Day Three Hundred and Forty-eight - White Christmas, "Well, hullo there, fella... fancy a good pipe and some warm buttermilk?"

I think that the last holiday movie that I did was The Nightmare Before Christmas (at least, for the blog) way back on Thanksgiving, and I've definitely been feeling my seasonal jonesing for those holiday classics, so why not get the ball rolling again with White Christmas.

A winter themed variety film starring Bing Crosby, Danny Kay, Rosemary Clooney, and Vera-Ellen, White Christmas nominally follows two old war buddies who start up a double act after V-E Day and manage to get themselves tangled with a similar sister act who are on their way to Vermont to play at a B&B there. Coincidentally, that very same lodge is owned by the boys former commanding officer and is in dire straits. Along the way there is love, laughter, and quite a few wholly unrelated musical numbers that are fairly quixotic choices for a holiday revue.

Bing and Danny have wonderful back and forth together, so I very much enjoy their repartee, it's pretty much Rosemary and Vera-Ellen that stretch my credulity. For one thing, it's hard to imagine them as sisters as they look absolutely nothing alike. For another, the chemistry that they have with the boys is a little hard to believe. This is especially true in the second to third act transition when Rosemary takes some miscommunicated gossip to heart and plays the spurned lover, running off to New York and dropping Bing flat. Romances in films like this are never really evocative or believable anyway, merely plot contrivances to keep the thin stories going and provide ample opportunity for conflict, but it still takes me out the movie.

The other main problems that I have with the film revolve around the musical numbers that the boys bring their floor show up to “practice” at the ski lodge in the hopes of drumming up some business for their flailing former commander. “Choreography” and “Abraham” are decent routines, but completely out of place in a Christmas picture and the “Minstrel Show” routine is just short of downright offensive. To their credit, neither the performers or set dressings show any hint of traditional blackface, but seeing a bunch of pasty white folk recreating Minstrel joke routines all to a huge music number is enough to make me uncomfortable at the very least. It's funny... when I saw that routine as a kid, I never made the connection, not having the context and all, but knowing what I know now, it definitely bugs me.

Still, for all of its faults, White Christmas has plenty to like about it. The duet that Bing and Rosemary have in the second act ("Counting Your Blessings"), not to mention the final number that gives reprise to the battlefield campfire routine of the cold open, good stuff there. I also must admit that Vera-Ellen is a heckuva dancer, even if her voice work was done by Rosemary. There's quite a bit of cheese and schmaltz, but it's the warm kind, with even the somewhat risque jokes exuding the quiet cool that isn't quite Rat Pack but almost there.

I want to give a quick shoutout to Mary Wickes who plays the B&B's house mistress and General Waverly's homefront aide de camp. She had a lot of roles similar to this in the fifties and sixties and it's always good to see her.

On the whole, White Christmas will remain both in my Instant Queue and on my shelf as one of those annual Christmas tradition films in spite of its obvious, glaring flaws. Bing, Danny, Rosemary, and Vera-Ellen have just enough oomph to push past their era's culturally insensitive idioms and deliver quite a few quality performances... I just wish the non-holiday routines had been shelved or kept in actual variety revues like That's Entertainment.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

Day One Hundred and Seventy-eight - Radioland Murders, "How much YOU love ME? Well, how about how much I love YOU?!"

The last movie to come out of Lucasfilms in the 90's before good old George put the entire studio into "Prequel Mode" for production of The Phantom Menace, for some reason Radioland Murders never caught on, making a paltry 1.3 Million in the theaters and only getting a 19% on Rotten Tomatoes.

19... percent!

Just thinking about it, I feel like Gene Hackman's character at the end of The Birdcage, exasperated and confused, spouting, "I don't understand!"

Set in the late 30's, the golden age of radio, Radioland Murders is a quirky murder mystery with tons of slapstick and wit wrapped around a melodramatic series of murders on opening night of WBN's (stand in for Chicago's WGN) brand new radio network.

The night is utter chaos already as debut jitters have everyone from the writers to the sponsors birthing kittens, but as the bodies stack up, the laughs just get louder as leads Brian Benben (Dream On) and Mary Stuart Masterson (Fried Green Tomatoes) try and track down the killer while dealing with their own marital issues.

Supporting them is probably one of the greatest ensembles of character actors, comedians, and old standbys that I have ever seen assembled, including: Jeffrey Tambor, Ned Beatty, Corbin Bersen, Michael McKean, Christopher Lloyd, Harvey Korman, Peter Macnichols (whom regular readers know that I just adore), and Larry Miller... as well as the last film appearances of George Burns and Rosemary Clooney.

And Stephen Tobolowsky... Steven-freaking-Tobolowsky... while I love him in pretty much everything he does, this has to be one of my favorite roles for him. Usually when I see him, he's a one-trick background pony like the role as Ned Ryerson in Groundhog Day or Sammy in Memento... great, but just a side note to the primary action. Here, he's a major character with an end twist that allows from some really riveting climax drama and action.

He's just golden.

And pretty much the same can be said for the majority of the film. I cannot understand why it has such a bad rap.

Sure, it's cheesy and melodramatic, but that's half the fun! The other half being a stylized romp through the nostalgia of the radio era. I have to say, I get much more enjoyment out of Radioland Murders than Woody Allen's Radio Days.

Sometimes the tastes of others just boggles my mind.

I love Radioland Murders and I think, if you give it a chance, you will too. It has that same sort of retro sheen and witty banter that made Clue so great (though the latter is obviously superior). But, who knows, maybe I'm wrong? Going over the critics, I find myself soundly in the minority.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~