Family Stone” can be a holiday classic. What’s interesting about Bazucha’s script is that “The Family Stone” is a title indicative of two aspects of the film, two aspects that have to be watched to be understood, but his debut film is a truly good dramedy that many people will enjoy. I was really looking forward to this film, but in my wildest dreams I never expected it to click with me as it did. During certain scenes I found myself completely engrossed in to the events, and teary during the truly emotional sequences. This film can be laugh out loud funny, and it can be heartbreaking.
Pieces of April (2003)
This is not your conventional holiday film. It doesn’t exploit emotions for the sake of drawing tears from the audience, nor does it shove the whole holiday theme down our throats, this is an independent film with a holiday theme that tends to focus more on the actual character within the general theme of the holidays. What’s shown is an array of colorful and somewhat eccentric character dealt into an engrossing story of family and values. If you’re sick and tired of the usual holiday fare, check this out. It’s a great story about family and holidays. “Pieces of April” we learn is symbolic of the main character April’s attempts at making amends with her family. It’s alluded that she was a troubled girl so, not only does the story become a quest for April to finish her meal, but it becomes a quest to prove to her family that she’s reformed.
Bad Santa (2003)
“Bad Santa” is crude, disgusting, violent, graphic, and has a lot of unsuitable content I wouldn’t recommend for a family out on Christmas, but it’s a great piece of comedy filmmaking by director Terry Zwigoff. There is a lot to like in this excellent character study, especially the two main characters Thurman and Willie, both of whom are opposites in every form of the word. Though their dichotomous relationship becomes something to watch with the highest regard allowing for comedy and warm moments.
Adam Sandler's Eight Crazy Nights (2002)
What if “It’s a Wonderful Life” was directed by a mental patient with severe brain damage? What if it was written by a sociopath? This is the questions asked during the viewing of a potentially annoying and incredible unnecessary film called “Eight Crazy Nights”, a film supposedly created as a Holiday Chanukah film yet barely even covers the topic of Chanukah, the meaning of the word, or the holiday. Adam Sandler is disappointing; here is a guy who has so much money and resources yet piddles it away on these irrelevant and crude films that try so hard to be funny but end up causing people to roll their eyes so much it gives them a migraine.