Skip to main content

ELF WARNING (CANDY CANE LANE)

 

© Amazon MGM Studios

Who knew there were bad elves in Lapland?

That's the premise of Reginald Hudlin's Amazon Prime Christmas movie 'Candy Cane Lane' with Eddie Murphy.

The elf in question is Jillian Bell's Pepper.

But we'll get to her in a minute.

© Amazon MGM Studios

Murphy plays Chris Carver, a Christmas mad father of three who lives in El Segundo's Festive obsessed neighbourhood in California,  Candy Cane Lane which actually does exist. 

Chris is so Christmas mad, he is married to Tracee Ellis Ross's Carol and his kids also sport Festive related names like Genneya Walton's Joy, Thaddeus J Mixson's Nick and Madison Thomas's Holly.

He's really into the annual competition for the best decorated house in the neighbourhood at Christmas, which this year has the added spice of a TV show offering $100,000 to the winner.

The Carvers' main rivals for the crown are Ken Marino's Bruce and Anjela Johnson-Rhys' Shelley who have won the title the most in recent years with illuminated, inflatable Christmas characters.

© Amazon MGM Studios

Another ingredient Hudlin throws into the mix is the laying off of Chris at the industrial plastics firm where he works.

Rather than hunt for a new job, Chris relies on Carol to land a plum promotion in the Amazon style parcel distribution centre where she works and is focused on winning the $100,000.

Normally Chris carves his own decorations but he decides to buy some decorations this time because his rivals have won in the past by buying tat.

Taking Holly with him, he stumbles upon an unusual Christmas shop called Kringle's in a highway underpass.

© Amazon MGM Studios

A kind of Christmas equivalent of 'Mr Magorium's Wonder Emporium,' they encounter Pepper for the first time who's a little odd but sweet talks them buying an ornate Christmas tree in a huge tin which Chris straps to the roof of his SUV.

During the purchase, Pepper produces a massive receipt which Chris signs without reading the terms and conditions on it.

Returning home with the massive tree, Chris impresses his family and neighbours as he unfolds it to reveal ornate wood carvings.

However the following morning there's chaos when turtle doves, French hens, geese and swans burst out of the tree decorations and go on the rampage.

© Amazon MGM Studios

It soon becomes clear that as part of the terms and conditions, Chris must collect five gold rings or face a curse from Pepper who has snared other victims in the past.

Can Chris collect the five gold rings in return for his Christmas wish to win the decoration competition?

Or will he pay Pepper's price on Christmas Eve?

'Candy Cane Lane' reunites Murphy with his 'Boomerang' director Hudlin and it has to be acknowledged it's a very smart looking production that revels in the Christmas spirit.

© Amazon MGM Studios

There's touches of 'Jumanji' style zaniness to the film, with Nick confronting a milkmaid in one scene while Joy and Chris square off against Lords A Leaping.

However try as they might, Murphy and his cast mates never quite land the Festive laughs that Hudlin and his screenwriter Kelly Younger are aiming for.

The zaniness often feels quite forced, with Younger trying to shoehorn flaccid jokes into the film.

The use of animated figures in the story voiced by, among others, Nick Offerman, Robin Thede and Chris Redd also proves irritating.

© Amazon MGM Studios

As Pip, Offerman in particular sports a grating "Lahndan" accent that threatens to veer into Dick Van Dyke "Cockerny". 

The occasional contributions of Danielle Pinnock and Timothy Simons as studio based hosts of the Candy Cane Lane competition TV show from time to time are also very annoying.

Bell turns in such a hammy performance as Pepper, you're half expecting Nigella Lawson to turn up, boil her in Coca Cola, smother her in honey and stick her in the oven.

To be fair, Hudlin sets out to make a different kind of Christmas family adventure.

© Amazon MGM Studios

But it has none of the subversion of 'Bad Santa' nor the. charm of 'Elf'.

Instead we are served up a tiresome convoluted nightmare before Christmas that struggles to land its laughs.

Hudlin knows his MVP is Murphy and while the star is amiable enough, he ultimately cannot save a movie which doesn't connect the heart with the funny bone like all the Christmas movie classics.

'Candy Cane Lane' is a very average film that fails to justify the almost two hours it demands of its audience.

© Amazon MGM Studios

When we get to Christmas 2024, I doubt most of us will be scurrying back to watch it. unlike an earlier Murphy classic 'Trading Places'.

That is the yardstick by which it must be measured.

Hudlin's film falls woefully short.

('Candy Cane Lane' was made available for streaming on Amazon Prime on December 1, 2023)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

FILMS OF 2024 (THE TOP TEN)

© Studio Canal, BBC Film, Protagonist Pictures, Brock Media & Arcade Pictures It was a year when  'Oppenheimer' swept the Oscars  but  Ryan Gosling stole the show with his performance of 'I'm Just Ken' . It was also the year when Saoirse Ronan once again aced her roles in two films and Cillian Murphy delivered arguably the best movie performance of his career. 2024 saw Denis Villeneuve open the door to a 'Dune' trilogy, while successful films about a Mexican drug gang leader seeking a sex change and a gay writer encountering the ghosts of his dead parents were common place when in the past they would have been unthinkable. As Pomona ranks the top 10 films it saw this year, who made the list and where are they placed? 10. THE OUTRUN (Nora Fingscheidt) There have been many movies about alcoholism over the decades but few have been as intriguing as Nora Fingscheidt's tale of a young woman coming to terms with her addiction on the Orkney Islands. Saoirse...
Post a Comment
Read more

HOUSE OF FUN (LOL: LAST ONE LAUGHING IRELAND)

© Amazon Prime Ever wondered what the 'Big Brother' house would have been like if it was populated just by comedians? No?  Neither had I. But Amazon Prime has tried to answer that question anyway with a new comedy show 'LOL: Last One Laughing Ireland'. © Amazon Prime Originally conceived by the Japanese comic Hitoshi Matsumoyo in 2016, the show throws 10 stand-ups together in a 'Big Brother' style living room for six hours with the strict instruction that they are not allowed to laugh, crack a smile or smirk at each other's jokes or anything else. If they do, the first time they falter they get a yellow card warning. The second time, they receive a red card and are out of the game. The comedian who outlasts the others wins. © Amazon Prime Versions have been produced in Mexico, Italy, Iran, Australia, Canada, Germany, India, Russia, Nigeria, Colombia and France. And with a UK version reportedly in the works, Amazon has decided to test the waters with an Irish...
Post a Comment
Read more

TWO TRIBES (KINAHAN: THE TRUE STORY OF IRELAND'S MAFIA & GERRY HUTCH: AKA THE MONK)

  From ' Public Enemy ' to ' The Irishman ,' ' The Sopranos ' to ' This City Is Ours ,' it seems we can't get enough of tales about gangsters on the big and small screen. Ireland has also had quite a few TV shows and movies about crime gangs in its time from ' The General ' to ' Calm With Horses ,' ' Love/Hate ' to ' KIN '. Sometimes, though, the grim storles of what real life crime gangs get up to is just as fascinating. That is especially true of two recent docuseries about rival sides in a feud that spectacularly erupted on the streets of Dublin - RTE1's 'Gerry Hutch: AKA The Monk' and BBC1's 'Kinahan: The True Story of Ireland's Mafia'. The feud between the Kinahan and Hutch gangs is probably best known for the  shocking gun attack on a boxing weigh-in in Dublin's Regency Hotel in February 2016 . However the fallout claimed the lives of 18 people. There were lots of other casualties ...
Post a Comment
Read more