My Year of Flops (34 page)

The film's surprisingly not terrible first half cruises through all sorts of landmarks in Santa Claus' evolution. At one point, the jolly son of a bitch expresses a suspiciously socialist belief that “every child should get a present,” but then he learns the error of his ways and implements his patented double-checked list delineating the naughty from the nice.

As long as it's fixated on the goings-on at the North Pole, the film remains on solid footing. The elves' workshop is so bright and cheery, it's easy to forget it's a sweatshop, and the special effects are slick and convincing, especially where flying is concerned. But the moment the outside world comes into play, the film's cornball charm disappears.

Santa needs an assistant, so he hooks up with an enterprising elf named Patch, played by Dudley Moore. Alas, Patch's modernization of Santa's factory results in shoddy workmanship, defective toys, widespread sobbing, and a furious backlash against Ol' Saint Nick. Children associated with him are terrorized. Bullies taunt a rich orphan (Carrie Kei Heim) by sneering, “How can you be so dumb, Cornelia? Everyone knows he gives out shoddy cheap toys. My daddy says he's
an old fake.” Another pint-sized hooligan twists the knife by braying, “My parents gave me a doll that says whole sentences on a cassette. You don't have any parents, so nyaaaahh!”

After the Christmas disaster, Patch resigns in disgrace and heads to New York, where he offers his services to sinister defective-toy merchant B.Z. (John Lithgow), a cigar-chomping archvillain desperately in need of good PR. I hope someday to be rich enough to smoke giant cigars while cackling maniacally.

Patch and B.Z. set out to beat Santa at his own game by giving out fantastical lollipops that allow people to fly. Literally. How can Santa compete? He can't, so he sinks into a holly, jolly suicidal depression. It's a good thing the elves hid all the knives, ropes, and sleeping pills from their morbidly obese boss until his ennui lifted. When an elf diplomatically shows Santa a new doll that wets itself, all Saint Nick can muster is a dispirited, “But does it fly?”

In spite of its title,
Santa Claus: The Movie
ignores Santa for long stretches of its dreary second half in order to focus on the low-wattage antics of a pair of moppets: a rich girl (Heim) who says things like, “Would you like some cookies? They're from Bloomingdale's!” and a Damon Runyon–esque scamp (Christian Fitzpatrick) who gazes longingly into the window of a McDonald's at a happy family enjoying the beloved fast-food chain's wide array of delicious products. The two form a bond that transcends class lines when the girl leaves a mouth-watering can of Coke and leftovers for her homeless Santa-loving pal.

B.Z.'s greed ultimately gets the best of him. When Fitzpatrick's scamp discovers Lithgow's evil scheme to sell dangerous, potentially deadly flying candy canes, he ends up bound and gagged until Santa shows up to save the day. And quite possibly save Christmas. And deliver a death blow to his unwanted competition. It's the free market at work!

As the film lurches to a close, the tone veers between the curdled dark comedy of Lithgow's scenery-chewing, highly theatrical performance and maudlin, sentimental speeches like, “People don't seem to
care about giving a gift just so they can see the light of happiness in a friend's eyes. It just doesn't feel like Christmas anymore” and “If you give extra kisses, you get bigger hugs. That's what Santa's wife is always saying.”

Then there are elf-themed puns: Patch insists that the magic lollipop's flying powers are “elf-explanatory,” that he does not lack “elf-assurance,” and that ultimately, “Heaven helps those who help their elf.” Plot proves the death of
Santa Claus: The Movie.
Whenever the film strays from Santa's well-worn mythology, it flounders, and the cynicism at the film's core rises to the surface. As with so many Christmas movies, the anti-materialist sermonizing feels disingenuous, since
Santa Claus: The Movie
is a moneymaking venture first, second, third, fourth, and fifth, and a creative endeavor a distinct sixth.

Yet
Santa Claus: The Movie
ended up angering the Great God of Commerce by losing a mint for Tristar. There would be no sequels, no remakes, no Superman/Santa crossovers where Santa Claus is forced to kneel before Zod … just a bleak yuletide for everyone involved.

Failure, Fiasco, Or Secret Success?
Failure

Totally Tween Case File #118: Bratz: The Movie

Originally Posted September 17, 2008

While on vacation, I briefly became addicted to A&E's
The Two Coreys.
In my favorite episode, Corey Feldman, concerned that his tragicomic bud Corey Haim has become a pill-popper, convinces Todd Bridges and Pauly Shore to confront Haim about his substance abuse. As Bridges and Shore contemplate the task at hand, they're overcome with a profound sense of life's ridiculousness. How did they get there? What crime did they commit in a past life to merit this karmic mind fuck? Even Pauly Shore, Todd Bridges, and Corey Feldman found the prospect of a semi-intervention featuring Pauly
Shore, Todd Bridges, and Corey Feldman to be surreal. You know your life has spun out of control when Pauly Shore is lecturing you about responsibility.

I know the feeling. There are times in everyone's life when the randomness of fate blindsides you. Don DeLillo, Kurt Vonnegut, and David Foster Wallace masterfully chronicled the often ugly, sometimes sublime preposterousness of our universe. They allow readers to take a step back and see the things we all take for granted in a new, disorientingly foreign light, to see the bizarre in the familiar and the familiar in the bizarre.

I experienced a similarly uncanny sense of life's absurdity when I sat down in a small, cold room on the 16th floor of a nondescript building in downtown Chicago with a platoon of pasty, shabbily dressed middle-aged men in 2007 to watch a series of flickering images and shiny, happy noise called
Bratz: The Movie,
a live-action movie designed to sell a popular line of skanky plastic dolls. Here's what the American Psychological Association had to say about these plastic pop tarts:

Alas, those spoilsport eggheads in the APA were no match for the Bratz spokesman (you gotta wonder whom
he
killed in a previous life), who defended the dolls with the withering retort, “The Bratz brand, which has remained number one in the UK market for 23 consecutive months, focuses core values on friendship, hair play, and a ‘passion for fashion.'”

Bruno Bettelheim argued that a proper appreciation of “hair play” is a vital component of every child's emotional development. And Abraham Maslow made “passion for fashion” a cornerstone of his hierarchy of needs. But
Bratz
's inspiring message of hair play, cultivating
a passion for fashion, and friendship is largely wasted on the killjoys in the APA. Also, film critics.

The folks at the screening room were, perhaps, not the ideal audience for a movie about clothing-obsessed teenage girls. When the film began, I wondered why
Bratz
was being screened for critics at all. Did the
Bratz
keteers expect us to respond to their product with anything other than disdain? Couldn't
Bratz: The Movie
just as easily be titled
Not Screened For Critics: The Movie
?

Bratz
's first sequence establishes a tone of psychotic peppiness, as the Bratz approach choosing outfits for the first day of high school with orgasmic glee. Ah, but
Bratz
isn't afraid to delve into deep issues. One of the girls has divorced parents. Another left her turquoise shirt at her friend's house.

Bratz
veers into
Afterschool Special
territory when one of the girls literally runs into a boy who's cute but also deaf, and they have the following exchange:

Brat:
What are you, blind?

Totally Hot Deaf Guy:
No, but I'm deaf.

Brat:
What?

Totally Hot Deaf Guy:
I'm deaf.

Brat:
You don't sound deaf.

Totally Hot Deaf Guy:
Well, you don't look ignorant, but I guess you can't judge a book, right?

Bratz
isn't done teaching valuable life lessons about how the deaf are just like you and me, only hotter, and way better DJs. In a remarkable sequence, the hot hearing-impaired athlete learns that being deaf and being def are not mutually exclusive when a sensitive Mr. Chips–type teaches him how to fuck shit up old school on the turntables by feeling the vibrations, Funky Bunch style.

He isn't just a brooding, telegenic deaf guy: He's a deaf jock who loves playing the piano and is also an awesome DJ. He's got five minutes of screen time and 18 different facets to his personality. I expect the
deleted scenes will reveal that he's also an orphan, a Jehovah's Witness, a monarchist, double-jointed, telekinetic, and an illegal immigrant.

The four Bratz enter high school intent on ruling the school in their respective niches. “I'm owning the science!” enthuses the Asian science geek with rad cotton-candy-blue hair extensions. That line is followed by the record-skipping sound effect that serves as bad-movie shorthand for, “Oh snap, something zany just happened!”

This vexes the black cheerleader, who frets, “Okay! Work the IQ, girl, but please don't lose your passion for fashion!” The message is clear: Learning about science is all well and good, as long as it doesn't interfere with the superficial things that really matter.

In spite of their oft-repeated promises to remain BFF, the girls are pulled in opposite directions by their overriding passions. The jock abandons her friends to hang out with the jocks. The cheerleader kicks it with the cheerleaders, the geek blends in with the brains, and the girl with little discernible personality but a gift for making bitching clothes presumably hangs out with other girls with little discernible personality and a flair for sewing.

We then flash-forward two years. The girls' utopia of shared clothes and daily video-IM-ing chitchats has died at the hands of cliques and the narrow-minded tyranny of the school's most popular student. In a moment of haunting sadness, two of the Bratz reconnect briefly over their shared love of Peach Party lip gloss, only to watch their fragile bond dissipate just as quickly.

Then, with the help of shopping-and-trying-on-makeup montages, the Bratz resurrect their friendship. These montages contain the film's defining sequence, in which a gaggle of prepubescent girls gaze adoringly at the Bratz. In their infinite kindness, the Bratz decide to provide makeovers for these 8-year-old representatives of the target audience for the Bratz film and toy line. The moppets begin as ordinary girls, a little awkward and ungainly. Then the Bratz slather on the whore makeup and transform their pint-sized protégés into creepily sexualized Jon-Benét Ramsey doppelgängers. Oh, if only they could reach through the screen and do the same for all the 8-year-olds in the audience! In spite
of such blatant pandering,
Bratz
mercifully bombed at the box office, thereby sparing the world an endless procession of theatrically released
Bratz
sequels and knockoffs.

The girls' bond and commitment to subverting the dominant paradigm threatens the school's most popular student, a pretty blond tyrant named Meredith that Chelsea Staub plays as a cross among Josef Stalin, Paris Hilton, and Tracy Flick from
Election
. Meredith's father, incidentally, is played by Jon Voight, though to be fair, he probably took the part only to pay back
Bratz
producer Steven Paul for giving Voight his career-making role in
Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2,
as an ascot-wearing, smoking-jacket-and-Hitler-mustache-sporting German businessman engaged in a decades-long, multi-continent struggle with a superscamp who travels around in a flying car and never ages. Voight is nothing if not loyal. And insane.