We haven't had anything festive yet this year, have we? As I get older and more cynical, even the more subversive Christmas flicks seem to have lost a lot of their appeal. It's funny, really; I never thought I'd ever get bored with The Muppet Christmas Carol, but when I saw it last year I was struck by quite how preachy it was. I doubt it'll stop me watching it again if I see it on the schedules, but another little piece of the magic has gone. Never mind, though; one of the joys of approaching 40 is the realisation that while some of the joys of Christmas may fade, new ones will always come through to replace them.
Technically, Death to Smoochy isn't a Christmas movie. It's set in winter, though, and has its climax at an ice rink, so it always shows up that way on my head. Oh, and it's an absolute blast.
Directed by Danny De Vito, this bleak little comedy has charm in spades and boasts three killer lead performances by Robin Williams, Edward Norton and Catherine Keener. Williams plays Rainbow Randolph, a sleazy, greasy kids' TV star who finds himself suddenly out of work when he gets caught accepting a suitcase full of cash in exchange for giving a young audience member a prominent place on his show. A replacement is found in the form of Smoochy the Rhino, whose creator, squeaky-clean vegan Sheldon Mopes (Norton), can be relied upon not to scare the horses or disgrace the network. Mopes soon finds himself at loggerheads with producer Nora Wells (Keener), however, when his principles collide with her fundamental cynicism. Sounds like the setup for a sweet romcom, doesn't it? Randolph, however, has other ideas...
The reason Death to Smoochy works, I think, has a lot to do with the character of Sheldon Mopes - not sure whether it's the writing or the performance, although I suspect it's probably a bit of both. It would have been easy to make Mopes a bland, saccharine innocent, but instead, we're given a simmering powder keg of a man who struggles with anger issues and values his integrity above all else. It's his honesty that we remember and that the other characters instinctively respond to, and whether picking fake fur for a new costume or teaching kids to howl their frustration to the moon, he's a joy to watch whenever he's on screen. Williams, meanwhile, gets to really cut loose, light-footed and demented but ultimately sympathetic as the desperate Rainbow Randolph. In the middle, meanwhile, is Keener's Nora, whose gradual change of heart provides the film with much of its considerable warmth.
The real reason I love Death to Smoochy, though, is that it's another one of those glorious movies that forgives its fucked-up characters without asking that they change in order to allow those around them to accept them.
This then brings me, briefly, to Trainwreck, which I saw a week ago and hadn't been planning on covering, but which has stayed with me for longer than I thought it would and for all the wrong reasons. For the vast majority of its runtime it was genuinely brilliant, filthy and unapologetic and the funniest thing I'd seen in years. What a shame, then, to tack on a deeply conservative ending that (spoiler) was basically stolen straight from Grease and felt trite even then, and even within a movie musical. All the goodwill I'd been feeling was destroyed, and then some. Ladies and gents, if you have to change your fundamental nature to make your partner accept you, then it was never you they loved in the first place and you're better off running while you can. #Christmaswisdom
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