Weekend movie viewing

Well, it's Christmas and Lifetime is having its yearly Christmas Romance movies. Every day a zillion romantic movies occurring around Christmas trees and all that Christian sentimentality.

First, the obvious: None of these movies specifically are about faith in Christ. At the most, very rarely they are about faith in God. But for the most time it's more of a faith in faith, faith in the power of belief, the power of love, the power of dreams. None of this is particularly bad but it's not particularly Christmassy either...except for the ubiquitous Christmas trees.

One could actually go through the 30 days of December and never get even a whiff of the Christmas story of Jesus.

But moving on to the movies. Well, first of all I have to say the magical negro was everywhere. Even if a kid doesn't know what Christmas about, by the time he has finished watching christmas movies he'll know that angels are sweet hipster black and male.

Okay, okay, the movies: The best was Eve's Christmas. A working woman goes back in time (via her helpful black angel) to marry the man she should have married instead of ending up in the evil city with wealth and power. We all know how that goes.

The worst was (Dang, I forgot the title! but it was ) about a widowed doctor's wife who is supposed to marry a nice sweet solid attorney but she meets a handsome store clerk and has qualms. Of course she goes off with the handsome store clerk because he is uh...well... handsome. These things happen. The plot is so horrible and it basically seems as if we are supposed to believe this guy is right for her simply because he is hot and funny. (Okay, I didn't think he was funny or representative of her wild and free side but I was supposed to.) Weird plot stuff aside, and zippo lack of personality traits, the worst thing is that the story gets rid of its premise half an hour after it starts. I mean: wouldn't it have been best to keep the handsome stud as poor instead of making him an architect/stock owner who gave up his evil money-making job because it wasn't noble and fulfilling enough. It just totally messed up the premise by making him rich. But I guess that's part of the entire romance genre. A good woman doesn't marry down.

The oddest film was Noel. Talk about angsty. Okay, typically some Christmas films are way full of angst. But dammit, this was way overdone. And there was even a priest who had lost his faith. (Do not let ngo on about how annoyed I get with the Robin Williams humorous outsider as wise-man schtick!) Why is humor euated with depth btw? But there was also this odd gay thread in it... which didn't go anywhere. I think basically the film -- which had tons of stars in it-- was trying to remake the typical Christmas film but didn't have the nerve to go all teh way. It was supposed to be bittersweet but it was just plain rancid.

There were some pretty dragony movies on Scifi Channel. Most were okay for the most part but Rock Monster was unintentionally humorous. It's hard to fear a rock when one keeps thinking they swiped him from Galaxy Quest.
C