The continued dominance of the Hallmark-industrial complex means that even the majority of Christmas movies released elsewhere on VOD and streaming services focus on fresh-faced smiling telegenic people in red and green outfits perfunctorily falling in love. This year’s fringe holiday offerings include a couple of variations on that formula, plus documentaries about Christmas tree merchants and movie memorabilia, animated adventures for a superpowered Santa Claus and magical animals, and one excessively grim thriller that is decidedly not produced in the spirit of the season.
Fragilé (Vimeo on Demand November 7): The installation of a 50-foot replica of the leg lamp from A Christmas Story doesn’t necessarily seem like fodder for a feature-length documentary, but director Reagan Elkins finds the absurdity in the petty battles among the residents of Chickasha, Oklahoma, over the proposed kitschy tourist attraction. It’s easy to imagine someone like Will Ferrell starring in the narrative version, as the local businessman who becomes inordinately fixated on a leg lamp as the magic bullet to bring visitors to his small, economically challenged town. Over a four-year odyssey, Tim Elliott never wavers from his conviction that the giant leg lamp is the only possible solution to the town’s troubles, and Elkins captures every minor squabble, with a Christopher Guest-like eye for ridiculous characters. The showdown between the arrogant, confrontational Elliott and his often prudish opponents becomes a real Team No One scenario, but that just makes Fragilé more entertaining. The leg lamp situation is, of course, a microcosm for America, in all its crass glory. Grade: B+
Animal Tales of Christmas Magic (Kanopy November 10; VOD and DVD December 2): This French animated anthology from a group of female directors is meant for the smallest children, but the lovely retro animation and timeless fable-like storytelling should appeal to parents, too. The five stories have varying connections to Christmas, but all involve winter adventures for adorable animals, told via expressive visuals and minimal dialogue. The best segments feature human characters, too, including stories of a mother and daughter joining with forest creatures to decorate a Christmas tree in the wild, and a pair of sisters bonding with a playful shape-changing tanuki. It’s unfortunate that the movie begins on its worst note, with a cutesy short about a bird accidentally sabotaging Santa Claus’ home, in which Santa simply repeats the same line of dialogue over and over. Even that segment has its charms, though, and none of the individual tales overstay their welcome. At 70 minutes, it’s an easy watch for little ones, and a worthy candidate for a new childhood Christmas tradition. Grade: B
SuperClaus (VOD and DVD November 11): The bombastic in-universe movie franchise about a Santa-themed superhero sets the tone for this grating, hyperactive animated comedy. The real Santa Claus (Harland Williams) is jealous of his movie counterpart, and a bump on the head leaves him believing that he’s actually the superpowered fictional character. After Santa flees the North Pole for the big city, neurotic elf Leo (Paul Van Dyck) teams up with kid genius Billie (Millie Davis) to rescue Santa, restore his mental faculties, save Christmas, etc. The additional threat from a greedy toy manufacturer (Colm Feore) adds more confusion than conflict, and the haphazard subplots about Billie’s family life and friendships offer poorly defined life lessons. The kind of international co-production that takes place in a generic no-man’s-land of eerily empty liminal spaces, SuperClaus bombards viewers with hideous animation, garish colors, and nonstop chatter, including from Billie’s gibberish-spewing robot sidekick. It’s ugly and irritating, with nothing to say about the commercialization of either Christmas or cinema, and no goodwill toward anyone. Grade: D
The Christmas Writer (VOD and Tello November 18): After last year’s more grounded The Holiday Club, the annual Christmas romance from lesbian-focused streaming service Tello shifts back into Hallmark territory with this basic but amiable story about a blocked novelist. Noel (Shelby Allison Brown) exclusively writes Christmas-themed lesbian romance novels, and she’s having trouble coming up with an idea for her latest book. So she heads back to her quaint hometown for inspiration and to spend time with her grandma. While participating in a promotional event, she meets friendly bookstore owner Callie (Callie Bussell), and mild sparks immediately fly. The romance is sedate but sweet, and it’s an improvement over director and co-writer Christin Baker’s previous Tello Christmas effort Merry & Gay. The story gently broaches questions of small-town tolerance without puncturing its characters’ pleasant romantic bubble, and Brown and Bussell have an easy rapport. Kendahl Landreth (as Noel’s best friend) and Jordan Myrick (as Noel’s agent’s assistant) get a few scene-stealing supporting moments, and the whole thing wraps up with an obvious but satisfying bow. Grade: B-
Dog Patrol: Operation Santa Paws (VOD November 20): There’s a surprising amount of gunplay in this ostensibly family-friendly caper featuring a cute dog. It opens with a jewel heist followed by a betrayal among thieves, setting up a showdown between angry mobsters and the safecracker who absconds with the loot. He conveniently dies of a heart attack before anyone in his new small-town home has to reckon with his illicit past, so that the movie can pit Home Alone-style bumbling criminals against a group of kids. One of those kids inherits the toy shop where the jewels are stashed, along with the dog who holds the key to the hiding place. The slapdash movie veers awkwardly from cloying kid antics to disingenuous lectures from the local sheriff (a tired-looking Cuba Gooding Jr.) to bizarre anti-humor from a movie-quoting FBI agent (Mars Callahan). There’s also a random musical number, an interlude featuring doggie friendship, and Christmas in there somewhere. None of it makes sense, and all of it is annoying. Grade: D
Reverence (VOD and select theaters November 21): Setting this morose thriller at Christmastime feels like a perverse middle finger to the audience, which is already stuck slogging through two-plus hours of narrative dead ends, glowering figures, dimly lit interiors, and droning musical cues. Writer-director Kyle Kauwika Harris aims for a heartland version of Mystic River or Gone Baby Gone with his rural Midwestern mystery about a missing teenage girl, but he’s no Dennis Lehane, and the plodding thriller offers no meaningful insights about the community or the people who live there. Instead, it takes way too much time establishing glum mechanic and military veteran Shannon Sadler (Adam Hampton) and his troubled relationships, which fray further after his daughter Mattie (Victoria Kmiec) disappears. Harris takes even longer to explore its various obvious red herrings, packing in multiple ultimately unrelated cases as Shannon slowly goes rogue, while other characters engage in go-nowhere subplots. As it drags toward its deeply unsatisfying ending, Reverence is as limp as the neglected Christmas decorations in the characters’ sad homes. Grade: C-
The Merchants of Joy (Amazon Prime Video December 1): The rampant swearing from old-school New Yorkers referred to as the “five families” of the holiday season marks this documentary about the Christmas tree business as something less cuddly than the typical feel-good yuletide profile, and for a little while director Celia Aniskovich appears to be heading toward a festive true-crime exposé. The Merchants of Joy eventually backs away from its potentially unsavory aspects for a rosier portrayal of its rough-around-the-edges subjects, but it remains pricklier than expected, with an underlying tension between the way business used to be done in the city (read: the mafia) and the way it’s done now (under corporate control). Aniskovich’s interviewees are all independent operators who are holdouts against the big-box stores that try to undercut them, and they exude a genuine love for Christmas trees along with their expletive-laden tirades. The movie follows them over the course of a single season, and while it gets a bit repetitive, it never loses sight of the passion and grit of its subjects. Grade: B
12 Toys of Christmas (VOD December 6): So many low-budget American independent productions are now shot in Eastern Europe that it makes sense to just move the setting there, too. There’s not much difference between 12 Toys of Christmas and any other holiday romance about a high-powered career woman who finds love and peace in simpler small-town life, except that here the small town is in Hungary. Olivia (Stephanie Perk) is a toy designer tasked with creating tie-in items for a major movie franchise. The franchise creator is Hungarian, and so is Olivia’s grandmother, so she travels to Pécs for a family visit and “research.” Mostly that means making eyes at her grandmother’s hunky next-door neighbor Andras (Gábor Kékessy), while collaborating on a vague plan to honor her late grandfather’s handcrafted toy-making legacy. The plot is a jumble of half-formed goals and obstacles, the characters are bland, and the depiction of Hungary is laughably sanitized, with everyone speaking English (including to each other). The change of scenery doesn’t come with an upgrade in quality. Grade: C
