Merry Media (original) (raw)

We didn’t watch as much holiday-related stuff this year as in previous ones, but here are a few things that were new to us, three movies and an album.

The Holdovers – This movie focuses on people left behind during the holidays in 1970 at a Massachusetts prep school. There are initially several students there, but one kid takes the others skiing with him, except for one guy who can’t get his parents’ permission. He’s stuck there with a cranky hard-ass history professor who’s forced to stay because he failed a legacy student, and a cook who’s recently lost a son in Vietnam. The three of them bond and learn more about each other, including their respective tragic backstories. It’s performed well and lets you feel for the characters, although it also demonstrates how toxic prep school life can be. The guy who has to stay is kind of a jerk, but no more so than many of his fellows.

Holiday Inn – Largely a showcase for Irving Berlin’s holiday-related songs, it stars Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire as performers who are both interested in their partner Lila. When she chooses Astaire’s character Ted, Crosby’s Jim ends up in a sanitarium, but he comes up with the idea to open an inn that’s only open on holidays. He says there are about fifteen of these, but the only ones that come into the film are Christmas, New Year’s, Lincoln’s Birthday, Valentine’s Day, Washington’s Birthday, Easter, Independence Day, and Thanksgiving. That’s only eight, or ten if you count both the Eve and Day for the first two. The Lincoln scene is where the characters perform a minstrel song in blackface, which is very uncomfortable to watch these days. The movie introduced the songs “Happy Holiday” and “White Christmas,” the latter of which was used as the basis for another Crosby film. As for the plot, Fred becomes interested in a performer named Linda who works for him, and Lila leaves Ted for a millionaire, and he also wants to get with Linda. In the end, Lila comes back because the guy wasn’t rich after all, and this apparently counts as a happy ending. These guys do realize they can date women who don’t work with them, right? It’s weirdly insular and makes the relationships seem really shallow. But hey, there are some good songs. The real-life Holiday Inn was named as a reference to the movie, but I don’t know that it ever had song-and-dance shows.

Prancer – I remember seeing commercials for this back in the day, and they were accurate enough in showing a girl named Jessica taking in an injured reindeer. There are a few online reviews comparing it to E.T., which definitely fits, as she tries to hide and protect the deer, and it seems to have supernatural powers. They even both center around a kid with a single parent. It’s not as flashy as E.T., however, instead being quite slow and often kind of melancholy. There’s a lot in it about dealing with grief, with Jessica’s dad, played by Sam Elliott, wanting to send her to live with her aunt. While the two of them fight a lot, she still loves him and wants to stay with him. After inspiring the townspeople, including a cranky old lady who comes around surprisingly quickly, Jessica lets Prancer go. We see the reindeer rejoining Santa’s team in the sky, but it’s very low-key and we don’t know whether Jessica’s dad sees it. Was this a budget constraint, or did they want the audience to not know whether or not it really happened? And Abe Vigoda appears as a veterinarian. The in-universe reason why the girl decides the reindeer is Prancer in particular is because she had just seen Prancer fall from a town display of Santa’s sleigh team, but I don’t know why the filmmakers chose that one over any of the others. I guess going with “Dancer,” “Comet,” or “Cupid” as the title might have given the wrong idea as to what the film was about.

Ben Folds, Sleigher – Ben’s new Christmas album is a mixture of introspection and cheerful goofiness, which I guess is true of much of his oeuvre. “Sleepwalking Through Christmas” is based on a news story about someone who had a sleeping disorder during the holidays. It has a lot of harmonica. “Me and Maurice” is a bittersweet kind of song about Ben walking his dog during a whiteout. “Christmas Time Rhyme” is about memories of Christmas, and how the holiday is his way of marking time. “We Could Have This” is a song about a developing relationship that Ben wrote with Lindsey Kraft, his opener the last time we saw him live. “The Bell That Couldn’t Jingle” is a cover of a jaunty song by Burt Bacharach and Herb Alpert. “Xmas Aye Eye” features a lot of cheesy computer sounds and lyrics supposedly written by generative AI. It’s obviously not to be taken too seriously. And “You Don’t Have to Be a Santa Claus” is a Depression-era song encouraging charity.