Candy Cane Lane (2023)
All Chris wants for Christmas is to win his street’s massive annual Christmas light contest, and he needs something super flashy. Everyone has a theme going, but for some reason Chris mostly wants to beat his neighbor, Bruce and his army of inflatables, maybe because he’s irritated at Bruce’s liking for boxed wine.
To make matters worse, Chris gets laid off from his job. Meanwhile, his wife, Carol, is all set for a big promotion at a mail-order company called Shyp that looks suspiciously like Amazon. “So…packing peanuts.”
Groan.
Chris and his daughter, Holly make the rounds, and after the movie features sweeping views of Walmart, Costco, and Target (yes, we see the logos and branding for each of them), they’ve got nothing. Nothing, that is, until they drive under an overpass and spy a mysterious little store called Kringle’s.
If this happens to anyone in real life, not that it would, keep driving. We all know this.
Naturally, Chris and Holly don’t keep driving. They meet Pepper, who, unbeknownst to them, is the Lucifer of the North Pole (read: an elf who was banished by Santa for going really bad), and she sells Chris a pop-up Twelve Days of Christmas…tree? Lawn ornament? Sculpture? Who knows, but either way, the thing comes in a giant tuna can and the instructions tell Chris to rub the partridge and make a wish.
Nothing good comes of this, although intially the lawn sculpture is so impressive it can be seen from thirty thousand feet in the air. After that, life goes haywire. And all because Chris failed to read the fine print when he signed the Kringle’s receipt.
Oh, and anyone who has ever wished Christmas village figurines could talk is going to be very happy with Candy Cane Lane, at least in some respects.
Ah, Christmas. Ah, Amazon. Ah, commercialism. Ah, Eddie Murphy.
I’m really trying hard to find something good to say about this movie, but I can’t. The premise is unique, but that’s about it. It’s exhausting. It tries too hard. The message is all over the place. From a comedic standpoint ninety-five percent of the schtick whiffs at windmills when it doesn’t have to. I think I maybe sincerely laughed twice during the movie’s interminable two-hour run time. Not even Eddie Murphy could save this thing, which is saying something.
And the movie had such untapped potential, especially in the hugely messy third act, which has the characters running around like maniacs in the midst of a crowd that does nothing except mill around. They’re like NPCs, so much so that I was getting a certain Zelda sound effect in my head every thirty seconds.
I wish, I wish, I wish Eddie Murphy ad libbed more, if he did at all, because Candy Cane Lane badly needs it. Like the weird tuna can thingie that held the Twelve Days of Christmas sculpture from the depths of Hades, the fun stuff is all confined and controlled, and even when the can is open nothing comes out in any kind of remarkable way.
The product placement, while not quite on the level of Josie and the Pussycats, is annoyingly prominent. When a movie is funded by one of the biggest, if not the biggest companies on the planet, product placement seems insincere. Also insincere is Carol working at an Amazon-like company, because Amazon appears to be stopping short of advertising itself in a movie they funded.
Please, sir, can I have some more money?
What’s ironic is that MGM, the studio Amazon just bought and which produced Candy Cane Lane, once had no qualms whatsoever about self-advertising in films. Seriously, during the Golden Era they did it all the time in one way or another. Legend has it the “God’s Country” number from Babes In Arms had to be edited in pre-production because it mentioned too many MGM stars.
Candy Cane Lane seems best when kept in the background and not studied too closely if possible. While I hope MGM steps up their game in the Chistmas movie department, the odds are good that somewhere out there, a Hallmark executive is no doubt dropping another marshmallow into his or her cup of hot chocolate and smirking comfortably.
Candy Cane Lane is currently streaming on Amazon Prime. Rated PG.
My grade: D+
Principal Cast: Eddie Murphy, Tracee Ellis Ross, Jillian Bell, Genneya Walton, Thaddeus J. Mixson, Madison Thomas, Nick Offerman, Chris Redd, Robin Thede, David Alan Grier, Ken Marino, Anjelah Johnson-Reyes, Lombardo Boyar, Timothy Simons, Danielle Pinnock, D.C. Young Fly, Iman Benson, Belle Le Grand.
Directed by Reginald Hudlin.
Written by Kelly Younger.