Bayside Cheese In Your Stocking: Holiday In Handcuffs

As I cycle through the ABC Family Channel and Lifetime's Christmas themed offerings, I'm noticing a few repetitve themes about, apparently,  the extreme difficulty attractive women face around the holidays. Among them:

-Overbearring families

-Seemingly perfect siblings

-Job trouble

-Randomly available and readily employed suitors

-Montages

-Slow-motion stress buildups that show just how noisy life really is

-Living in huge apartments despite aforementioned job trouble

Holiday In Handcuffs--not a porn, although the title and premise scream for one--features all these threads, but beats the likes of Snowglobe and Golden Christmas (about a magical golden retriever who reunites childhood sweethearts and has puppies who she then abandons, natch) because it also includes a climax that involves figure skating.

Hence, best Christmas movie since Silent Night Deadly Night 2.

Quick Plot: Poor Trudie (Clarissa, giving a slightly better performance than in Nine Dead) lives in a sprawling but messy loft apartment and works as a diner waitress while trying to get a sales job set up by her dad (the increasingly eerily George Bush Jr. resembling Tim Bottoms). At about the 3/4 mark of the film, we also learn that she's a frustrated painter because just like V.C. Andrews novels, no Lifetime heroine can be relatable without a hidden artistic talent.

Most importantly, she's single, which means (to the target audience) her life is worthless.

AND she has terrible hair.

Thankfully, A.C. Slater has come to town to slip on ice, play hockey, dangle around an engagement ring and take his shirt off. A catch like this, why WOULDN'T you kidnap him with a 19th century musket, tie him up with a wool scarf, secure his hands with fuzzy cuffs provided by the kindly & kinky gas station attendent, and tell  your folks that your new boyfriend gets off on pretending to be held hostage?

Admittedly, the initial introduction of Mario Lopez to Trudie's clueless family is not without chuckles, as their daftness about their daughter's crime comes close to rivaling the Dodos' empty headedness of Follow That Bird. Once the humor gets broader--i.e., let's meet the dirty talking grandma who uses the word 'tatas'--and Lopez has to turn genuine, Holiday In Handcuffs loses most of its charms.

I don't know about you, but I don't particularly want to live in a world where Melissa Joan Hart reproduces with Mario Lopez. Heck, I don't want to believe Mario Lopez has sex with anyone other than himself, and even that makes me feel bad for him because I'm sorry but WHO WANTS TO HAVE SEX WITH MARIO LOPEZ?

Oh right, Mario Lopez does.

But just like the token love interest in Snowglobe, he studied architecture and is somewhat available (a pesky fiancee is easily discarded). Lopez gets the edge by having an orphan sob story, so with a little nudging to Trudie's artistic talent and, you know, a how-can-I-not-fall-in-love-with-the-cute-blond-who-can-do-double-axels sequence, everyone has a merry Christmas.

Even Grams' tatas.

  

Lessons Learned

Sooner or later, guys overpower girls

The word ‘crap’ is quite tacky

Little known fact: nervous breakdowns come in sizes

As do awkward publicity photos

The Winning Line

“I’m just dating a few guys. I didn’t say I slept with them. I’m not a slut.”

Nope Clarissa' little sister, you're just a tease.

Stray SVU Connection

Just before queuing up Holiday In Handcuffs, I set the tone by watching the episode of Law & Order: SVU titled "Svengali," wherein Mad Men's Jarred Harris plays a sadistic artist whose charisma inspires young women to murder for him. At one point, the camera lingers over Harris' portraits and I would bet a pair of Chris Meloni eyebrows that they were crafted by the same painter who made Trudie's sketches. Should I find that as rewarding as I do?

Open Xmas Question

Does any family consisting solely of grown adults spend Christmas Eve gathered around while one member reads Twas the Night Before Christmas out loud? Admittedly, my folks were never big on holiday traditions, but SERIOUSLY?

Token Slapstick Alert
Someone read a book about funny things that happen on ice, and hence, Holiday In Handcuffs gives us several "Ow, that's gonna hurt!" sequences on a frozen pond

Montage Mania
Two by my count, as we follow Slater's gradual glee at being kidnapped by insane Christmas geeks and later, his sadness at an impending unhappy marriage

Sass Factor

Trudie's man-hating, man-sleeping-with best friend who gets to dress like a Christmas hooker while telling police officers how terrible their penises are

Stocking Stuffer or Stuffed With Coal

Holiday in Handcuffs is a horror film, just for different reasons than Don't Open Til Christmas or good-spirited director Ron Underwood's more amazing Tremors. Being part of a family that still insists on writing letters to Santa when the kids are in their 30s, having to listen to Mom talk about her annual and unfulfilling birthday sex, and worst of all, being trapped in a secluded cabin with Mario Lopez is far more terrifying than anything Billy OR Ricky Caldwell did through bloodied Santa suits. All this being said, the movie--streaming on Netflix--is cute for people that think things like this are cute.

Or I could just look at puppy pictures and enjoy something that's actually cuter.

Cheese In Your Stocking: Snowglobe

A new development in my life is the weird amusement I’ve found from gooey holiday cinema. If there’s a lesson to be learned at the end, then by golly, I can’t imagine why it doesn’t fit the criteria for reviews on the Doll’s House!

Today’s sugary entry is none other than a film that popped up on the Netflix recommends for Sci-Fi & Fantasy. While I *suppose* the idea of a woman being trapped in an alternate winter wonder-universe via her decorative snowglobe is trippy, the idea that liking Blade Runner implied I’d also like an ABC Family Channel original seemed too intriguing to pass up.

Quick Plot: Meet Angela, a pretty young woman who works at her family’s successful butcher shop in Brooklyn. After each day of wrapping up sausages (no irony! this is the Family Channel!) Angela goes home to her spacious one-bedroom in the apartment building owned by her overbearing family. Mom Lorraine Bracco and obnoxiously pregnant big sister constantly break in to use her oven and holiday plates, much to the annoyance of the “I’d rather be alone!” Angela. 

When not rolling her eyes, Angela gets to spurn the advances of the single architect/bartender/goofball living down the hall, played by the teacher/biologist/villain in Quarantine 2.

Who for some reason, keeps getting cast as the attractive love interest even though I find him about as weirdly horrifying as Tommy on the last season of Hell’s Kitchen.

Anyhoo, poor privileged Angela feels like she has a really harsh life, what with having to eat--gasp--lasagna at Christmas as the price to live in a rent-stabilized home. Of course, she could just get a job that didn’t involve seeing her family every day or, you know, move out of her gigantic one-bedroom Brooklyn apartment and not make her mom a spare key, but Snowglobe has a better idea.

One day, Angela receives the titular Christmas decoration from a mysterious benefactor, only to fall asleep to its charms and awaken inside a sweet Christmas village where goose is always in the oven and fake snow never melts.

It’s there that she meets Douglas, a tall glass of brainless eggnog who makes her perfectly mascara’d eyelashes flutter. Together they ice skate, wrap presents, and do other montage-worthy TV-G rated activities until a twist of fate/commercial break brings Douglas into the real world. 

If you’ve seen Elf, then you know what happens when a tall white guy from a magical land tries to ride a New York escalator. 

Aaaand yadda yadda, Angela learns the true meaning of Christmas--in this case, eating lasagna-stuffed goose with her kooky Cuban-Italian family and falling into the arms of The Goofball Next Door. 

Everyone is happy and our heroine finally discovers her true calling in life by opening up a Christmas store called--get this--Angela’s Christmas Store. It's nice when life is easy enough to not even make you think hard about naming stuff.

High Points

Although Will Ferrell did it first and better, Matt Keeslar and Kailin See have some cutesy fun as the goody good citizens of Snowglobeland

Low Points

Christina Milian is cute as a button. Christina Milian is also a terrible actress.

Lessons Learned

It’s good to fall asleep with makeup in place and giant hoop earrings shiny. Sure, it might be bad for your skin and back of your neck, but if you wake up in a magical fantasy land filled with handsome men, you really should look your best

One of the hardest words to pronounce with a bad Brooklyn accent = drawer

There are no black people in snowglobes

Sass Factor (Vital for any holiday original)
Angela's overly Italian family practically drip garlic, while her fiesty best friend makes the typical single gal mildly tolerable

Montage Mania (how else to show plot development when commercials are imminent?)
I counted at least two, one that showed Angela's happiness in Snowglobeland, the other, Not Will Ferrell's Totally Not Elf-Like NYC tour

Poll of the Day

Green lasagna: festive or tacky?


Stocking Stuffer or Stuffed With Coal?

Eh, Snowglobe is innocent fun for those who like virgin eggnog. And heck, we even get enough mixed drink ideas to bump the rating to a solid PG (eggnog + cinnamon schnapps anyone?). So nah, I’m not recommending it on a so-bad-it’s-goofy scale but I guess those who need to distract babysitting charges could do worse. As for me, my mouth is now watering for a horror director to tackle the idea of, you know, ACTUALLY being trapped in a snowglobe. Because you know, it is kind of horrifying.