Crimes:
•
Contriving a new holiday movie that combines the slapstick violence of the '90s Dennis The Menace
with a tangled plot that includes a small-town holiday bike race, a Dickensian
Christmas angel named Bob, and a miracle snowfall in a community that hasn't
seen a white Christmas in years
•
Shooting on hazy DV, sprinkled with clunky (and largely unnecessary) digital
effects
• Being
simultaneously cloyingly sweet and excruciatingly crass
Defender: Director Ron Oliver
and star Robert Wagner
Tone of
commentary: For
Oliver? Chuckle-y and matter-of-fact. For Wagner? Surprised. "It's a pleasure
to be here watching this for the first time," Wagner says at the outset, and
throughout, he keeps asking questions like, "Is this scene in the picture?" and
"There's a bike race at the end of this film?" Yet Wagner is so gracious and
supportive that he expresses enthusiasm for everything he sees, to the extent that
five minutes in, watching a routine helicopter shot, he says, "Seeing this,
it's really just amazing how it came together."
What
went wrong: Cable-TV
veteran Oliver tried to think outside the box, creating a Dennis that's more a
misunderstood sweetie-pie than an incorrigible mischief-maker. "This is how I
imagine Hank Ketcham would do it now if he were coming up with the characters,"
Oliver insists, adding, "We were remembering the Dennis The Menace stuff, but not really addressing it
as 'Dennis The Menace.'" And though Oliver and Wagner are watching a rough cut
with no effects as they comment, Oliver keeps raving about the effects that are going to be
there, including the CGI pies that will eventually be hitting Wagner in the
head. "Not a single real pie was harmed," Oliver jokes, blissfully unaware that
he's just described one of the major problems with this movie.
Comments
on the cast: Oliver
identifies the mostly Canadian cast by the long-forgotten MTV and Nickelodeon
shows on which he worked with them. ("He was in Dead At 21… so talented, and funny as crap.")
Wagner identifies them by his most recent encounters. ("I saw him the other day
when I was doing the ADR. Very humorous man.")
Inevitable
dash of pretension: During
the opening credits, the director says, "I don't like to say 'A Ron Oliver
Film,' I like to say 'A Ron Oliver Movie.' I think a film is an important
political statement, and a movie is just entertainment." Then less than two
minutes later, he explains, "I wanted to make a movie about a 6-year-old kid
and his next-door neighbor, and about how they are linked together
inextricably."
Commentary
in a nutshell: "There's
nothing funnier than a kid in a pickle costume chasing a turkey around."