Elf-Man (2012)

“He’s like a superhero who has special powers, but doesn’t know how to use them yet.” –Ryan, Elf-Man

Today is Christmas.  That’s right!  It’s December 25^th.  Last night, children around the world impatiently awaited the arrival of their version of Santa Claus.  They wanted their gifts dropped off so that they could play with them.  Except for the bad kids.  They wanted anything but the coal that was coming their way.  The children stayed up as late as possible in an attempt to see the jolly man in red and white, but in most cases, they fell asleep.

What children seem to forget is that Santa Claus has help.  He has elves to help him with getting to every child on time.  No, not Nazi elves like in the movie Elves.  He has small little workers like Hermie in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.  The movie today focuses on one such elf who was left behind at a child’s house.

Elf-Man was released in 2012.  Kasey (Carly Robell) and Ryan (Blake Kaiser) were two children living with their single father, Eric (Mackenzie Astin).  They were excited for Christmas to be coming the next day.  They were even more excited when their dad revealed that his new invention was complete.  When their father didn’t come home that night, they wished for help.  It came in the form of Elf-Man (Jason ‘Wee Man’ Acuna).  The three of them, along with their Gramma (Marty Terry) and Eric’s crush Amy (Mirelly Taylor) teamed up to stop a band of thieves led by Mickey (Jeffrey Combs) from stealing the invention.  They also wanted to free their father from Mickey’s captivity.

As we know from Saving Christmas, everybody has a story.  The story in Elf-Man was dependent on the invention that Eric created.  It was some a chip that could heat a house.  For how long?  They don’t say.  How does it work?  They don’t explain that either.  The most that they thought about the chip when writing was to state what it was and show that people wanted it.  It was like The Black Pelican in Road House 2: Last Call.  It was something that people wanted and the writing never built it out beyond that.

Mickey wanted to steal the chip from Eric and make money with it.  The only problems were that he didn’t have the blueprints, so he couldn’t recreate it, and he had no connections that he could use to sell it.  I know that Elf-Man is a kids’ movie, so I shouldn’t be so critical of it in this way, but in the real world, if you go to a company screaming about your new invention, without being invited and without a way to mass produce it, you’ll get thrown out.  Mickey looked like a homeless guy.  There’s no way he was getting in the door of any company that would buy the chip.

That doesn’t truly matter though.  The real moral of the story wasn’t that you shouldn’t steal heating chips from single parents.  The real moral was that you need to think of other people and not just yourself.  That is where Elf-Man came in.  He was a selfish elf trying to work his way up the ranks of Santa’s elves.  When he was left behind, he was worried more about getting home than anything.  It took until the end of the movie for him to realize… Spoilers here… He was the gift all along.  The children asked for help and he was the help.  He also learned how to be a better, more caring elf.  Helping other people can lead to a better world.  That is what Santa does.  He helps out children in need so that he can give them a better life.  Better lives lead to better kids which lead to better adults and a better world.  That is the real meaning behind Elf-Man.

Even with a good lesson, the movie ended up being bad.  The technical stuff isn’t worth getting into because it doesn’t go far enough to be terrible.  It hovers in the meh range.  But there were moments in where the movie went insane for a few seconds then came back to the reality of the world being presented.  Now is the time where these moments get covered in some detail because writing about the movie wouldn’t feel complete without including them.

Gramma showed up near the beginning of the movie.  Her entire introduction was odd.  First off, her car drove down the road so slowly that one of the vampires from Robo Vampire could have hopped faster.  But that’s not even the nuttiest part.  When she got into the house, she gave the kids their annual fruitcake.  They didn’t like fruitcake, as exhibited by the cabinet they had been sticking them into for years.  They disliked fruitcake so much that when they looked at the new one, it had a face and teeth, and growled at them.  The fruitcake became a monster for about three seconds and then was a normal fruitcake for the remainder of the movie.  Talk about bizarre.  The fruitcakes would also make an appearance later in the movie when the family used them as weapons to fight off the intruders.  It was a scene right out of The Christmas Consultant, but with more fruitcakes and more enemies.

The other strange moment was the darkest moment.  During the climactic battle, Mickey found the kryptonite to Elf-Man’s powers.  He brought mistletoe to the battle.  The mistletoe caused Elf-Man to write around in pain.  The family watched in horror.  When Mickey left, he threw the mistletoe onto Elf-Man, leaving him hurt on the floor.  Ryan took hold of the mistletoe and knew the only way to destroy its powers of hurt.  He held it above Eric and Amy’s heads and waited for them to kiss.  When they did, it broke whatever spell it had on Elf-Man and he recovered and took down Mickey’s band of mischievous robbers.

Elf-Man was an interesting little Christmas movie.  It’s not one that I would recommend.  It’s definitely not good, but outside of a few little moments of insanity like the stuff I mentioned, there isn’t a lot to make it entertainingly bad.  It just is.  It doesn’t fill you with the Christmas spirit either.  Looking at it is interesting as you try and figure out why the movie is.  Answers are hard to find.  It just is, and sometimes that happens.

These notes are the same way. They just are:

• I mentioned a few movies I’ve covered during this post.  I mentioned Robo Vampire, The Christmas Consultant, Elves, Road House 2: Last Call, and Saving Christmas.
• Jeffrey Combs was the only Sunday “Bad” Movie alumnus to appear in Elf-Man.  He was previously in Robot Jox.
• Have you seen Elf-Man?  What did you think when you saw it?  You can discuss the movie or this post in the comments section below.
• The comments are a good place to put any bad movie suggestions.  I’m working on the schedule right now and am always looking for movies to include.  If you want to contact me through Twitter, you can do that too.
• Sometimes when I’m watching bad movies, I put clips of them up on snapchat.  You can add me if you want to see that kind of thing.  My username is jurassicgriffin.
• Next week, we ring in the New Year with a horror movie called Antisocial.  I don’t know too much about it, but when I searched New Year movies, it came up.  This could end up being a disastrous week, or I could enjoy it like I enjoyed Money Train.  Who knows?  I’ll see you next week with a post.

Saving Christmas (2014)

“This is a complete hijacking! This is a hijacking! Hi-handed, hijacking! Handedness-jacking! It's like a car-jacking of our religion!” –Christian, Saving Christmas

Christmas time is here again.  Families will be bonding over the holiday festivities with gifts, feasts, and some casual drinking.  It’s a season of shopping as people search for that special something for a special someone.  The songs fill the air.  Holiday movies are on every channel.  Somebody makes a joke about their tree looking like the one from A Charlie Brown Christmas, even though 95% of the time it doesn’t.  But something that rarely gets discussed is the religious origin of Christmas.  Nobody talks about Jesus being born on Christmas and how the name comes from his name.  Except for Kirk Cameron.

How did he spread the gospel during the holidays?  He didn’t bring people to church or do public appearances.  Kirk Cameron produced a movie called Saving Christmas.  It had less to do with saving the day than it did with opening up one character’s eyes to the lord.  Kirk Cameron was at a Christmas party when he noticed that his brother-in-law, Christian (Darren Doane, the director), wasn’t filled with the holiday cheer.  He decided to show Christian the way by explaining how his questions about the sanctity of Christmas could be answered through religion.  That was the whole story.  Kirk Cameron explained how everything about Christmas came from The Bible.

Ridiculous is the perfect word to describe Saving Christmas.  It began with Kirk Cameron speaking to the camera about why he loved Christmas, then saying that it is a religious day.  It took six minutes to get that point across.  His wordiness didn’t stop there.  It continued throughout the movie.  He talked so much that it was hypnotic.  His words made no sense but he talked so long in a calm and comforting tone that it was easy to understand how Christian fell for it.  There was also an unwarranted dance number near the end of the movie.  It had nothing to do with the story.  The narration literally stated that it was an unexpected twist.  This scene will haunt me for years to come.

I now want to turn your attention to the title.  We’ll get back to the individual segments later.  As was said near the start of this post, Saving Christmas isn’t a title that suits the movie.  One person’s belief in Christmas being a religious holiday is saved, but that’s it.  Everyone else was having a wonderful holiday and didn’t need saving.  But the title gets even more confusing when you look around online.  In one of the only instances where I will use Rotten Tomatoes as a reference, the site has the movie listed as Kirk Cameron’s Saving Christmas.  On first glance, it is Kirk Cameron’s because he produced it and was the star.  He was the driving force behind the movie.  They even made light of that fact in a credits joke.  But then you think about the title for a bit and associate it with what the movie is.  It is an hour and a half of Kirk Cameron talking to the audience through a character named Christian, about the religious side of Christmas.  He tried to show the audience how great religion is.  Therefore, Kirk Cameron’s could be “Kirk Cameron is”, as in “Kirk Cameron is Saving Christmas”.  He did it through the stories.

Stories were an essential part of Saving Christmas.  The main, non-Kirk on a chair portion of the movie began with Kirk telling the audience that everyone has a story.  No matter whether it was big, small, entertaining, or boring, everyone had stories in their lives.  He told the story of what happened on that fateful Christmas with Christian.  Through that story, he told Christian three different stories about how the different elements of Christmas came to be.  It was an Inception of stories.  There were stories in the story.

The first of the three stories was a response to Christian saying that Jesus was not born on December 25^th.  I’m not sure if Kirk Cameron actually gave a real rebuttal.  He talked about Jesus being born in a cloth, and a cloth being present at Jesus’s death.  He talked about it for a long time, to the point where it was an interesting enough story.  But it had nothing to do with the date of Jesus’s birth.  The entire story was simply highlighting the parallels between his birth and death.  The cloth, the funeral spices… All of the things that were present at both his birth and death were mentioned.  Not a whole lot about the date was in the story, though.

More irrelevant was the second story.  Christian asked what the Christmas tree symbolized to the biblical idea of Christmas.  The tree was a pagan symbol, not a Christian one, and he didn’t understand how it was part of biblical religion.  Kirk Cameron responded with one of the most mind-blowingly insane stretches that I’ve heard in a long time.  The first part made some sense.  Adam took fruit off of one of the trees in the Garden of Eden, and decorating trees for Christmas is like giving the fruit back to the trees.  Instead of fruit, we’re giving lights and ornaments, but it works.  He could have stopped there and the argument would have been valid, but he veered off course when bringing Jesus into the story.  Jesus was the last in a long line of Adams who hadn’t repaid the stolen fruit.  He gave his body by hanging it on the tree.  The tree was a cross.  Since crosses are made of wood, they count as trees.  And since Jesus was crucified, he was hanging on the tree. 

As the third part of the story trilogy, there was the origin of Santa Claus.  The modern depiction of a man with a belly like a bowl full of jelly, wearing red and white, coming on Christmas Eve to give gifts to the good boys and girls doesn’t seem biblical.  His “Ho ho ho” demeanor didn’t strike Christian as religious.  It seemed commercial.  Kirk Cameron had a defense for that.  He told Christian about Saint Nicholas, who lived in the fourth century.  He gave gifts to people who were good in his eyes and punished those who weren’t.  He was present at the first council of Nicaea.  Kirk Cameron said that he was the inspiration for Santa Claus, which is partially true, and said that it’s because of religion that Santa Claus exists.  What he left out was the commercialism that Santa has become, and how that has nothing to do with the Saint.

Sadly, these arguments, mixed with the random dance scene, led to an underwhelming experience.  I expected insanity in a different way.  I thought it was going to be religion mixed in with crazy Christmas action.  It wasn’t.  It was religion and that’s all it was.  Kirk Cameron spoke about religion the entire hour and a half, trying to convince Christian, as well as the audience, that a religious Christmas is the proper Christmas.  His arguments made little sense, and could easily be countered.  But that’s not the movie.  It wasn’t about giving both sides.  It was about the greatness of religion.  I’m all for believing whatever you want, but you shouldn’t be pushing your religion on other people.  That’s why I don’t like these kinds of movies.  Saving Christmas is another movie that sidestepped story for religious promotion.  It hurt what was on screen and made for a watch that was the opposite of fun.

These notes might be a little more fun than the movie:

• Some of the other Christmas movies that have been covered for the Sunday “Bad” Movies include A Nanny for Christmas, Roxanne’s Best Christmas Ever, and How the Toys Saved Christmas.
• Have you seen Saving Christmas?  Have you seen any other religion based Christmas movies?  What do you think makes a good Christmas movie?  Discuss anything about this post in the comments section below.
• I’m always looking for suggestions for future Sunday “Bad” Movie installments.  Let me know about any movies you think I should cover by putting your suggestions in the comments or on my Twitter feed.  Thanks!
• Sometimes when I’m watching bad movies, I put clips of them into my Snapchat story.  If that sounds interesting, you can find me there with the username jurassicgriffin.
• Next week’s movie will conclude the annual December Christmas movie marathon for the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  What better day to finish up on than on Christmas?  The movie that we’ll be celebrating with is a movie called Elf-Man.  It stars Wee Man from the Jackass group.  I’ll let you know more about it next week.  See you then.

Santa with Muscles (1996) and Action Stars in Family Films

“Santa, you sleigh me!” – Dr. Blight, Santa with Muscles

Every generation has action heroes that they enjoy watching.  The 1980s had the rise of Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dolph Lundgren, and some other muscle bound guys.  The 1990s saw Bruce Willis and Keanu Reeves find their place in action.  The late 1990s and early 2000s were a strange time when Ben Affleck and Nicolas Cage were action stars.  Now we have Dwayne Johnson, Vin Diesel, and Jason Statham gracing our screens.  These men have been through explosions, gun fights, car chases, and any other thing you can imagine.  But what if they didn’t want to do that?

There is a tendency for action stars to make family movies as their careers progress.  Sometimes, as in the case of Arnold Schwarzenegger, they overshoot it.  He has Kindergarten Cop, Junior, Twins, and Jingle All the Way that go in a more family friendly direction than his usual action shtick.   The actors made action movies that have stood the test of time like Stallone’s First Blood, and then delve into more family friendly fare like Over the Top.  Perhaps the action star had a family and wanted them to be able to watch his or her movies.  Perhaps they wanted to expand their audience into a different market.  No matter what the case, there are numerous instances of action stars diving into the world of children.

One star that frequently, and strangely, made movies for children to enjoy was Hulk Hogan.  He became a leading man in 1989 with No Holds Barred, but would soon turn to families with a series of movies that included 1991’s Suburban Commando, 1993’s Mr. Nanny, 1996’s The Secret Agent Club and Santa with Muscles, and 1998’s 3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain.  These years may have included more movies aimed at kids than they did movies aimed at adults.  Hulk Hogan was trying to get the child audience.

That might be because of his wrestling popularity.  Hulk Hogan was one of the most popular wrestlers to ever step into the ring.  He might not be the most successful in film (Dwayne Johnson has him beat in movie popularity), but he was top dog of wrestling for a long time.  The time when he was popular was also a time when wrestling was popular.  No Holds Barred was a movie made from the success of his wrestling persona.  He was a wrestler in the movie.  Yet, part of his wrestling audience could not watch that movie because of the violence and adult themes.  The young male audience that wrestling seems to capture the attention of couldn’t see the movie that their wrestling hero was in.  Thus, he had to make movies that they could see.  He made movies that were ostensibly for kids.

Let’s take a look at this week’s movie, Santa with Muscles as an example of how it was a tough guy doing a movie for kids.  First, look at the title.  Santa is a figure that many children believe in.  He is the bringer of presents.  That is the children part of the title.  Then there is the muscles part.  That is representing Hulk Hogan himself, a muscular man.  Now, let’s see what the movie was about.  Santa with Muscles followed Blake Thorn (Hulk Hogan), an obnoxious rich guy who suffered head trauma while being chased by the police.  He was found by Lenny (Don Stark), a mall elf, and turned into a mall Santa.  Blake soon travelled to an orphanage run by Clayton (Garrett Morris) and Leslie (Robin Curtis).  He helped the orphanage defend itself against the evil plans of Ebner Frost (Ed Begley Jr.), who wanted to steal it for the minerals beneath it.  There were three children living in the orphanage that grew to love Blake, even after he remembered he was not Santa.  The children were played by Mila Kunis, Adam Wylie, and Aria Curzon.

The movie was filled with one liners and goofy comedy.  It was a family movie through and through, but filtered through the Hulk Hogan machine.  It felt like his other family movies.  There was still the action side with him kicking mad scientist butt.  He threw people, knocked people down, and did all the wrestling sort of fighting that wrestlers turned movie stars did at the time.  Roddy Piper was guilty of the same sort of action.  But it also showed Hogan caring for children and keeping them safe.  That’s the same kind of thing he did in Mr. Nanny.  Both had a similar feel to Suburban Commando.

As I mentioned earlier, many other tough guys have gone through their family film periods.  I’m going to take a look at other action stars that have jumped into the world of family movies.  One exception is that I’m not going to bring superhero movies into the mix.  At this point in time, superhero movie are the tentpole blockbusters and everyone is doing them.  They’re also more action than family, so although comic books have people of all ages as a foundation, I’m not including them as family films.  Let’s get started.

Arnold Schwarzenegger

This is the most obvious person on the list since he made such a turn from his usual action fare for many of his 1990s movies.  Technically, Twins started it off in 1988, but the 90s saw the releases of Kindergarten Cop, Junior, and Jingle All the Way.  Schwarzenegger was breaking into a new audience.  Young boys liked to sneak into action movies or find them on home video and watch them without their parents’ permission.  But now that Arnold was starring in family movies, the children would be able to see them without having to worry about permission and sneaking around.

The main difference between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Hulk Hogan is that his family movies have had staying impact.  There are always rumors of a sequel to Twins being made.  There were recently direct-to-video sequels made for Jingle All the Way and Kindergarten Cop.  People continue to quote the movies.  Kids and adults alike enjoy sharing their favourite moments.  But the one thing that is shared between these movies and those of other action stars diving into the family area is that there is a focus on children.

Jingle All the Way, which has been discussed in this blog with two posts of its own, was all about Howard finding a toy for his son.  The movie was about the family as much as it was about the action.  Kindergarten Cop was about John Kimble, a tough cop known for his action-heavy criminal-busting skills, becoming a kindergarten teacher in order to find a dangerous man.  Though there was always the story of the criminal who might harm people, the movie was more about Kimble learning how to properly take care of children.  Kids are an important part of family movies.

Sylvester Stallone

Speaking of action stars who decide to work with kids, Sylvester Stallone has done that a couple times.  The most recent that I can recall is Spy Kids 3-D, where he played the villain.  I saw the movie once when it first came out, so I don’t remember too much.  The other one that comes to mind is a movie from 1987 called Over the Top.  Hugh Jackman, another action star, made a movie just like this when he was in Real Steel.

The story of these two movies was that a man is given care of a son that he hadn’t seen for years.  The mother was dying or dead and the father was reintroduced into the son’s life.  They would eventually grow to appreciate each other through their company and through sport.  In Over the Top, it was Stallone’s arm wrestling that helped the two to bond.  In Real Steel, it was robot boxing.  Both movies represent action stars moving into movies about father/son bonding.

Vin Diesel

The Pacifier.  Vin Diesel made this movie in 2005 for Walt Disney Studios.  It was directed by the guy who made Rock of Ages, Bringing Down the House, and Cheaper by the Dozen 2.  I know it was Vin Diesel’s version of Mr. Nanny.  He had to take care of some kids.  At some point, he rode a child’s tricycle.  He made this one family movie after becoming a big action star with The Fast and the Furious, xXx, and the Riddick series.  One of his costars from the later Fast and Furious movies made a bigger impact on family films.

Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson

The man is known as franchise Viagra for what he has been able to do with sequels.  He has been brought into multiple franchises and the installment in which he joined got better critical acclaim than what came before it.  One of these franchises was the Journey series.  Brendan Fraser left the series after the first installment and Dwayne Johnson replaced him.  Both movies were solid, but there’s no denying the added charisma that Dwayne Johnson brought.  This wasn’t his only family movie, however.

A few years before he joined the Journey franchise, Dwayne Johnson made a Disney family movie trilogy.  He starred in three Disney family movies from 2007 to 2010.  First was a movie called The Game Plan where he played a football player with a daughter.  Remember that thing about children?  Then there was Race to Witch Mountain, where he was a taxi driver driving children around.  Finally, there was Tooth Fairy, which is a name that screams children.  He was a family movie juggernaut for a few years, before he went full on back into action.

There are many more action stars who have been in family movies.  Chuck Norris was in Top Dog, one of the strangest ventures into family fare, since it feels almost more adult than family, Jason Statham did voice work in Gnomeo and Juliet, and Kurt Russell starred in Sky High.  But I’ll leave those for another post on another day.  Maybe I’ll even go more in depth with the stuff I covered this week.

If anything, Hulk Hogan is an archetype for action stars who want to split their time between action and family movies.  He was the blueprint for what Dwayne Johnson would succeed with.  Hogan may not have found the same big screen success, but he could always fall back on his wrestling roots.  Others have managed to succeed where Hogan did, and succeed to a better degree.  Others haven’t.  But most have tried to find the family audience.

Now to find some notes:

• Santa with Muscles was suggested by @LastFilmSeen, who previously suggested Santa, Jr., and Jack Frost 2: Revenge of the Mutant Killer Snowman.
• I mentioned Jingle All the Way in this post.
• Roddy Piper was briefly discussed.  He was in Hell Comes to Frogtown.
• I mentioned Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was in Hercules in New York, Batman & Robin, and Jingle All the Way.
• Clint Howard made his fourth Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance in Santa with Muscles.  He was also in House of the Dead, Blackwoods, and Blubberella.
• Diane Robin showed up in Santa with Muscles.  She was already seen in Santa, Jr.
• Kevin West made a return to the Sunday “Bad” Movies with Santa with Muscles, after being in Bio-Dome.
• Don Stark, who played Lenny in Santa with Muscles, was also in Freaked.
• Neill Calabro returned to the Sunday “Bad” Movies in Santa with Muscles.  He was previously in Batman & Robin.
• Santa with Muscles was the second movie for Emmy Cicierega that made it into the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  She had a voice performance in Delgo.
• Finally, Adam Wylie, who played one of the kids in Santa with Muscles, was also in Return to Sleepaway Camp.
• Have you seen Santa with Muscles?  Have you seen any other Hulk Hogan movies?  What actions stars did I not mention being in family movies?  If you have questions or answers, you can leave them in the comments section below the post.
• Are there any movies that you think I should watch for the Sunday “Bad” Movies?  Let me know about them.  Put your suggestions in the comments below, or put them in my Twitter feed.  I take all suggestions into consideration, unless I know it’s not a bad movie.
• I use snapchat mostly to share clips of bad movies.  If that seems like something interesting to you, feel free to add me on snapchat.  My username is jurassicgriffin.
• Next week is going to be an interesting week.  I’m going to be covering Saving Christmas, a Kirk Cameron religious film from a couple years ago.  I believe this is the first religious film of that type that I’ve seen for the blog, since I watched God’s Not Dead in my own free time.  These movies are crazy.  You’ll get an interesting post next week, I think.