A Wrestling Christmas Miracle (2020)

One of the more fascinating aspects of the Christmas season is how low the standard for movies gets. People will watch almost anything as long as it is Christmas themed. Those Hallmark movies? Would anyone consider them all that good? Probably not, for most of them. But those same people would watch them endlessly to get into that festive feeling. That’s the kind of thing I’m talking about.

That’s how people came to know A Karate Christmas Miracle. I checked that out a couple years ago for this very blog. A kid’s dad went missing and they went to great lengths to pull off a miracle and get the dad back. It was a bonkers movie with fever-dream type sequences. There were main characters who did some odd things but, most importantly, weren’t cartoonish. The poster would have you believe it was a kid’s movie, but it played more adult.

When I was writing the post for A Karate Christmas Miracle, I came across something that I took note of immediately. The same people made another movie. I knew I’d get to it at some point. This is that point.

A Wrestling Christmas Miracle came out a year after A Karate Christmas Miracle. It wasn’t a sequel. It had many of the same performers. They all played different characters, though some were in similar roles. Kace Gabriel (Mario Del Vecchio) was a child wrestling star, from a family of wrestlers that included his dad, Ajax Gabriel (Ken Del Vecchio). Kace put his wrestling career on hold when his friend fell into a coma. He wanted to make the best, most funniest movie ever. That would surely wake his friend up. However, the movie was stolen by Chuck (Buddy Fitzpatrick) and Kitty Kat (Julie McCullough).

When I first watched A Karate Christmas Miracle, I was flabbergasted by how strange it was. It was a missing persons story where a mom sought out answers to her husband’s disappearance to try and alleviate the pain she and her son felt. Her husband had disappeared after a theater mass shooting. As poorly made as it was, with the weird movie screen hallucinations and the almost slapstick comedy with the college professor, it had some emotional substance. The driving force was how to deal with loss during the holidays.

A Wrestling Christmas Miracle wasn’t interested in being grounded in an emotional reality. Instead, it went all in on the slapstick comedy. It was clearly directed at children, while A Karate Christmas Miracle had been geared more towards adults. It leaned right into the slapstick comedy. Everything was about jokes. The clips from the movie within the movie were all the broadest, worst jokes. The thieves were as goofy as they could be. Everything about A Wrestling Christmas Miracle was grounded in the movie being directed at kids.

Speaking of the movie within the movie, I didn’t understand how that cast was in A Wrestling Christmas Miracle. I understood how the characters in the movie could have gotten them to be in their movie. They were famous wrestlers. Kace was a child prodigy at wrestling. But for the people behind A Wrestling Christmas Miracle, it was shocking that they got Gilbert Gottfried, Todd Bridges, Jimmie Walker, Michael Winslow, and Martin Kove to all be in this movie. This was not the kind of movie to have that many recognizable, albeit well past their peak popularity, actors. Yet it did.

And those cameos were probably as crazy as A Wrestling Christmas Miracle got. Aside from the ending. The way that they brought the kid out of his coma was one of the most insane life-saving techniques I’ve ever witnessed on screen. I’ve seen a lot of bad movies, and few have gone to this level of unrealism. And to immediately follow it up with someone saying “It’s a Christmas miracle!” before slamming the title card on screen and hitting the credits… That was as ludicrous as it could have been.

It was really the theft storyline that took me right out of A Wrestling Christmas Miracle, though. Had the movie simply been strange cameos that I didn’t understand, or moments like that final scene, I would have appreciated it a little more. However, the two thieves were played so goofy that I couldn’t help but think of every direct-to-video children’s movie I’ve seen where thieves have been the villains. For a movie that was set up as a kid trying to bring his friend out of a coma, having comedic relief villains seemed too much.

Here are a few examples. The villains were introduced as two actors, one who took the craft too seriously, and the other who couldn’t remember her lines. Yet they were a couple. It was like having Harry and Marv if they were a married couple who stole a hard drive containing the movie a child made. Their introductory scene involved the bad actor repeating her line wrong, over and over again. “Wow, my whites do look whiter.” Kind of a strange line to repeat. Then there was the climactic ransom handoff where the good actor pretended that a can of tennis balls, that everyone could see were tennis balls, was a can of explosive projectiles. He wanted to swap the movie for the money when he spelled “bear.” Then there was a whole debate over whether it should be “bear” or “bare”. It was an odd comedic moment to have when there was a ransom exchange happening.

All these elements of A Wrestling Christmas Miracle were more comedic than A Karate Christmas Miracle. Sure, the earlier movie had some comedic moments, but it was grounded in the emotional side of the story. It would have been better if A Wrestling Christmas Miracle had followed in that direction. It was introduced as a story about making a movie to help get a friend out of a coma. That was a much more serious topic than the tone of the movie would have you believe, and that’s where this one steered so wrong.

I started this post by saying that people have a lower standard for Christmas movies. Movies that they might not find good or entertaining any other time of year become the movies they’ll watch endlessly once December hits. But I don’t know who would want to watch A Wrestling Christmas Miracle besides me. Between the serious story subject, the cameos from 80s stars, and the slapstick comedy I’ve seen in many kid’s movies, I don’t know what the demographic of the movie truly was.

There have been plenty of bad movies, or movies of more questionable quality, made for holiday season consumption. People give them a pass because those movies are more about the feel of that time of year and less about pure entertainment. A kiss under the mistletoe led to Hallmark holding the holiday hostage for love. Too many people have seen their past, present, and future to become a better person. Too many dads have put up too many lights and let their house be seen from too high in the night sky. But audiences will flock to these movies to feel that holiday cheer. That’s the way it goes.

Now this post will go to the notes:

• Here’s a link to the post for A Karate Christmas Miracle.
• Michael Winslow moved up the ranks of recurring Sunday “Bad” Movies actors with his appearance in A Wrestling Christmas Miracle. He was also in Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No!, Lavalantula, 2 Lava 2 Lantula, Police Academy, Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment, Police Academy 3: Back in Training, and Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol.
• Gilbert Gottfried became a six-time Sunday “Bad” Movies actor, appearing in Thumbelina, Never on Tuesday, Sharknado: The 4^th Awakens, Sharknado 5: Global Swarming, The Last Sharknado: It’s About Time, and A Wrestling Christmas Miracle.
• Martin Kove was in A Wrestling Christmas Miracle after appearing in A Karate Christmas Miracle. He was also in 2 Lava 2 Lantula, and I’m in Love with a Church Girl.
• Julie McCullough appeared in Sharknado, A Karate Christmas Miracle, and A Wrestling Christmas Miracle.
• Six actors appeared in A Karate Christmas Miracle and A Wrestling Christmas Miracle. They were Michael Borao, Ken Del Vecchio, Mario Del Vecchio, Candy Fox, Buddy Fitzpatrick, and Joe Wooley.
• Finally, Todd Bridges was in She’s Out of Control before appearing in A Wrestling Christmas Miracle.
• Have you seen A Wrestling Christmas Miracle? What did you think of it? Is it a Christmas classic? Let me know in the comments, or you can find me on Bluesky or Threads.
• Bluesky, Threads, and the comments are three places you can suggest movies for me to watch for future Sunday “Bad” Movies posts.
• Now it’s time to look ahead to what’s coming up for Sunday “Bad” Movies. I only have one movie on deck right now, and it’s a return to a director I’ve seen before. BC Fourteen made Bigfoot vs. Megalodon and Van Helsing. I thought I’d go back to what seems to be the beginning of these animated movies for him. I checked out Trump vs. the Illuminati. It was something. You’ll find my thoughts soon enough. See you then.

Santa's Got Style (2022)

There’s a certain language to movies that you will see time and time again, the more movies you watch. The most basic language is that of the visuals. The colour palette that makes up a movie. The flow of a character from one shot to another that makes their movement make sense. Low angles and high angles that make a character feel more powerful or weaker. All sorts of visual cues that you might not even think about when watching something.

When you dig a little deeper, you get into transatlantic accents and costume design and the music. Oh, the music that truly sets a tone for a scene. Scores can be super important at making the audience feel the way they feel. Even licensed music can hit the audience in just the right way. Every little bit of the movie is a piece of language that helps tell the story.

I should get into the written story, though, since that’s the bit of movie language I want to talk about. Well, part of a written story. It’s difficult to come up with a story that is truly original. So many stories have already been told. Everything will feel like something that came before. How many movies have been made with some unstoppable killer hunting a bunch of teenagers and killing them before one girl figures out a way to stop that killer? That’s a whole subgenre of horror movies right there.

You can break things down beyond the overall story into scenes, characters, plot points, and tropes. Certain elements that you see over and over in many movies. Part of the language of filmmaking has been using these elements time and time again. Audiences are familiar with them. A story must be told. Using familiar elements should, in theory, help an audience connect with that story. Unless that element has been used too often or too frequently. Or it hasn’t been used in an interesting or new way.

This has all been a long setup to get into the movie at hand, Santa’s Got Style. There were two things about the movie that felt very familiar. One was the story. Madison (Kathryn Davis) needed to hire a Santa Claus for her department store. She wanted one that would appeal to adults, so she went to her friend Ethan (Franco Lo Presti) to hire a model from his firm for the job. Ethan couldn’t find a model, so he did it himself without telling Madison. He thought she’d be upset that he gave himself the job. Madison fell in love with Santa while Ethan fell in love with Madison and the whole double identity thing came to a head.

Okay, so you can see the familiar story in there. Right? One of the main characters pretended to be another person and didn’t tell the other main character. Eventually, they wouldn’t be able to keep up the charade, and the other main character would find out about the double identity situation. Some sort of tension would come from that, but it would all be resolved in the end. Everyone would live happily ever after. This wasn’t a new concept to Santa’s Got Style.

Another example that immediately came to mind was Mrs. Doubtfire. The whole movie was about a divorced man pretending to be an old woman so he could work as a nanny for his separated family. It has been a few years since I saw it. Probably since I was a child. I don’t remember the specific details. But it played out much the same way. He wore prosthetics to pretend he was someone else. Eventually, they found out who he was. Tension rose, and everyone lived happy ever after once the tension was resolved.

For whatever reason, this storyline has become one that writers have clung onto. There’s something about this double identity concept that intrigues them. Glen Powell has written two projects, and each of them has used this same concept. Hit Man was about a teacher who moonlit as a police entrapment tool. He pretended to be a hit man so people would hire him and get arrested for hiring him. He fell for a woman who wanted to hire him and kept his hit man persona to keep his relationship with her. Chad Powers was a television show from earlier this year that he wrote about a controversial football player using prosthetics to pretend to be a college player and find a fresh start. The whole show was about him struggling to not get found out. Glen Powell seems to really like this double identity concept.

Santa’s Got Style wasn’t even the only Christmas movie to utilize the double identity storyline. I recently watched My Secret Santa, which had a mom pretend to be a man so she could take a job at a local ski resort as Santa Claus. This job would allow her daughter to get snowboard lessons at the resort’s ski hills for half the cost of tuition. At the same time, the mom fell in love with the owner’s son. She was eventually found out and yadda, yadda, yadda, everyone lived happily ever after.

As you can see, this storyline has been rolling around Hollywood for years. It has continued to be used because people continue to be receptive to it. Audiences like this story. The different ways that it has been told have been original enough to keep it interesting. The stylish Santa doing advertising for a department store. The father trying to be a part of the family he was separated from. The football player trying to move past the drama and get back to what he loved, football. There have been a bunch of different stories told through the same storyline that have connected to many different people.

That wasn’t the only part of Santa’s Got Style that felt familiar, though. There was a specific scene near the end of the movie that has been a part of many of these stories, as well as stories that haven’t been about double identities. Well, I guess it is specific to double identity movies, but it was sort of an inversion of a scene that has been in many a romantic comedy or situational comedy stories. Or any other story, for that matter.

There were two big moments that had the same trope involved. Most sitcoms and romcoms use the trope of one person on two dates at the same time in the same place, or close to the same place. Santa’s Got Style inverted that and had Ethan being himself and Santa at the same place at the same time, trying to have nobody notice. The first scene was a party in Ethan’s apartment where Santa was invited. By the way, people knew he wasn’t really Santa. He was Rafe, Ethan’s cousin. Or so Ethan said. Anyway, Rafe and Ethan were both supposed to be at the party, so Ethan had to go upstairs and change into costume to allow Rafe to be there. The other scene, the one where he was found out by the department store’s security officer, was a fashion show that Ethan was supposed to be helping run while Rafe was supposed to walk the catwalk. Each scene was a balancing act for Ethan to try not to get found out.

Now we will go back to My Secret Santa, where the same thing happened. Not the same exact thing, but the idea was the same. There was a party held by the owner of the ski resort that both the main character and her Santa were invited to. She had to keep excusing herself to the washroom to switch into or out of costume. That was, until someone ran into the party and said her daughter had been injured on the ski hill. She dropped her entire second identity at that moment because her daughter came first.

Mrs. Doubtfire managed to merge the two opposing tropes into one double trope. The main character was invited to his ex-wife’s birthday party as Mrs. Doubtfire. At the same time, he was invited to a meeting at the same restaurant, as himself, with the CEO of a television station about a new children’s show. He had to switch in and out of costume while also participating in both dinner reservations. Double identity movies always tend to have the in and out of costume scene, an inversion of the two dates at once trope.

As you can see, this trope has been used time and time again in stories where a character had a second identity. What better way to ratchet up the tension than to have the character need to be both personas at the same time? The character will get anxious. The audience will get anxious. It will make the movie more suspenseful and, hopefully, more entertaining.

This is how the cinematic language works. When a person speaks, there are certain words that fit with each other in ways that other words don’t. They’re just more satisfying when spoken together than when other words are in their place. That’s the same with certain scenes in certain movies. A story arc about someone with a double identity always feels better when they’re at risk of being exposed. That conflict drives things forward or brings things to a conclusion.

Santa’s Got Style wasn’t the best movie. It wasn’t the most entertaining movie. But, when it came to the script, it used a familiar story and the tropes within to tell what could have been a compelling tale in better hands. It was really only the set design that didn’t quite work. The movie had no reason to look as cheap as it did. One bad chapter does not make a bad book.

There are many bits and pieces to the cinematic language. The story structure and the tropes that come with it are only one part of the whole. They give the backbone for the movie, but all the decoration still needs to be put around them. The performances, the set design, the shots, the colour palette, the sound editing… There are many parts that work together to make the language more beautiful than it has any right to be.

That’s the beauty of film as an entertainment medium. The basic language of cinema is only the starting point. Like many languages, there are ways you can add flourishes. You can spruce things up to make them look, feel, and sound better. The stories and the tropes are only the starting point. It’s what happens with them that makes the movie magic.

Now for a few quick notes to close this post out:

• The only returning actor in Santa’s Got Style was Lanette Ware, who had a role in The Christmas Consultant.
• Have you seen Santa’s Got Style? What are your thoughts on the double identity story? Let me know in the comments or find me on Threads or Bluesky.
• Threads, Bluesky, and the comments are great places to suggest movies for me to watch for future Sunday “Bad” Movies posts.
• Okay, a quick look forward. I got this post done a lot quicker than I expected, thanks to a snow day. I’ve already got another Christmas post lined up. I watched A Wrestling Christmas Miracle, a movie from the same people behind A Karate Christmas Miracle. I had to check out the other one. You know? Anyway, yeah, that’ll hopefully drop next week. See you then.

Bandit Goes Country (1994), Bandit Bandit (1994), Beauty and the Bandit (1994), Bandit's Silver Angel (1994), and People Who Claim Something Can Ruin Their Childhood

The internet has given a voice to people who never really had one in their offline life. People who felt like outcasts because they weren’t normal. They cared about movies, books, television, video games, or comics. Interests that only a couple decades ago would have been seen as nerdy and would have led to people being made fun of. Now they had a voice and could find people from around the world who shared those interests.

However, with good always comes bad. When you give a voice to a whole group of people who didn’t have that same voice before, someone will use it for bad. There has been a lot of negativity within these communities. Misogyny, racism, all kinds of crazy, inexcusable stuff. I’m not the right person to get into those serious issues, though. I can condemn them, but I can’t speak to them. There’s something more lightly negative that I want to examine.

The same communities that were bullied before the internet and the rise of technology are the same people that complain about every single detail they don’t like in the media they claim to love. Some of those complaints might overlap with the other major issues. Casting someone who they believe was the wrong gender or race. That sort of stuff. However, it usually comes down to a single, catch-all statement. “They ruined my childhood.”

This statement annoys me beyond any reasonable level. It always comes after a remake or adaptation or sequel to something from the past. Sometimes as soon as the new project is announced. These vocal detractors treat a new piece of media as though it can take away from the quality of something they enjoyed years earlier. They treat it like the creatives behind the new project personally attacked them. It gives insecurity.

A new version of something you love doesn’t change the thing you loved. That thing you loved still exists. You can still go back and enjoy that thing you always enjoyed. A new version doesn’t automatically pop the old one out of existence. Especially with almost everything being so readily available on either physical media or streaming services. There will always be a way to watch that version that got people so invested in the first place.

One of the movies I grew up with was Smokey and the Bandit. It was one of those movies my parents saw when they were teenagers, and it made an impression on them. When VHS and DVD were big, they picked up copies of it. Not the second one, though. The first one was the good one. That’s what I had always been told.  The second one, the one with the elephant, was nowhere near as good. It was stupid, in fact. That first one, though? A perfect movie.

Notice how they never brought me up to think that the second movie ruined the first? That’s because it didn’t. The second movie was worse than the first. Much worse. It had too much focus on the comedy and not enough focus on the driving stunts. That didn’t take away from what the first movie accomplished. In fact, it only helped solidify why Smokey and the Bandit worked as well as it did. There was also a third movie that barely had Burt Reynolds in it, which could be seen as even worse. I think it brought the action back enough to make it more enjoyable than the second, however. I know I’m in the minority.

What I really want to talk about, though, is the reboot television movie series that came out in 1994. That’s the Smokey and the Bandit outing that inspired this post. Bandit was a four-movie television reboot of the Smokey and the Bandit franchise that brought Hal Needham back as the director. Had these television movies been made in an age of widespread internet, forums probably would have been filled with people saying that their childhoods of Smokey and the Bandit fandom had been ruined because it was so different. I think it kind of worked. Maybe shouldn’t have been based on Smokey and the Bandit, but it was, and we just have to deal with it.

Now, there were some major differences between Bandit and Smokey and the Bandit. One was the casting. They obviously didn’t get Burt Reynolds back for the television movies. They had to cast someone else in the role. They went younger with Brian Bloom taking the mantle. This was a reboot, not a remake. They went with a fifteen year more modern setting and a younger Bandit. They covered some of the stuff he got up to before the famous beer run, if that beer run even happened to this version of the character.

The first adventure, Bandit Goes Country, saw Bandit return to his hometown while accompanying a couple musicians, Mel (Mel Tillis) and Teach (Charles Nelson Reilly), to a concert. He got involved in a love triangle with his high school sweetheart, Beth (Elizabeth Berkley), and muscle-bound wrestler, Big Sky (Tyler Mane). Bandit also got roped into some music bootlegging with his cousin, Johnny Bruce (Christopher Atkins). Along for the ride was Bandit’s trusty best friend. No, it wasn’t Snowman. The only character that ported over to the reboot was Bandit. This new best friend was Lynn (Brian Krause).

There were reasons I didn’t think Bandit Goes Country was a good reboot of the Smokey and the Bandit franchise. I mentioned the Burt Reynolds of it already. Very few actors could capture his specific brand of humour, charm, and charisma. Brain Bloom wasn’t one of those actors. I could see that from the start of the television movie. Then there was the lack of a proper police villain. Buford T. Justice was nowhere to be seen. There was a police officer in there, but he was a one-off villain-of-the-week kind of officer. Finally, there was the car. For whatever reason, I can never take car chases seriously when the car is from the 1990s. The Dodge Stealth they used in the television movies, replacing the Pontiac Trans Am, looked too much like a Pontiac Sunfire or Chevy Cavalier. It looked so odd in police chases.

Yet there were some good elements to Bandit Goes Country, as well. The characters and actors all seemed to have good chemistry with each other. The small-town shenanigans were fun, particularly when they played jokes on the police officers. There were memorable characters who probably deserved to pop up in more of the episodes, but didn’t because it was an episodic television movie. And it had that southern feel that this franchise was rooted in from the beginning.

All I had to do was shift my perspective a little bit to enjoy Bandit Goes Country. Was it a good Smokey and the Bandit outing? Maybe not. However, it would have been a fun enough little television movie if it had been anything else. If they had simply made it its own thing instead of making it a reboot of Smokey and the Bandit, it would have stood perfectly well on its own two feet. That’s where I came to enjoy this four-film television series, as its own thing.

Next up was Bandit Bandit, the most Smokey and the Bandit feeling television movie of the bunch. Bandit was arrested on the way to deliver a futuristic car to the governor. A fake Bandit (Gerard Christopher) had broken laws to get him in jail and take the car for himself. After Lynn broke Bandit out, he had to get the car back, while escaping the pursuit of Sheriff Enright (John Schneider).

If any episode was going to showcase how this series of movies was based on the Smokey and the Bandit franchise, it was Bandit Bandit. It had everything. Bandit was delivering a car. There was a sheriff chasing him to arrest him. His sidekick was by his side. Sure, Bandit for some reason had a helicopter at his disposal, but it was mostly the kind of story that made Smokey and the Bandit such a classic. It was outrunning a police officer while delivering a car. With a couple new twists, of course.

Sure, the biggest flaws in Bandit being a reboot of Smokey and the Bandit were there. The Dodge Stealth still didn’t look like a formidable car for chases. That’s a me problem. I don’t think 90s cars look all that great in action scenes. And Brian Bloom still didn’t quite have that Burt Reynolds charm that brought everything together in the original. However, the strengths were starting to show. For a television movie, this had the heart of what made Smokey and the Bandit special. It captured that feeling, even if the quality wasn’t there. And Brian Bloom was starting to make his own out of the character, much in the same way that different actors have their own spin on James Bond.

I still stand by the idea that it didn’t ruin the original. If anything, the original was ruining what I thought of the television movies. They were starting to click, though. Everything was falling in place to be a fun little movie series on a television budget. All I had to do was shift my mindset from this being a new Smokey and the Bandit to this being a bunch of television movies inspired by the car movie classic. It wasn’t Smokey and the Bandit. It was Bandit. If I imagined the character being a different character, everything got better.

That was only solidified in Beauty and the Bandit, the third television movie in the series. Bandit had his car stolen by a mysterious woman, Crystal (Kathy Ireland). As he tried to get his car back, Bandit learned more about her. He learned about her ties to a mob boss, Lucky Bergstrom (Tony Curtis). He learned that she was being chased by a bounty hunter, Slade (Joe Cortese). There were also some FBI agents involved. It was a race against time and other people to get his car back and protect the woman who stole it.

Beauty and the Bandit solidified that Bandit could live on in the spirit of Smokey and the Bandit. It had a whole lot of driving. Crystal drove Bandit’s car. Bandit drove Bandit’s car. Bandit drove a buss filled with nudists. Yeah, that was a thing. There was the chase. Lucky sent his goons after Crystal. Slade was after Crystal. Bandit was after Crystal. The FBI was after Crystal. The local police were after everyone. There was the banter between enemies that became a sort of friendship while still being enemies, with Bandit and Slade. Yeah, it was a television movie and wasn’t nearly as good as the theatrical outings, but it at least captured the spirit.

This was the third of the four television movies. If I were one of those overreacting internet people, I could have easily claimed that they had ruined Smokey and the Bandit for me. Except they hadn’t. As I had learned while watching them, it was simply a different take on the material. If you go in with that mindset, you’ll even enjoy these new versions. A new take on a character, a world, a story cannot take away from previous takes on any of them. It’s just another take on the material. It’s not the only take on the material. That’s where the false claim of ruining the original comes into play.

And then there was the fourth television movie, Bandit’s Silver Angel. Bandit was contacted by his uncle, Cyrus (Donald O’Connor), about helping with a traveling carnival. He turned his uncle down, only to inherit the carnival upon Cyrus’s passing. Angel Austin (Traci Lords) was the person in charge of the carnival. Bandit helped her fend of debt collectors and put down a rebellion within the staff.

This was about as far from Smokey and the Bandit as Bandit could get and yet it still worked. Most of the television movie involved running the carnival and tricking people. There were a few car chases sprinkled throughout. There was one with Uncle Cyrus at the beginning, one to get rid of the debt collectors, and one to outrun the police who tried to tax the carnival to death. But they didn’t feel like the traditional chases this franchise featured in the past.

For the most part, Bandit’s Silver Angel felt more like an episode of a television show than the previous two movies. It felt much smaller scale. Sure, there were still appearances from notable actors, but it didn’t have the same scope or special feel that the other television movies had. The setpieces felt smaller scale. There were minimal chases. It was more about outrunning than losing the people behind. The big setpiece was a truck barely crossing a lake on a raft ferry, which was cool, but didn’t feel as full of spectacle as a plane landing on a truck or a truck being chased down by a helicopter.

None of the Bandit television movies were anywhere near as good as Smokey and the Bandit. They were never going to be. The difference between a Hollywood big screen budget and a 1990s television movie budget is huge. I could imagine people now, hearing that their favourite 1980s property was being made into a television movie on USA network, complaining about how this decision was a blight on their childhood favourite. It happened when Ghostbusters was remade in 2016. It happened when the first trailer for Sonic the Hedgehog came out and people didn’t like the teeth. It happens whenever a Marvel production comes out, and the costumes aren’t one hundred percent accurate to the comics. It wouldn’t have been any different here.

The thing about a new version of a beloved property is that it’s just that. It’s a new version. A new generation of fans can find an entry point that better fits their sensibilities. Maybe it will lead them to seek out the older version. Maybe it won’t. That doesn’t matter. That doesn’t affect the quality of the old version. It doesn’t erase the old version from existence. Well, not in this day and age. It may have in the 20s or 30s when they reused old film stock like maniacs. Today, though? Everything has been ported to hard drives, put on home video, or bounces between streaming services. A television movie reboot of Smokey and the Bandit won’t stop the original trilogy from being available. In fact, it comes in the same DVD package as the theatrical trilogy.

All this is to say that claiming a remake, reboot, sequel, or re-adaptation of a beloved property is ruining the past is a false claim. The new version can’t change the quality of the original. It can’t take your love of the original away. It may, in fact, be a new version of that story you can grow to appreciate and maybe even love.

With the ever-increasing digital landscape, there can be multiple versions of everything that allow different people to enjoy it. If you think something is ruining your childhood, you have that love of something from the past. A newer generation or audience might not have that love, and a new version could be just what they wanted. Why is it up to this vocal minority to decide what people should or shouldn’t be allowed to enjoy?

The internet has brought about a lot of good things. It allowed people from around the world to connect in ways they never had before. If you felt alone in your day-to-day life, there was a chance you would find your tribe on the internet. It became a good place to archive text, video, imagery, and audio so that it was less likely to be lost over time. It took a library and allowed it to fit into the palm of your hand.

The downside of the internet was that some of the tribes that people found were bad tribes. Rampant racism and hate. Bullying. That sort of stuff. The imagery and archived stuff could also be bad. And the voice that was given to that lonely person who was able to connect with others? Sometimes that voice came out in the most self-entitled way imaginable. The internet was good for some things, but terrible for others. We should all try a little harder to get rid of the bad stuff.

What I won’t be getting rid of are these notes:

• The four Bandit television movies were directed by Hal Needham, who directed Rad.
• Brian Bloom, Brian Krause, and Dawn Sears were each in all four Bandit television movies.
• Bandit Goes Country featured Elizabeth Berkley, who you might know from Showgirls or Control Factor.
• The other three-timer in Bandit Goes Country was Christopher Atkins, who appeared in Shakma and The Pirate Movie.
• Marty Terry appeared in both Bandit Goes Country and Elf-Man.
• Robert D. Raiford was in Super Mario Bros. and Bandit Goes Country.
• One of the more recognizable people in Bandit Goes Country was Tyler Mane. He was also in The Scorpion King.
• Finishing off Bandit Goes Country was Charles Nelson Reilly, a recognizable voice you might remember from A Troll in Central Park.
• Now onto Bandit Bandit, which featured the third appearance of Mark Jeffrey Miller after Super Mario Bros. and Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip.
• Two other actors from Super Mario Bros. were in Bandit Bandit. They were Michael Harding and Andrea Powell.
• Buckley Norris was in Bandit Bandit and Mac and Me.
• Bandit Bandit featured Barnaby Carpenter, and actor from Jem and the Holograms.
• James Martin Jr. returned to Sunday “Bad” Movies for Bandit Bandit after first showing up in Jaws: The Revenge.
• Closing out Bandit Bandit was Ami Dolenz, who had already been in She’s Out of Control.
• Another third appearance this week came from Tony Curtis. He previously voiced a character in Roxanne’s Best Christmas Ever and appeared in Sextette before popping up in Beauty and the Bandit.
• The other third appearance in Beauty and the Bandit was Henry Cho, who also appeared in Material Girls and Say It Isn’t So.
• Beauty and the Bandit had three more actors from Super Mario Bros. They were Lucy Alpaugh, Wallace Merck, and Patt Noday.
• One of the stars of Beauty and the Bandit was Kathy Ireland, who appeared in Mom and Dad Save the World.
• Brining Beauty and the Bandit to a close was Mark Joy, who was in Martial Law.
• And now we get to Bandit’s Silver Angel, which featured Marc Macaulay, who popped up in both From Justin to Kelly and Cop and a Half.
• Finally, Traci Lords was in Bandit’s Silver Angel and Ice.
• Have you seen any of the Bandit TV movies? What did you think? What do you think about people feeling entitled to something ruining their childhood? Let me know in the comments, or you can find me on Threads or Bluesky.
• Threads, Bluesky, and the comments are all good places to let me know what movies I should check out for future Sunday “Bad” Movies posts.
• Okay, this post took longer than I thought it would to come out. With that, we’re already in December, which means my next movie will be a Christmas movie. What one? Santa’s Got Style, of course. I got a box set of a bunch of those Hallmark-like Christmas movies and picked one with an interesting name and gave it a watch. I’ll get that post out soon. See you then.