Like a poorly-wrapped Christmas present, you totally know what you're going to get when you visit Two Dollar Cinema. For over six years now, this blog's bread and butter has been the fact that I watch a ton of shitty movies, then write a couple of piss-poor jokes about them in something not exactly resembling a traditional/engaging film review. This is a time-honored format that has resulted in dozens and dozens of pageviews.
But after being handed the baton in Nostra's rad The Ten: Best Christmas Movie relay I realized something rather troubling, I have been ignoring an important genre year after year.
The Holiday movie.
Check that. The shitty Holiday movie.
Okay, Love the Coopers doesn't exactly qualify as shitty, but it is a holiday movie. And it's not very good.
Earlier in the week, my wife and I revisited what I would have sworn on my chestnuts was a great Christmas movie! - 2005's The Family Stone (I have since dialed back that claim to moderately charming). I mention this uninteresting fact because the two films, despite being released a decade apart, seem to be plucked from the same poorly-made, coal-filled stocking. Both have large ensemble casts full of famous faces (including a Mean Girl), and both focus on hyper-quirky, multi-generational families where at least one sibling is a rotten prick. At first.
Oh, and both films also have Diane Keaton, playing, possibly for the only two times in her career, an eccentric white lady. One we're not exactly sure whether or not we like actually like, at that. Wait, what? Keaton goes full-on quirky broad? No way!
Yes way, which might explain why Keaton's Charlotte Cooper is trying to make it through Christmas before telling her kids (and grandkids) that she and her husband Sam (an emotionally and physically deflated John Goodman) are getting a divorce. Aww, that's kind of sad, right? 'Tis. Especially considering the main reason for their impeding separation is her reluctance to go on an African safari with him.
*spits out egg-nogg* What the f--k?
The Holiday movie.
Check that. The shitty Holiday movie.
Earlier in the week, my wife and I revisited what I would have sworn on my chestnuts was a great Christmas movie! - 2005's The Family Stone (I have since dialed back that claim to moderately charming). I mention this uninteresting fact because the two films, despite being released a decade apart, seem to be plucked from the same poorly-made, coal-filled stocking. Both have large ensemble casts full of famous faces (including a Mean Girl), and both focus on hyper-quirky, multi-generational families where at least one sibling is a rotten prick. At first.
Oh, and both films also have Diane Keaton, playing, possibly for the only two times in her career, an eccentric white lady. One we're not exactly sure whether or not we like actually like, at that. Wait, what? Keaton goes full-on quirky broad? No way!
Yes way, which might explain why Keaton's Charlotte Cooper is trying to make it through Christmas before telling her kids (and grandkids) that she and her husband Sam (an emotionally and physically deflated John Goodman) are getting a divorce. Aww, that's kind of sad, right? 'Tis. Especially considering the main reason for their impeding separation is her reluctance to go on an African safari with him.
*spits out egg-nogg* What the f--k?
