• Hey! We're on Twitter!

  • Buy The Book!

  •  

     

    Click to Buy The Mug

    Buy The Book

I’ve got a treat for you, kids. Today we’re fortunate to be visited by longtime Wo’C guest columnist Bill S., scourge of wingnut movies and critics alike, who had the nerve to go where I feared to tread this year. Take it away, Bill!

Earlier this month, the Lifetime Movie Network treated us to a heartwarming trio of films aired back-to-back: , a made-for-TV movie inspired by the Worst. Christmas. Song. Ever., followed by its two sequels, The Christmas Blessing and The Christmas Hope.

[Note from Scott: It appears that the movie, The Christmas Shoes was based on a novel, which was based on a song — at least, that’s the lineage according to author Donna Van Liere, and why would a writer lie about swiping her literary premise from the crappiest Christmas carol ever (unless she’s just trying to shift the blame a bit)?]

I taped them all, with the intention of offering a review of all three in time for Christmas. Unfortunately, I was only able to get through the first one, so the other two will have to wait til next Christmas. Something to look forward to, I suppose. Even more unfortunately, I still hadn’t finished writing the first draft by Christmas day, so you’ll excuse my tardiness. You might think of this as a package that arrived a bit late. Or maybe a fabulous post-holiday markdown. Or a slice of leftover, moldy fruitcake. I like to think it’s all three…

THE CHRISTMAS SHOES
Our story begins, fittingly enough, in a cemetery. Rob Lowe is visiting his mother’s grave on Christmas Eve. The only other visitor is a mysterious young man in a baseball cap, standing at another grave just a few feet away. Who could he be? We don’t know yet, but we soon will, as the film flashes back to a Christmas many years ago…

It’s 1985, although many of the cars, and Rob Lowe’s face, are clearly from two decades later. Rob is a lawyer, and his wife Kate is a stay-at-home mom who looks after their daughter Lily. They seem to have a perfect life, except he’s such a busy, workaholic yuppie he has no time to enjoy the small, incidental pleasures like attending his daughter’s concert recitals, or actually talking to his wife. What a tool.

Lily begs him to attend her next concert, and Rob promises her he will. His conviction is so strong, so clear, that we know, without a shadow of a doubt, that he will screw up and miss it. While in town for some important lawyering, a delivery truck whizzes by him and a package drops out the back and hits the ground by his feet, flying open. Rob picks it up to examine its contents: a pair of tacky red women’s shoes with little sprigs of holly drawn on them. CHRISTMAS SHOES! Noting they aren’t his style (he actually DOES say this), he tries to return them to the truck, which by this time is about half a mile away. His attempt to return the box consists of standing in the same spot, holding one shoe aloft and saying, in a slightly louder tone, “Hey!” What a tool.

Later, he passes the home of Maggie Andrews (Kimberly Williams). She’s out in the front yard, teaching her son Nathan the finer points of hurling footballs at moving vehicles. Rob gives her pointers and departs. Nathan races his mother back to the house, but Maggie seems to be having trouble keeping up. Her pace gets slower and her breathing gets shallow, which either indicates that she’s got a Movie-of-the-Week disease of the week, or she’s just trying to match the director’s tone, since most of this movie is slow and shallow.

Maggie’s husband, Jack, is a schlubby auto mechanic. Nathan pleads with him for a puppy, and his mother supports this. Jack, however, shoots down the idea by going into Nathan’s room and hauling out a bowl containing a pair goldfish floating belly-up. He declares Nathan “irresponsible,” which is ironic coming from a guy who let his son keep a pair of dead fish in his bedroom for two weeks.

Maggie works at Nathan’s school as its music teacher. Oh, correction — she volunteers at the school. Being a virtuous woman, she, like Kate, would never take a paying job away from a man. One day she’s visiting a class presided over by Dalton, who, unfortunately is no relation to our favorite . Instead, as played by Dorian Harewood, he’s the film’s token Negro, who’s always around to offer white people a helping hand or words of wisdom. In addition to being Nathan and Molly’s teacher, he also lives next door to Rob’s mother Ellen. He appears to have no life of his own and, unless I missed something (please don’t make me watch this again), he’s the only racial minority in the whole town. But he does know how to tell a good story, and on the day Maggie visits, he tells a doozy about a pair of MAGICAL SHOES! that causes her to go all weepy.

At the rehearsal for the upcoming choir performance, Kate and Maggie meet and become fast friends. Maggie notes how talented Lily is. The girl does indeed have a pretty voice, which lends to selections like “America, the Beautiful” and other favorites that are public domain. Kate modestly insists her daughter didn’t inherit her gift from her. Which could be true. One thing for sure-she didn’t inherit her singing talent from her dad (Caution: ).

Rob visits his mother after a busy day of lawyering, and she offers him some sage advice: “Don’t just make money. Make memories.” That advice proves to be too little, too late, because, of course, he missed his daughter’s choir performance yet again, and arrives home to find Kate watching it on a videotape. She could probably make good money as a videographer, because Lily is framed perfectly, and there’s no audio interference from the people Kate was standing next to when she shot it. At the end of Lily’s song, Maggie appears to announce that the school choir’s been selected to perform in the town square. Rob doesn’t seem to recognize her as the woman he met just a couple days ago. What a tool.

A doctor pays a visit to Maggie’s house, and we learn that she’s suffering from a Tragic Fatal Illness. Judging from the symptoms we’ve seen her exhibit, Kimberly Williams sought out Ali MacGraw as a medical consultant. (She’d have been better off hiring Ali as an acting coach.) As Jack and Maggie learn she has congestive heart failure, Nathan, in another room, overhears everything. The doctor suggests the couple go to Boston to look into the possibility of a heart transplant.

Maggie has grown too weak to continue teaching, so she asks Kate, who happens to have been a music major, to take over the class. Kate agrees, and in doing so, blows off a job interview Rob had set up for her. When Kate explains the situation — that her friend has a serious illness, Rob responds in typical fashion, suggesting Maggie try popping an aspirin. What a tool.

He still hasn’t returned those tacky CHRISTMAS SHOES!, so he brings them to the address on the box — Wilson’s Department Store. The owner, Mr. Wilson, is cheerfully decorating a lamp outside the store when he arrives. Wilson remarks, “It doesn’t look like anything we ordered”, and then looks in the box. (Yes. In that order.) Noting that Rob is having car trouble, he sends him over to Jack’s mechanic shop, where Jack’s dim-bulb partner observes, “There’s a guy who drinks cappuccino!”, whatever that’s supposed to mean.

Jack and Maggie take the trip to Boston, leaving Nathan to stay over at Dalton’s house. The boy passes the time by asking questions like, “Have you ever known anyone who died?” Seeing what a downer he is, Dalton tries to cheer him up by bringing him to Ellen’s house, which has been decorated with enough lights to land a 747 in her backyard. He begins poking around Rob’s childhood bedroom, which is wall-to-wall baseball memorabilia. Ellen gives Nathan her son’s old baseball cap, which looks just like the one worn by the young man at the beginning of this movie. Coincidence? Yes! If you’re really, really slow, that is. Ellen comes across Rob’s old lunch box, and decides to mail it to him, along with a Meaningful Letter. [And what would be a more exciting gift to receive at Christmas than a rusty lunch pail that reminds you of getting pantsed in Junior High, and contains a guilt-inducing note from your mother and a Thermos that still smells faintly of sour milk?]

The visit to Boston starts out fine — Maggie can get a transplant (yay), but then, not so fine — the donor had hepatitis B (boo!) and there’s no hope left. Maggie is not long for this world. (Thanks, Mr. Movie Producer Any way you can work the same magic on the rest of the cast?)

Kate visits Maggie, who’s now using an oxygen mask, and looks really really sickly. Kate notices how attentive and affectionate Jack is towards Maggie and confesses a bit of envy. Maggie responds with, “Oh, well, you’re welcome to trade places with me and drop dead before you’re 30, you stupid cow!” Oh, wait, I’m sorry. That’s what I would have said. Saint Maggie advises Kate to remember the early days of her marriage. The happier times. When Rob wasn’t a tool.

She then recalls her own happiest times with Jack. The annual tradition they had, of dancing together at Christmas, those special shoes he had that seemed Magical. This gives Nathan an idea. He wants to buy his mom some CHRISTMAS SHOES!

He runs to his dad’s mechanics’ shop and excitedly tells him, “I want a job!” Jack sternly tells him, “We are NOT GETTING A PUPPY!” It would be incredibly easy for Nathan to clear up this misunderstanding, but this movie has a fatal case of Idiot Plot Syndrome, so he never does. Just then Rob arrives, and bitching about what he thinks is crappy service, tells Jack, regarding the latter’s his failing business, “No wonder you’re dying.” What a tool. He emphasizes his point by angrily flinging an empty soda can in a nearby trashcan and speeds away. Jack fishes out the can and beaming, says to Nathan, “Well, here’s a nickel!” A light goes on in the boy’s head, and he comes up with a plan: to make the money to buy his mom her CHRISTMAS SHOES!, he’ll collect empty cans. (This isn’t necessarily a dumb idea: one time, when my parents went away on vacation leaving me and my brothers home alone, I cleared $23 worth of empties left over from the party that commenced within seconds after my folks were outta the driveway.) He informs Dalton of his plan.

Rob meets with his clients for his current case, a group of farmers. It has to do with irrigation ditches draing too much water from the river and hurting wildlife. Or something like that. To tell the truth, I really didn’t give a rat’s ass about this subplot, so I wasn’t paying much attention to it. In my defense, neither were the filmmakers.

Maggie is now confined to a hospital bed in her home. Nathan decorates the guardrails with twinkly lights. They’re very pretty, if wildly impractical. Much like buying shoes for a bedridden woman.

Over at Ellen’s house, the family and Dalton are having a grand time singing “Jingle Bells.” These are the kind of people who, when they get to the “Laughing all the way” part, add “Ha-ha-ha!” (Don’t you want to smack them?) Ellen gives Rob a lecture on remembering the good old days, but it doesn’t do much to ease the tension between him and Kate as they leave. They step outside to say their goodbyes, and Dalton says goodnight to Ellen, then loads up a giant bag of empty soda cans into his car.

Meanwhile, Maggie takes Nathan aside for a Meaningful Discussion. She somberly, and rather presumptuously, tells the boy that very soon, she’ll be departing to Heaven. Nathan has a lot of questions: “Are there animals in Heaven? Like puppies?” Maggie assures him that when his puppy dies, it will go to Heaven to join those two goldfish he killed.

The next day, Dalton notices Ellen’s Christmas lights are still on. Since this is usually a symptom of a medical emergency, he enters the house and finds the old lady sitting in her rocking chair, dead as a goldfish, but not, fortunately, floating tits-up in shallow water. (Thank you again, Mr. Movie Producer.) At her funeral, the farmers Rob was representing approach Kate and try to convince her he isn’t a total tool. We’ll see.

Dalton and Nathan wander about town for a heart to heart. Every so often, Nathan finds a discarded soda can and immediately picks it up. Dalton leads him to a deserted alley, where the boys discovers: a hundred cans! It’s a Christmas miracle! AND a pointless act of littering. It sure was touching the way Dalton scattered his cans on the ground to surprise Nathan, wasn’t it? I mean, most people would have just given him the BAG of cans, still bundled up, or better still, gone to the store to collect the deposit and given the kid the cash (chipping in a little extra if he could spare it.) But who wants to do that, and miss out on the chance to watch a ten-year old crawl around a grimy alley, in the middle of winter, plucking up each can one by one?

The Christmas Choir, led by Kate and featuring Lily, passes by the law office where Rob works. He hears it, rises, walks over to the window and briefly glances out, without bothering to open the window and wave to his wife and daughter. This guy is such a tool his wife’s pet name for him is probably “Mr. Goodwrench.”

Time’s running out for Maggie, the movie, and our patience. She and Jack share a tender moment: Maggie asks for one last dance. Jack picks her up from the bed and carries her around the room, with a sad, pained look on his face — either an expression of grief, or her dead weight is aggravating his sciatica. But they’re so lost in this intimate moment, they don’t notice that Nathan has sped out of the house to Wilson’s department store.

And we come to the Big Moment, the one described in the Horrible Song. Nathan desperately searches for those tacky red CHRISTMAS SHOES, but to no avail. Rob, who’s in the store as well, mumbles something about a teddy bear to the crying boy seated in a heap on the floor, then walks away. What a tool. But as he saunters off, he accidentally kicks over the box containing the shoes Nathan was looking for. The kid rushes to the counter, cutting in front of Rob (Atta boy! If you’d stepped on his foot, you’d be my hero!) Unfortunately, he’s $5.50 short. The cashier behaves like a total dick and the soon to be semi-orphaned child bursts into tears. He explains his predicament to Rob, who takes pity on the boy and gives the cashier the remaining balance for the CHRISTMAS SHOES. Noting that Rob still hasn’t paid for his own items, the cashier asks, “Are you ready to cash out?” Rob replies, “No — I don’t think I am.” He decides to try and patch things up with Kate, and hops in his car, but it won’t start. (Nice repair job, Jack.) Wilson offers him a ride, and tells him the location of the Christmas Concert has been changed. Gee, I wonder where?

Nathan races back to his house, passing the herd of candle-bearing Carolers standing on his front lawn, while The Worst. Christmas. Song. Ever. blares on the soundtrack, drowning out the much nicer one the choir was singing. He arrives just in time to slip the MAGIC CHRISTMAS SHOES on his mother’s feet. She’s touched by this gesture, tells him she loves him, and tastefully dies. Apparently her living will contained both a Do Not Resuscitate and Do Not Cremate Me Barefoot order. Oh, and, uh, Kate and Rob reconcile.

Back at the office, Rob finally finds the lunch box Ellen mailed before she died, and begins reading the dribbly note she wrote. The camera dissolves to present day, with him still reading the note at her graveside. We don’t know what Kate got Rob for Christmas, but a gift certificate for the Evelyn Wood course might have been helpful.

Meanwhile, the Young Man in the baseball cap places a box on the grave he was loitering over during the flashback. He and Rob exchange a few niceties, ending with Rob saying, “Nice cap.” Look, I don’t care how handsome Rob Lowe is, there’s still something creepy and wrong about cruising in a elementary. The youth isn’t interested though, and leaves. Rob makes his way over to the grave the guy was visiting, and the camera pans down to reveal the name: Maggie Andrews. Just in case there were two or three people who DIDN’T figure out it was Nathan whom Robert had been talking to. And laying on top of the grave are those MAGIC CHRISTMAS SHOES! (What happened to the box? Nathan didn’t take it with him — maybe he tossed it into a nearby open grave.) Rob suddenly realizes who he was talking to, and calls out, “Hey! Gimme back my baseball cap, you thieving punk!”

Well, he might as well have. What the hell kinda ending is this? Rob has this life changing experience wherein a dying woman touches the lives of his wife, his daughter and himself, but, years later, he’s severed ties from her family so completely that, not only doesn’t he recognize her son, but…he DOESN’T EVEN REMEMBER THAT MAGGIE’S GRAVE IS JUST A FEW FRAKKIN’ FEET AWAY FROM HIS MOTHER’S?

What a tool.

But, on a more hopeful note: Nathan apparantly held onto his dead mother’s tacky shoes for fifteen years.

Now, doesn’t THAT warm your heart?

Merry Week After Christmas, Everyone.
-Bill S

14 Responses to “Bill S. Walks a Mile in Rob Lowe’s Christmas Shoes

Lily begs him to attend her next concert, and Rob promises her he will. His conviction is so strong, so clear, that we know, without a shadow of a doubt, that he will screw up and miss it.

So basically, Robin Williams did this shtick first and better in “Hook”, right?

Aren’t you supposed to click the red shoes’ heels three times and say, “There’s no place like Nome” and then instead of Heaven, you go to Alaska?

Well, that movie is one steaming pile of holiday magic, I tell you what. I accept as my Festivus present that you sat through the damn thing and not me. Yay!

Happy holidays to all you folks out there in comment land!

Oh, and (yuk, yuk, yuk; they won’t see this coming)… see you next year, or yahr, if you speak pirate.

There were a couple other things about the movie that I wish I’d included in the column:
1. The only woman in the movie to hold a paying job is a legal assistant at the firm Rob works at. She’s a frequent target of his verbal tirades at work. (What a tool.) She’s also the most plain-looking woman in the cast. Even the grandmother was prettier.
2. It seems awfully odd that the owner of that department store is a super-nice guy, but his employees are such assholes. I can’t help but think that if Mr. Wilson had been present during the shoe episode, he’d have given the kid a discount on the spot and reprimanded that cashier for his snotty attitude.

If you haven’t heard Patton Oswalt’s rant on “The Christmas Shoes” (the execrable song, not the execrable movie), well, I pity you. Correct this failing now!

But, what was the point of the Christmas shoes? Everybody died.

People sometimes say “Nice Hat” to my husband, but thats because he wears a Fozzy Bear cap. There is a whole sub-culture, one that easily beats the “Fight Club” one, and that is the Fozzy Bear lovers. They’re *everywhere*.

LOL Bill thanks for watching so we don’t have too. Here’s another take on that song that I’m sure will be more to your liking.

Happy New years all!

http://puntabulous.com/2009/12/21/the-adventures-of-super-viagra-and-vagina-girl-a-christmas-miracle/

I’m happy enough with Bill S.’s take on this show and conclude that teevee seems to have some silent demand that most all fiction/drama/sitcoms be so bad as to fit for punishment.

“You are hereby sentenced to ten months of “Saved by the Bell”, “Full House” and every Christmas special every produced.”

I’d rather spend ten months in close confinement with psychopathic, recently converted lesbian killers.

What happened to the link Mary posted?

“I’d rather spend ten months in close confinement with psychopathic, recently converted lesbian killers.” — Kate

Sooo… you’ve met my ex? Didn’t know that she’d finally made it to the big house, but nice to know that she’s finally “out,” even if she never GETS out, which, really, would be doing society a favor.

I hope that you also realize that you just gave six different porno producers half-chubs and “plots” (ha!) for a series of nine installments of prison-themed “lesbian” flix, right?

Waaayyyy more profitable than cheerleaders having pillow fights, I can promise you that.

ANNNNYYYWAAAYYYYYY… Bill, darlin’ heart, you have, as always, my utmost appreciation and admiration. Talk about “taking one for the team” — dood, enduring THAT clusterfuck ought to have earned you a Congressional Medal of Honor. Fuck, if Dumbya can throw ‘em out like Mardi Gras Beads, you oughta have THREE, if you’ve listened to the shitty song AND read the book.

You do a far, far better thing than I have ever done before, and hell no, I am NOT volunteering for the next mental hari-kiri for the sake of any fake-ass holidays or even for the sake of the glorious World O’Crap itself. Ain’t a gun big enough ever been made, to make me submit to anything THIS painful, honestly. And I have to spend some fraction of every day watching the “THIS!” channel from MGM, which is the EPITOME of mental masochism.

You are a brave man, Bill, and I hope that Santa/Satan rewarded you justly and copiously for throwing yourself onto this visual grenade. And no, you shouldn’t be penalized for turning in your homework late, you were saving US from the pain as long as you could, so it was an action of self-sacrifice on your part which, I might note, oughta earn you extra brownie-points with Santa/Satan in the getting-prezzies department.

I didn’t read the book, Annti, but I DID watch the movie three times before writing the column.
And here’s something I only just recently learnt (or I’d have included it in my column): it actually started out as an Internet story designed to promote a line of shoes. In other words, the MOVIE is based on a book that’s based on a song, that’s based on an ADVERTISEMENT.
And I thought spinning off a sitcom from a series of commercials featuring guys dressed like cavemen was a horribly stupid idea. But, compared to this…
And Santa didn’t bring me NEARLY enough to compensate.

Good God, Bill. I had no idea what we were putting you through. That’s just… appalling. Was the Rob Lowe at least worthwhile, despite the tooliness of the character?

In any event, I admire the snark, though it took me too long to tell you, but it made up for the new years migraine I had. And was *way* better than Sherlock Holmes, which brought the migraine on.

What a shitty, shitty, movie. The link to Roadhouse puts it into sharp relief: there’s fun shitty, and then there’s painful shitty. Sorry you spent a few hours of your holiday taking in the latter.

Something to say?