MonsterHunter

Okay, I’ll admit it - I like Christmas movies. Or I guess I should say that I like the idea of Christmas movies. It seems like that a lot of times when I watch a movie that features Christmas prominently, it never fails to disappoint, substituting cheap platitudes and artificial sentiment for an interesting story or genuine feeling.

I just saw part of It’s A Wonderful Life on television the other week and I remembered that there was a reason why I hadn’t watched the whole thing and why my DVD copy of it was still shrinkwrapped from when I bought it last Christmas. Something about an angel getting its wings and some townspeople coming together to save the day and Jimmy Stewart ruining his life so his younger and more handsome brother can realize his dreams. All that gooey self-sacrifice didn’t put me in the Christmas spirit so much as it reminded to be on my guard the next time I visited my own friends and family at Christmas.

I liked Holiday Inn and White Christmas fine, except that they’re the same film starring Bing Crosby. Remember The Night had the Double Indemnity team of Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray going for it, but had the completely hokey premise of a prosecutor taking a defendant home for the holidays going against it. Stanwyck did better in Christmas In Connecticut and Robert Mitchum’s Holiday Affair was a fair to middling love story. All these movies also probably get the benefit of the doubt and I don’t hate them as much as some other films because I only watch them around Christmas when they are least likely to offend.

Now, the other film that I give great deference to for no good reason would have to be the old supernatural romantic comedy. You know these movies. Ghosts, spirits, and witches muck around with mortals trying to help out and/or participate in their love lives. You got your I Married A Witch, The Ghost And Mrs. Muir, Blithe Spirit and The Bishop’s Wife which somehow manages to combine the Christmas movie with the supernatural romance. I always liked the idea that dead people have nothing better to do in the afterlife than to hang around dumb old Earth playing matchmaker for lovable losers.

It’s with this background that I fired up Beyond Tomorrow, programmed to like it because it was a Christmas movie and it featured not one, but three ghosts! How could I not like it? It actually turned out not to be that difficult. Kind of like a Christmas miracle. But in reverse.

The movie starts out with a Christmasy enough premise. You’ve got these three old dudes who are successful businessmen. One of them is a “bah humbug” sort of guy, another is a Colonel Mustard type of British chap, and another is a festive, feel good Irishman. For some reason they are all friends and either live or hang out at the same house as this old Russian woman (Maria Ouspenskaya of The Wolf Man) who is some type of royalty and is accompanied by her faithful servant named Yakov or something.

It’s Christmas Eve and the fun loving guy named O’Brien is planning on having some people over for dinner. They cancel once it becomes apparent to them that they would actually be spending their Christmas Eve with three old guys, an ugly Russian broad, and her neutered man servant. This is a bit of a downer and the crabby one of the old guys, George, assumes that they canceled because they heard his grumpy ass would be there. He hastens to add that he was never convicted in some scandal he was involved in. This plays a little bit of a part later in the movie when he dies and ends up going to the “darkness” instead of the “light” because he was never remorseful about whatever it was he was never convicted for.

This O’Brien guy is not about to be denied a wacky and fun-filled Christmas Eve, so he concocts one of those Candid Camera stunts where they all toss out a wallet with a ten dollar bill and each one of their business cards into the street. Then they’ll wait until some appointed hour to see if anyone has the old Christmas spirit in them and returns the wallet with the cash. Once they come in to turn over the wallet, O’Brien will spring the trap and invite them to dinner.

The first wallet gets picked up some rich woman who laughs at her luck and gives the ten bucks inside to her driver and goes on about her gloriously decadent business. The time period that the three geezers had agreed upon is just expiring when there’s a knock at the door. In walks Richard Carlson, several years away from finding lasting fame for battling a guy in a rubber monster suit in Creature From The Black Lagoon. For this film he has traded in his 1950s swimming suit for an equally unflattering Texas accent.

His name is James Houston and he came up to Madison Square Garden with the rodeo and never bothered to go back to Texas. Well, like most hicks in the big city that can’t catch on with the city rodeo, he’s down on his luck, but he still has a good heart because he turned the money back in and is asking nothing in return. The old guys invite him for drinks and the crabby guy takes to him, because he’s from Oklahoma and that means they’re practically neighbors. The doorbell rings again and this time it’s some nerd girl that answers the door with the third wallet and the money. She turns it in and they invite both of these two to stay for dinner which they do.

At this point in the proceedings I am still with this movie. I’m a little leery of the whole “guy named Houston from Texas with the accent that fades in and out like the only UHF channel that I can get The 700 Club in on in my trailer” thing, but there’s snow outside, carolers running around, people doing nice deeds and even George is enjoying himself, so I’m still on this movie’s side.

However, it turns out that in addition to being a loser rodeo guy, Jimmy Houston can really sing! This is where I start to worry about things. You know how these old movies are about characters that sing these awful songs. It usually leads to some type of stab at a professional singing career and the next thing you know, your Christmas movie has turned into one of those cautionary tales about what can happen to a hillbilly that has his head turned by fame, fortune, and show biz skanks. Well, that’s what happens here, but not before we pile on so more feel good moments, and get Jimmy Houston and the nerd girl (she works in a children’s hospital) named Jean (see, I told you she was a nerd girl) all hooked up and lovey dovey!

Before they start the “all show business is evil and can turn even a good guy into an inconsiderate snake” angle, we get a lot of montages with Jean and Jimmy and the three old guys. This shows us that the three old guys really enjoy having young friends and they do crazy stuff like go bowling and visit the children’s hospital. Those are nice scenes since everyone is happy and while the old guys brought the two love birds together, the two lovebirds are showing the old timers that life can be more than just business and acquittals on scandalous (but apparently scurrilous) charges.

Sadly though, all the good times can’t last and eventually the three men have to take business trip to Pennsylvania on a plane. The plane naturally crashes and just as soon as Jean and James show up to tell their friends the news that they’re getting married, they find out that they’re dead. Now, just because these guys are dead, doesn’t mean that we’ve seen the last of them. It turns out that this is one of those deals where their spirits show back up at the house and they hang out and talk for awhile about how they got killed, but are still hanging around.

These ghosts don’t seem to know what to do with themselves because they don’t do much but sit around and talk with each other. Usually these types of apparitions like to take a more active role in things, but they don’t, beyond whispering into some character’s ear something or other that the character either follows or doesn’t depending on what the plot demands.

With their friends dead, James somehow parlays his fame for knowing the dead guys into a shot at stardom singing the classics on the radio. Also singing on the radio is established star Arlene Terry. She’s a famous, beautiful woman that immediately sets her sights on our hero, James, the singing rodeo clown. This is the beginning of a very unconvincing love triangle that sees James begin to ignore his intended for the attentions of the conniving Arlene. Now, James doesn’t ever seem to do much more than practice his singing with her an awful lot, mind you, but this is what passes for a “cheating heart” in this flick.

The movie at this point in time has slowed to a complete crawl, the relationship between Arlene and James not being very interesting and his relationship to Jean just kind of sits in limbo with Jean doing nothing more than frowning and whimpering periodically whenever James calls to cancel on her. If James had actually done anything with Arlene or had shown the slightest interest in her other than as a professional role model, I might have been able to muster up some enthusiasm for this aspect of the film, but so little was going on, I was beginning to wonder if maybe I had died and my ghost had ended up trapped in a real dull house populated by a bunch of dunderheads that wouldn’t heed my whispered entreaties to “pick up the pace!”

What about all those elderly ghosts running around? Well, they all disappear, called to their final resting place, with O’Brien refusing to go because he wants to make sure that Jean and James get back together. There’s a climax here where the action picks up so that things are no longer a complete flatline. Arlene’s ex shows up and shoots James and her. She dies and O’Brien pleads with the higher power to give the guy one more chance.

I don’t know what message the movie tried to show us. James really didn’t do anything to deserve a second chance at love. In fact, he’s only going back to the nerd girl because the sultry singer is dead. The stuff with the ghosts is pointless with George’s choices and predicament wound up way too easily (you can get by just by saying you’re sorry once you find out how awful the darkness is?) and the ghosts not figuring in much of the plot.

The idea that O’Brien would give up his everlasting place in heaven just to see to it that his young friends triumphed in love is compelling, but isn’t given anything but a cursory play here and nothing goes on long enough for you to get too wrapped up in it. A decent start is completely marred by the dull plot twists and uninteresting and unconvincing finale. Just skip it and fire up some version of A Christmas Carol if you insist on a Christmas movie with ghosts that wear Depends.

© 2008 MonsterHunter