Category: Christmas

Last year I watched the original A Miracle on 34th Street, and I liked it a lot. There was another in the 50s, and one more in the 70s before this version which came out when I was a boy. Of the two that I have seen so far, this one is easily the weaker. But it isn’t awful.

My mother has been asking me to watch this film for years. Of course, the year I finally did, it was because my other mother decided to put it on in the middle of a very busy living room, and with me sitting at perhaps a 20 degree angle from the television. I am fully committed to re-watching the movie, but for now, take this review with a grain of salt: I was literally incapable of giving this movie my full attention.

The fact that I forgot to review this movie (forgot I watched it, in fact) may be an indicator as to how I felt about it. But with that jab out of the way, I have to say: I didn’t hate it.

I’ve mentioned this film a number of times in the blog but I only realized a couple entries ago that I’ve never actually written about it.

Whether he was always this way, or whether it was a psychic defense mechanism Cameron evolved in order to exist as the Born Again Christian he became as a young man, Kirk Cameron’s singular defining trait is that he must always be the one who is right. In any situation or argument, he knows better than you do, and in fact, that is probably why he started talking to you in the first place. And while you’re speaking back to him, he’s smiling, nodding, arming his next arguments, and waiting for you to stop so that he can illuminate you on how he is actually the one who is right.

And he is so enthusiastically that way that he made a 78 minute movie about it.

This is another one of those films that I have to hate more for the fact that it could easily have been better.

This movie is nearly as low-budget as A Christmas Hero but is less idiosyncratic in its focus, which is the mildest compliment I believe I’ve ever given anything in my entire life.

Hot take: This is the worst episode of King of the Hill. It has the worst writing, the fewest jokes, the silliest premise, the most wasted guest star, and what makes it all just a little worse: it’s (loosely) a Christmas episode.

You know what? This (as movies like this go) could have been a lot worse. As a Christmas movie (the standards for which are very low, you’ll no doubt recall) this is entirely adequate. But they really missed their golden opportunity to call it a Christmas Tail. That’s something they can never get back.