Holiday-A-Thon #2 Surviving Christmas (2004)

As the 2014 Holiday-A-Thon continues, I give you some thoughts on what I would like to call a pleasant surprise; Surviving Christmas, a christmas-themed film starring Ben Affleck, Christina Applegate, James Gandolfini and Catherine O’Hara (among others).

The movie centers around a young millionaire (Affleck) who finds himself having loneliness issues around the holidays and “rents” the family (Gandolfini and co.) residing in his childhood home to be “His” family over the holidays. ‘Say what?’ Yupp, that was kinda my reaction to at first, but as I said, the movie was a pleasant surprise. Sure, it was in essence just a romantic comedy, but the fact that it centers around his Holiday issues makes it a little bit more than just a plain seen-it-all-before rom-com.

Yes, we do have all the awkwardness of an orthodox rom-com, sure, but add to that the awkwardness of a teenage boy just discovering Internet smut, a stranger telling everyone what to do because he did so as a child and the ex-girlfriends family meeting a recast (and black) doo-dah… all in a ominous Christmas setting… yeah, we have a pretty good movie.

Yeah, this second installment of my 2014 Holiday-a-Thon also receives the ‘Tango Approved for Xmas’ stamp. What, am I being to generous with the stamps? Well, we’ll just have to wait and see about that, aren’t we so tune in again tomorrow to see if I’l dolling out another stamp. But, as always, until then….

Holiday-A-Thon #1 Jingle All The Way (1996)

And so, here we are. December, the month of merriment and joy… and movies, corny, clichéd christmas themed movies about stuff that doesn’t really matter January through November, but alas, they keep comin’ so I’ll be dropping one reviewed title a day, all the way up to the 24th and ending this Holiday-a-Thon with a ‘Tango’s Top 5 Must-See Christmas films’ list… so let’s just dive right into it, shall we!

Jingle All The Way, one of those weird(?) attempts for a successful actor (i.e. Arnold Schwarzenegger) to branch out into other genres and it was received with generally negative criticism. As it stands today, however, is another question entirely.

For me personally, I feel it has the potential to become one of the classics that has to be at least playing in the background at Christmas gatherings. It’s not one of the greatest films ever made, but it has that christmassy feel to it all the way through and apart from it being seriously annoying at times (a fact that I blame entirely on Sinbad and his extremely annoying postman), it’s actually quite funny. It’s filled to the brim with clichés and stale jokes but seeing the big Austrian Oak work his butt off to get a toy for his kid… it makes it worth it, because both clichés and stale jokes are best delivered by a walking cliché itself.

All in all, Jingle All The Way get’s the Tango’s Approved for Xmas-stamp and I’m pretty sure I’ll be watching it again at some point during next years Holiday season. How about you?

Well, there you go. The first entry to this years A-Thon, which will be focused on Christmas. During this A-Thon, I will review Christmas films such as Deck The Halls and Home Alone but also classics such as It’s A Wonderful Life and A Christmas Carol, so don’t forget to tune in at least once a day, all the way up to December 25th.

See you all again tomorrow for my next installment of the Tango’s Thoughts 2014 Holiday-A-Thon, but until then…..