Ep.# 386 - The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause, with Alonso Duralde

[0:00] On this episode, we discuss the Santa Clause 3, the Escape Clause.

[0:05] Okay, real quick, can I just enact the Escape Clause right now and not have to do this episode?

[0:10] No, you're cursed.

[0:12] Oh.

[0:30] Hey everyone, welcome to the Flophouse, I'm Dan McCoy.

[0:37] I'm Stuart Wellington.

[0:38] I'm Elliot Kalin, and before we get into our normal tomfoolery and jack-cornery and sitting

[0:44] in a cornery and putting our thumbery into Christmas pies and pulling out a plumbery,

[0:49] I wanted to introduce our very special guest today.

[0:52] That's right, it's that time of the year, the holiday season, and so we couldn't do

[0:57] an episode without our favorite, Holidays, although we should have him on for non-holiday

[1:01] movies also, guest.

[1:02] He's the film reviews editor for The Wrap, he's co-host of a vast universe of podcasts,

[1:07] and he's the author of the book, Have Yourself a Movie, Little Christmas, and co-author of

[1:11] I'll Be Home for Christmas Movies, that's right, you already knew who it was before

[1:14] I started the introduction, Alonzo Doralde, our favorite.

[1:17] Thank you so much for joining us, Alonzo.

[1:18] Happy Holidays, everybody.

[1:21] My spoke in the wheel has come back, I'm very excited.

[1:26] Yep, once a year, you have to come and help us to guide our way through this strange time

[1:31] we call Christmas time, or Yuletide, or X-mas, or the Yuletide is rising, or if you look

[1:40] at Dan's search history, triple X-mas, I'm here to show you the true meaning of Christmas

[1:46] flops.

[1:47] Yeah, so on this podcast, Dan, what do we normally do?

[1:53] Well, we watch a bad movie and then we talk about it, that's the simplest way, and perhaps

[1:58] the simple old ways are best.

[1:59] It's worked all the time, to say it that way, yeah.

[2:02] But, Dan wants to amend it, it seems like.

[2:05] No, no, there are a few things I want to say up top, if you're at home, you know, throwing

[2:10] your phone into the local pond, or water treatment, like off-ramp, I don't know, what am I looking

[2:18] for?

[2:19] The local pond off-ramp, so that the frogs know how to get in and out of the ponds, yeah.

[2:24] If you're angry, I was about to say that there's no Cage-mas content here, I just want to say

[2:30] a quick word about Cage-mas, I'm not saying Cage-mas is dead, people, but we've seen this

[2:38] last year, there was a book, a retrospective book, The Age of Cage, by Keith Phipps, who

[2:44] we really should ask to be on the show to talk about it at some point, there was a movie

[2:50] that was very meta about Cage's career, and Mr. Nicolas Cage seems to have paid off all

[2:57] of his castle debts, and is back to making movies that he's chosen, perhaps more wisely.

[3:06] All these things together, there's a war on Cage-mas, led by Nicolas Cage himself.

[3:13] I'm glad we're right up top, we're alienating all the new listeners who are like, I love

[3:17] the Santa Claus 3, I want to hear these dudes talk about it.

[3:20] Also, you know what, after all these years, Nicolas Cage, I've been uncomfortable with

[3:26] the meme-ification of a man who I think is a good actor, and our own part in it.

[3:31] I'm not saying that in the future, if we don't have a good Cage movie, we're not going

[3:34] to bite right into that apple, but perhaps not every year going forth.

[3:40] We're not going to force it.

[3:42] We don't have the material.

[3:45] It reminds me of when I worked at the Daily Show, and people would be like, ugh, this

[3:49] Bush, because it was back when Bush was president.

[3:51] This Bush-

[3:52] Yeah, the worst president we've ever had, right?

[3:55] I mean, the fact that two of the worst presidents in American history happened this, in like

[3:59] the past 20 years in this century, kind of sucks, but one almost after another.

[4:03] But people would be like, you don't like him as president, but you must love that he's

[4:08] doing the job, because he gives you so much material.

[4:10] I'd be like, no I don't.

[4:11] I would rather the show get canceled and the country be doing well.

[4:14] I feel that way about Nicolas Cage.

[4:17] I love him as an actor.

[4:18] I just re-watched Vampire's Kiss recently, which people are like, look at this crazy

[4:22] performance, but I love that performance.

[4:24] And I think this was a good year for Nicolas Cage, and I would rather he have a good year

[4:29] and be respected as the actor he is, than he be forced to make just crap after crap

[4:33] so that we have something to talk about.

[4:36] The other thing is, I was very excited to talk about Santa Claus 3 with our pal Alonzo

[4:42] Viraldi more than I was to try and watch the Nicolas Cage movie right now.

[4:47] So let's get into that piece of shit we just watched.

[4:52] So real quick, we're talking about the Santa Claus 3, the escape clause, which is the third

[4:56] in a series, a series of movies I've seen none of.

[4:59] Really?

[5:00] I've seen none of.

[5:01] But Dan here...

[5:02] Really?

[5:03] You said as if it would make sense for Stewart to track down each of these family movies

[5:06] starring Tim Allen.

[5:07] I feel like by some sort of cultural osmosis, people in general have seen the first Santa

[5:14] Claus movie.

[5:15] I mean, I saw the first Santa Claus when I was a kid.

[5:17] I was, yeah, I was 12, I think, when it came out, and I saw that in the theaters, but Santa

[5:21] Claus 2, I didn't see.

[5:22] See, at that point, I was like, what, 14?

[5:24] So I was already watching hardcore pornography and facing death and shit, so...

[5:28] If Stewart had said, well, I've never seen Galaxy Quest, I would say, really?

[5:32] That's the Tim Allen family movie.

[5:33] I would be surprised for Stewart not to have seen.

[5:37] Dan, would you like to tell us, Stewart, sorry to take this under, Dan, would you like to

[5:41] tell us about the research project that you put together before watching this, and then

[5:44] fill us in on the previous history of the films?

[5:47] Last night, Audrey was like, so we're going to watch the Santa Claus before watching the

[5:52] Santa Claus 3, right?

[5:54] And I'm like, are we?

[5:55] And she said, you know...

[5:56] She goes, happy wife, happy life, Dan.

[5:57] So yeah, you're watching the Santa Claus.

[5:58] And points to a sign they have on their wall.

[5:59] Maybe I entered into this fear of that myself, but I was like, sure, you know, because it

[6:06] was a favorite from her childhood, and I watched it in theater, too, when it first

[6:12] came out, and that was the last time I had seen or thought about the Santa Claus.

[6:17] But once we were into the Santa Claus, I was like, I kind of want to watch the Santa Claus

[6:22] 2 as well.

[6:24] And so it turned into a three-movie marathon last night, just because I was curious about

[6:29] how they could possibly keep pushing this premise in different directions.

[6:33] That's right.

[6:34] So viewers, last night, Dan had every man's dream, a threesome of Santa Claus movies.

[6:40] All three clauses.

[6:41] Now, I can assume that the first one is the Santa Claus, Tim Allen becomes Santa Claus.

[6:47] Okay, yeah.

[6:48] And the second one is the Santa Claus 2, Santa horny, and they need to find him a wife.

[6:54] That is essentially it.

[6:55] Kind of.

[6:56] I want to get into it just with a little more depth.

[6:59] I promise I won't take up too much time before we get to the movie we're essentially talking

[7:03] about.

[7:05] Santa Claus 1, very much right in the middle of those 90s family films, which are much

[7:11] more about a depressed, divorced dad than you would expect, and I'm like, why was this

[7:17] the family film thing?

[7:19] We have to show Tim Allen at the beginning of the Santa Claus is a genuine asshole.

[7:25] Not like a comedy asshole.

[7:27] Just like this.

[7:28] Weird.

[7:29] That must have been a real stretch for actor Tim Allen to do that.

[7:32] Not a very nice man in real life, but this is also of the time therapy was mistrusted

[7:39] even in the mid 90s.

[7:41] As recently as the mid 90s, there are a lot of jokes about how Judge Reinhold's stepfather

[7:46] character is a therapist and how that's bad somehow, I guess, because he cares about emotions

[7:53] and it's nice.

[7:54] Unlike Tim Allen.

[7:55] His Cosby sweaters.

[7:56] Yeah.

[7:57] And every time he's on screen, they play like yoga music.

[8:00] Mm hmm.

[8:01] Mm hmm.

[8:02] Well, I mean, it was this one.

[8:03] He takes up yoga, but yeah, well, it's like how in the 80s movies, the idea of sushi was

[8:09] automatically a joke.

[8:10] Yes.

[8:11] Only a crazy, weird, rich person in a city would think to eat sushi.

[8:15] And now it's something that is all over the place or I mean, literally, I need to clean

[8:18] it up.

[8:19] It's all over my house.

[8:20] It's just a mess.

[8:21] Cell phones, even like the early big brick cell phones.

[8:24] Yeah.

[8:25] You had one in a movie.

[8:26] You were an irredeemable douchebag.

[8:27] Yeah.

[8:28] Yeah.

[8:29] It's basically now we're all super cool.

[8:31] It's basically the Santa Claus.

[8:34] We're a rich guy who pours his every thought into a cell phone just to share with the world

[8:39] is just is a philosopher king of some kind.

[8:42] Yeah.

[8:43] There's basically the Santa Claus one.

[8:46] The arc is him becoming slightly less of an asshole through becoming Santa Claus.

[8:52] Through killing Santa Claus and then taking on and then taking on his role like Craven

[8:56] the Hunter.

[8:57] Yeah.

[8:58] Burying Spider-Man alive and then putting his costume on to prove he's better than Spider.

[9:02] Yeah.

[9:03] A lesson we can all apply to our lives.

[9:06] Tim Allen, the only way he can move forward emotionally is to take Santa's place, bones

[9:11] and all, and experience that high.

[9:14] Yeah.

[9:15] Oh, man.

[9:16] Satan in a skin suit.

[9:17] So that's that.

[9:18] Santa Claus 2 is, of course, as you say, they discover a previously unknown Claus that he

[9:24] has to have a wife.

[9:26] Now, where is this Claus coming from?

[9:28] Because there's also a Claus who made these laws.

[9:30] I think it's that that thing where if you're going to have a NBC late night show, you have

[9:35] to get married.

[9:36] Isn't that why Jimmy Fallon got married?

[9:37] Did he?

[9:38] I don't know.

[9:39] It seemed like he came out of nowhere.

[9:40] I mean, I thought he was married before he had that show.

[9:43] Maybe I'm wrong.

[9:44] Yeah.

[9:45] Anyway, Christmas magic is the answer to anything that confuses you.

[9:48] OK.

[9:49] Lawyers, apparently.

[9:51] And so, yeah, Spencer Breslin, kid Spencer Breslin.

[9:55] We will see less young kids, Spencer Breslin in the movie we're talking about today.

[10:00] past his sell-by date, I would say, unfortunately. Sorry, Mr. Breslin.

[10:05] There are people who were child actors who should not have been actors when they were not young.

[10:13] Well, I guess someone's not watching A Christmas Story Christmas.

[10:16] Anyway, he discovers this clause, and for some reason, he, like, tells Numbers.

[10:22] That's how I think of that guy, whatever his acronym is.

[10:25] David Krumholz.

[10:26] Yes, his most famous role as Numbers, the math detective.

[10:32] He, like, above his objections, Spencer Breslin's like,

[10:37] we gotta, the elves are gonna get nervous with Santa out of town,

[10:40] so we have to use this toy cloning machine I've made to create a toy robot version of Santa.

[10:47] So, of course, there's the logical Mrs. Claus plot,

[10:50] and then we keep cutting back to the fun stuff at the North Pole

[10:55] where Santa Claus, the robot, goes crazy, thinks all of the children are too mean,

[11:00] like, that we're too lenient on kids.

[11:02] Love it.

[11:03] Decides that he's gonna give them all coal and creates an army of large tin soldiers to enforce his will.

[11:08] Perfect.

[11:09] And does he do, like, a cool dance like Megan?

[11:12] Yeah, and at the end of it, yes.

[11:15] At the end of it, Tim Allen convinces Elizabeth Mitchell, the...

[11:21] Juliet from Lost?

[11:23] Yes, Juliet from Lost, but the principal at his kids' school,

[11:26] he has learned that his kid was naughty, which is part of the reason why he's home as well.

[11:31] The principal at his kids' school, he convinces her to marry him after, like, I think one date,

[11:38] on the basis of, he says, you've known Santa all your life, and I'm like, that was a different Santa.

[11:44] First off, it's creepy.

[11:45] Secondly, it's factually incorrect, because that Santa was a different guy that you killed.

[11:51] But maybe there's some kind of shared memories, identity type thing, right?

[11:57] It's possible.

[11:58] I think that there is some sort of, yes, there's a cultural memory that gets passed down,

[12:05] a genetic Santa memory that...

[12:07] Yeah, Jung talks about that, the collective Santa conscious, yeah.

[12:11] So Santa's basically proposing to her the same way that, like,

[12:14] Steven Tyler would hit on a much too young woman.

[12:17] You've been hearing me all my life.

[12:18] You know me.

[12:22] Basically.

[12:23] So that's enough of that.

[12:24] I'll let Stuart, who's...

[12:25] Love in an elevator?

[12:26] That's about us.

[12:27] He's champing at the bit, right?

[12:28] He's champing at the bit, baby.

[12:30] So the movie opens with a Disney logo and a snow globe.

[12:34] Is that, do they do that with all the Santa Claus?

[12:37] I don't think so.

[12:38] I think it was just this one.

[12:39] It's like the smoky Lord of the Rings New Line logo.

[12:42] All of them have very cheap credit sequences.

[12:46] This movie has a lot of snow globe material in it, so maybe that's what...

[12:49] But you're right.

[12:50] Oh, really?

[12:51] Opening credits.

[12:52] Okay.

[12:53] I'll check my notes, but I don't remember it.

[12:54] I'm informing the listeners, too.

[12:55] I'm not telling you.

[12:59] Yeah, the credits do look very cheap.

[13:00] Yeah.

[13:01] It looks like, right off the bat, it looks like a TV movie more than a theatrical release.

[13:05] And, Alonzo, you've seen a lot of TV movies.

[13:08] More than anyone probably should, yes.

[13:12] We talked about this particular movie on Deck the Hallmark this year, and one of the co-hosts

[13:18] there said that he read that the budget for this movie was $12 million, which just seems

[13:23] impossible to me, because I don't think you get your one and two on the call sheet for

[13:28] this movie for $12 million.

[13:29] But given how janky a lot of it looks, it's not out of the question, I suppose.

[13:34] Yeah, $10 million went to Tim Allen, and the rest was distributed around.

[13:42] Okay, so the movie opens in the North Pole.

[13:45] The North Pole kind of looks like Disneyland dressed up for Christmas, right?

[13:51] It looks kind of like a theme park.

[13:53] Yeah.

[13:54] It's the happiest place that children are used as slave labor to make toys for other

[13:58] people.

[13:59] Those are elves, Elliot.

[14:00] They're just played by children.

[14:01] They're just children with funny-looking ears.

[14:04] That's what they are.

[14:05] They're children with submariner ears.

[14:06] I'm sorry.

[14:07] It's the happiest place at Magnetic North.

[14:11] So we open with Mrs. Claus teaching elf school.

[14:14] Again, I don't know if they're elves.

[14:16] Are they elf children?

[14:17] I don't know, because they're all children, all the elves are children.

[14:21] It's a weird thing for her to be teaching school for adults, unless this is like a night

[14:25] school, so these elves can have degrees that will then help them rise through the ranks.

[14:29] Yeah, yeah.

[14:30] It's the baby Yoda thing.

[14:31] He's actually 50, so who even knows?

[14:34] I do also want to say about Elizabeth Mitchell.

[14:37] Baby Yoda started getting his Social Security checks.

[14:40] Social Security checks.

[14:41] But he's just a baby.

[14:42] I know, but he's old enough, technically.

[14:44] It's a Benjamin Button kind of thing.

[14:46] Elizabeth Mitchell in this movie, at the end of Santa Claus...

[14:49] That's why Yoda talks backwards.

[14:50] Jesus Christ, Elliot.

[14:51] Because he's a Benjamin Button.

[14:52] Yes, that's it.

[14:53] That's why he ages backwards and he talks backwards.

[14:56] And he's seen so much history, just like Benjamin Button.

[14:58] Yeah.

[14:59] He's kind of experienced America, like we have.

[15:01] Hey, remember when the Beatles run Ed Sullivan?

[15:03] Benjamin Button watched that on TV, too.

[15:06] That's why Brad Pitt...

[15:07] He was a witness to history.

[15:08] He puts all of the subjects of the sentences at the end in that movie.

[15:11] Because it's backwards.

[15:13] Okay, guys.

[15:14] Dan has something funny to say.

[15:15] It's not funny, but I certainly would like to be able to get through an entire sentence

[15:20] without going back to the previous bit at the very end of it.

[15:23] No, I just wanted to say, in the previous movie, Elizabeth Mitchell,

[15:29] there's a credit sequence where she dances and lip syncs to a Christmas song or whatever.

[15:36] And they have Santa Claus-ed her up in the credit sequence.

[15:39] They've done the fat suit, slight aging.

[15:43] I mean, not to the degree of Tim Allen.

[15:45] She doesn't have a big bushy beard.

[15:47] Yes.

[15:48] But in this movie, they clearly were like, we can't have that.

[15:52] Elizabeth Mitchell is a pretty woman and we're Hollywood.

[15:55] We can't have her looking like that throughout the film.

[15:58] According to Wikipedia, they shot for a couple of days with her in the, like,

[16:03] zaftig Mrs. Claus-like makeup.

[16:05] And then they were like, her face wasn't moving.

[16:09] I'm sure, if anything, it was not skinny and hot enough for the execs who were overseeing this movie.

[16:17] Who want to fuck Mrs. Claus?

[16:19] Considering I work on a TV show that is an animated show about dogs,

[16:23] and a note that we would get would be basically, why aren't these dogs sexier?

[16:28] Well, why aren't they?

[16:30] That was a note you got from me, bitch.

[16:33] The idea that they're like, Santa Claus is a boss.

[16:37] Like, Santa Claus is a famous rich guy.

[16:39] He's got to have a hotter wife than this.

[16:41] This is crazy.

[16:42] Like, when people are like, Hugh Jackman, there's no way he loves that woman.

[16:46] She's not at the same attractiveness level that he is, according to us.

[16:49] He's Wolverine, for God's sake.

[16:51] This is Wolverine.

[16:53] He should be with Jean Grey, or another woman with red hair, or Mariko, a Japanese woman.

[16:59] It's the only kind of people Wolverine can be with.

[17:01] Okay, so Mrs. Claus, the elves don't want to learn, so she's like, I'll tell you a real fucking story.

[17:07] So we get a flashback.

[17:08] So the rest of the movie is basically a nested flashback, okay?

[17:11] Yeah.

[17:12] And the movie really needs those bookends, right?

[17:15] It absolutely needs it.

[17:16] It would not be able to function without them.

[17:17] It would not make sense.

[17:18] I mean, that's the punchline.

[17:20] I'm going to make a case there's a point to this, but I'll wait until we get there.

[17:23] Oh, okay.

[17:24] Okay, please do, because I was like, this is maybe the most unnecessary kind of flashback.

[17:28] You better start building your fucking case, buddy.

[17:32] So we are –

[17:33] So they say you can Phoenix Wright this shit at the end of the episode.

[17:35] Yeah.

[17:36] So, yep.

[17:37] So the story she's going to tell them is – it seems to be her birth story.

[17:42] It begins with a false alarm.

[17:44] Mrs. Claus is pregnant.

[17:45] She's going to have Santa's child.

[17:48] I learned that it's not his first child because apparently that's information not covered in the previous films.

[17:54] David Hellstrom, son of Santa.

[17:56] Exactly.

[17:58] This is his first son – first child as a Santa.

[18:01] Yes.

[18:02] His previous children were as a normie.

[18:03] Which, by the way –

[18:04] This is his first time that he's infusing the power of Santa into his –

[18:07] This is one of the many questions that the Santa Claus raised for me that is not answered by the Santa Claus films, which is like, okay.

[18:17] Santa is having a child, like not from his previous pre-Santa life.

[18:22] He's having a child at the North Pole, but we've learned that also Santa is like a mantle that gets passed along.

[18:30] Are there other children from previous Santas living at the North Pole mad that their birthright does not go to them but whoever might murder their father?

[18:41] That their father didn't die in front of them and they could put the coat on.

[18:44] Exactly.

[18:45] That's a good question.

[18:46] I once did a presentation many years ago at former guest Kevin Marr's – one of his Kevin Geeks Out shows that was about Christmas.

[18:53] I did a presentation about all the movies I could find that involved the children of Santa Claus because there's a lot of them where it's like Jenny McCarthy is Santa's daughter or Kelsey Grammer is Santa's son or whatever.

[19:03] There's one where – was it Matthew Modine I think is Santa's – I can't remember.

[19:08] Arthur Christmas has a whole lineage and Noel.

[19:11] Yeah, Arthur Christmas.

[19:12] And I was wondering – I kind of wondered the same thing although my presentation then went off on the idea that using the Santa Claus as a basis that Santa has now become viral and at this rate of spread, the entire world will be Santa at a certain point.

[19:24] But this is pre-COVID, very, very prophetic.

[19:27] But yeah, you're right.

[19:28] There's a lot of unasked questions about what it means for Santa Claus to have a child since a Santa Claus is not one person but instead like the kind of fan continuity of James Bond is a name and a position that gets passed along from one to another or the Dread Pirate Roberts.

[19:45] Exactly.

[19:46] I just want to say – go ahead.

[19:48] No, no, no.

[19:49] Oh, please.

[19:50] Let me go along with the plot here.

[19:51] So this – in addition to raising questions for you, it's raising some issues between Santa and Mrs. Claus because she is pregnant.

[19:57] She's due any day now.

[19:58] And also –

[20:00] Christmas is coming up, so she's worried that she's going to deliver her baby while he's

[20:06] delivering presents.

[20:07] She also feels lonely.

[20:08] Which would make her baby Jesus also, which would only complicate things for her.

[20:11] And she's also lonely because she only has elves to hang out with.

[20:14] You know if you've got like that one day a year that is absolutely booked, maybe you

[20:18] would like reschedule your, you know, what's the word I want here, extermination?

[20:25] Thank you.

[20:26] Yes, exactly.

[20:28] Well, they thought they were using the rhythm method because he's Catholic, but unfortunately

[20:34] they got the dates wrong.

[20:37] And this is one of the weird parts.

[20:38] They were dead set on wanting a Scorpio.

[20:40] That's true, yeah, because he really wanted his kid to have a reason to wear the jacket

[20:45] from Drive.

[20:46] You don't need a reason, Elliot.

[20:48] The reason is because it's so cool.

[20:50] Because it's a sweet jacket.

[20:51] And if you're Santa's kid, you really want to be born on Christmas Day because nothing

[20:55] is going to overshadow your birthday.

[20:56] Oh God.

[20:57] What a nightmare.

[20:58] It's like if you're Wes Craven's child and you're born on Halloween or you're Gary Marshall's

[21:04] child and you're born on any holiday.

[21:08] This is the, and Stuart, I'm sure you're getting into this, but the crux of it where it's like

[21:11] she's lonely.

[21:12] She's expecting her child.

[21:14] She wants to be with her parents.

[21:16] For some reason, this is a problem that this is a Gordian knot that no one can figure out

[21:19] how to untie.

[21:21] There's no way she could possibly leave the North Pole and go spend the time with her

[21:24] family.

[21:25] Something that pregnant women routinely do all the many times.

[21:29] And all she does is sit around in Santa Claus's office that features a Zardoz like fireplace

[21:35] of Santa Claus's face.

[21:36] Well, wait, wait, wait, wait.

[21:37] That's an amazing piece of set decoration.

[21:39] Dan, is that in the other movies?

[21:41] No, I don't think it was.

[21:42] It's a bizarre piece of set decoration.

[21:43] And then when he comes down the chimney into it, it opens its mouth and goes like, ho,

[21:47] ho, ho.

[21:48] It's crazy.

[21:49] Yeah.

[21:50] But I'm hung on to that for the TV show.

[21:51] But I think it's introduced in three.

[21:53] It's almost worth the movie being created just so that that exists.

[21:57] It's so frightening.

[21:58] It's $12 million, guys, all on the screen.

[22:00] It's a somewhat manufactured conflict, but it does make sense that she wants to be with

[22:07] her husband when the birth happens and he is super tied to being at the North Pole being

[22:13] Santa Claus.

[22:14] Yeah, that's true.

[22:15] Elliot, you have kids.

[22:16] That's true.

[22:17] I mean, what if your job delivering presents made you miss the birth of your child?

[22:22] Yeah, as a UPS man with those tight shorts of yours.

[22:25] I mean, yeah.

[22:26] Well, the shorts.

[22:27] Thank you.

[22:28] They do show off my gams in a way that I'm very happy with.

[22:29] I mean, that's the thing about being a UPS guy is you're not just a someone who delivers

[22:33] presents.

[22:34] You're a cultural and religious institution that goes back hundreds of thousands of years.

[22:38] And so you really have the UPS driver is such a such an important part of every child's

[22:43] holiday season, second only to the Hess truck, because every year there's going to be a new

[22:47] Hess truck.

[22:49] Time marches on.

[22:50] There's a new Hess truck every year, Elliot.

[22:52] It's a fucking it's just part of life.

[22:55] You have to accept it.

[22:56] To quote Ben Franklin, there's nothing certain in this world but death taxes and a new Hess

[22:59] truck every year.

[23:00] Let's go get it.

[23:01] I thought when you said that the UPS driver was this cultural thing, you were going to

[23:05] talk of, of course, the cave paintings of all the gals in the steno pool being horny

[23:09] for the UPS guy.

[23:10] Yeah.

[23:11] Yeah.

[23:12] That guy goes in.

[23:13] Let's go see.

[23:14] I mean, you can't go see them now in person.

[23:15] You can see the pictures of them.

[23:16] Yeah.

[23:17] Yeah.

[23:18] There's a documentary about this.

[23:19] Yeah.

[23:20] It's documentary.

[23:21] Cave of forgotten UPS fantasy.

[23:22] Anyway, you see it in 3D because because they painted the way they painted on the rock so

[23:26] that the phallus of the UPS driver points right out at you using the natural rock projection.

[23:30] I like to think I'm speaking for fans of the show everywhere where I say I need to hear

[23:34] somebody use the phrase bad dad, Santa dad.

[23:37] Oh, you're right.

[23:38] He is.

[23:39] That's exactly.

[23:40] He is.

[23:41] That's definitely.

[23:42] Yeah.

[23:43] I mean, that's definitely the case.

[23:45] He so he is also kind of being a bad Santa.

[23:49] Not like in the movie, that Santa.

[23:50] But he's kind of neglecting his duties in anticipation for this for the checking lists

[23:55] only once, et cetera.

[23:56] Mm hmm.

[23:57] Yeah.

[23:58] He's he's he's his mind is neither on his work nor on the coming baby because he's trying

[24:03] to do it all.

[24:04] So can a Santa have it all?

[24:05] That's the question in the movie.

[24:06] Yeah.

[24:07] And relatable.

[24:08] So as we said, the it seems like the solution is for Mrs. Claus's parents to come up and

[24:14] spend time with her during the holidays and during her birth.

[24:18] However, those in-laws are not are not aware of her, their son in-laws profession or identity.

[24:27] Yeah, I guess.

[24:28] Yeah.

[24:29] I want to say having not really paid that much attention to the credits, I thought to

[24:33] myself now, if I was going to cast a man to play a sort of a maybe disapproving father

[24:39] in law who doesn't know that his kid, his his daughter's married to Santa and is has

[24:46] to be the subject of this elaborate ruse where they say that they're in Canada and not the

[24:51] North Pole, et cetera, et cetera.

[24:53] Who would I cast?

[24:54] Robert, myself, Alan Arkin, Alan Arkin.

[24:58] And lo and behold, there he was.

[25:02] There's only one issue with that, which and I'll mention this is that there's a line coming

[25:06] up where his wife and Margaret says something about like, well, I know you've never been

[25:10] all that into Christmas and I want him to say, because I'm Jewish, that it never comes

[25:14] up.

[25:15] And that was the only thing that stuck for me was I was like, why would you cast such

[25:18] an obviously Jewish actor to play this part?

[25:21] But that's why it's so dubious and it makes sense because I want it or like when at the

[25:27] at, you know, spoiler alert, when they finally learn the identity of Santa Claus, for him

[25:30] to be like, he's just like, this is great, as if like he doesn't burn inside him.

[25:36] Oh, we got Santa Claus.

[25:37] He's one of the number one anti-Semites on the world, you know, realization.

[25:41] But once we get there, when we get there, when we get there.

[25:44] Yeah.

[25:45] OK, so this will require a little bit of subterfuge.

[25:48] We get a meeting of the legendary figures.

[25:51] So these are some kind of a council of kind of a random assortment of names that somebody

[25:57] picked out.

[25:58] These were very miscellaneous.

[25:59] These were introduced in part two.

[26:00] It's not even Rise of the Guardians, you know.

[26:03] Yeah, exactly.

[26:04] And so do you who wants to is it OK if I go through the names or do you want to go through

[26:09] who's on the council?

[26:10] You're very excited.

[26:11] Why don't you do it, Elliot?

[26:12] OK, the Council of Legends, it has all the all the all the most important characters,

[26:17] all the top hits.

[26:18] There's the Easter Bunny, who is gross throughout the movie.

[26:21] There's Cupid, as played by Kevin Pollak, who's just like floating around, kind of like

[26:27] being shrinken with like the old style, like just like video compositing.

[26:33] Then there's the Tooth Fairy, the Sandman, Father Time, Mother Nature, played by Michael

[26:39] Dorn.

[26:40] Dude, get your fucking bat left, baby.

[26:43] So I don't it's hard for me to recognize him without prosthetic plastic prosthetic forehead

[26:47] ridges.

[26:48] They considered it, I'm sure, for this movie.

[26:52] And here's the OK, guys, here's what we're going to play a little thing of Mother Nature

[26:55] and Father Time.

[26:56] And of course, Peter Boyle is is Father Time, but he doesn't get to do or say, by the way,

[27:00] I want to say Peter Boyle, a character who in the first movie plays Tim Allen's boss.

[27:05] And then they just bring it back.

[27:08] Because Father Time is the boss of a boss of us all.

[27:12] Guys, we're going to play a game of choose your own adventure here.

[27:16] Should we if you want to hear me be slightly more woke than I probably need to be and read

[27:22] a racial subtext into some of the casting that I probably shouldn't.

[27:26] But it's there.

[27:27] Tell me if you don't want me to do that, we could just go on with a summary.

[27:31] Tell me that.

[27:32] I mean, I think I can guess what you know, I want to hear that.

[27:35] OK, what I want to say is that so all of these actors, all these characters, these legendary

[27:39] characters setting aside the fact that of all these legendary characters, they they

[27:44] either belong with except for the Cupid and I guess the Tooth Fairy and Father Time.

[27:50] You know what?

[27:51] There's the only the only holidays that are represented are either Valentine's Day or

[27:56] Christian holidays.

[27:57] Setting aside that that the only black actors, the only actors of color on this council are

[28:01] Aisha Tyler as Mother Nature and Michael Dorn as the Sandman, that the only two actors on

[28:06] this council are playing the sleepy guy who's always falling asleep and the woman who is

[28:11] connected to nature and therefore, I guess, has more of a is an earthy quality, literally

[28:16] earthy.

[28:17] And you can read into it less civilized quality.

[28:19] And I know this is probably them trying to be diverse in their casting.

[28:23] But it's like, why can't a black actor be the Tooth Fairy?

[28:25] Like what?

[28:26] Why do the black actors have to be the characters who are either falling asleep all the time

[28:29] or are more in tune with nature than us white people?

[28:32] And I was like, this is them probably.

[28:35] I don't I assume there's no I assume they weren't like, of course, the sleepy guy has

[28:38] to be black.

[28:39] You've given much more thought to the casting of Santa Claus three than anyone ever has.

[28:45] Yeah.

[28:46] So you're saying this Sandman in Mike Tyson's Punch Out was also a racial stereotype in

[28:51] a video game that is otherwise super not racist at all?

[28:56] I well, the only reason I would say no to that is because the Sandman and that the whole

[28:59] thing is that he puts you to sleep as opposed to this Sandman who is in Soviet Russia and

[29:04] yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[29:08] Or maybe it's or maybe I'm being too wrong and it's a reference to the Sandman from the

[29:12] Apollo Theater.

[29:13] You know, theater.

[29:14] But, you know, it was just one of those things.

[29:16] The same way that fucking Morpheus, I don't know.

[29:19] The same way that it was in like in the movie Meg, where the one black character was like,

[29:23] I can't swim and no, it's not because I'm black.

[29:25] And I was like, well, I think the black character just know how to swim like that.

[29:28] Like the I feel like there's a say, I guess Santa Claus three try harder, but they don't

[29:32] really try.

[29:33] So I think you missed the boat.

[29:36] I'm getting to try anything.

[29:38] So we get the final member of the legendary figures who is Santa Claus.

[29:42] I know you're a 16 year old movie, but try better.

[29:45] Never too late to change.

[29:47] So we get the we get the subject of this meeting, Jack Frost, the legendary figure who has

[29:53] been causing a real problem around around the world because he is jealous that he does

[30:00] does not have a holiday associated with himself.

[30:03] Jack Frost looks like one of those cherry poppin' Dannys

[30:06] dressed up in like a zoot suit with like icicle hair,

[30:09] like Guy Fieri hair, and like multiple wallet chains.

[30:12] He looks amazing.

[30:13] Played, of course, by-

[30:14] I don't remember the wallet chains.

[30:16] He has like four wallet chains.

[30:17] He didn't see that?

[30:18] Yeah.

[30:19] Okay.

[30:20] I mean, maybe it's a watch fob.

[30:23] You're, no, I mean, check the fuckin' tape, everybody.

[30:27] Okay.

[30:28] So, Jack Frost's in trouble

[30:30] because he's trying to upstage Santa.

[30:32] He's using his Frost powers.

[30:34] He's got magic, everybody.

[30:36] And he's less popular.

[30:37] And they bring up the idea of the escape clause,

[30:40] where, was the escape clause mentioned

[30:42] in previous Santa Claus movies?

[30:43] No, these are all just new things

[30:44] that are being invented to extend the brand.

[30:47] So, as punishment for his crimes,

[30:50] of which they are legion, Jack Frost is sentenced to-

[30:54] I mean, his crime seems to mainly be

[30:56] that he put up cardboard standees in malls

[30:58] that say, like, happy Frostmas or something like that.

[31:00] And he, like, caused, like, a snowstorm in Mexico,

[31:03] which I'm sure would, like, fuck up the-

[31:05] Crop failure.

[31:05] Oh, that's true.

[31:06] Exactly.

[31:08] That's pretty bad.

[31:09] They don't really mention that,

[31:10] how it would impact the agriculture of the world

[31:12] at that point, but, you know.

[31:13] You know what?

[31:14] I'm seeing one thing that could be a wallet chain

[31:16] in one picture, but I wouldn't call it-

[31:19] I'm glad Dan Lombo is on the case.

[31:21] I wouldn't call it a defining part of his character,

[31:23] but I do see, yeah.

[31:25] Okay, well-

[31:26] Santa Claus, I know you're busy.

[31:27] I'll let you go.

[31:27] One more question, though.

[31:29] One more, but that makes sense.

[31:31] I want to say-

[31:31] It's a role that's been passed down through the generations.

[31:35] One more question.

[31:36] When you have a kid, are you going to murder yourself

[31:38] in front of him so he can pick up your jacket

[31:40] and he'll be the next Santa?

[31:41] Martin Short, a man, no matter what, like, you-

[31:45] You got-

[31:46] Dan, you got to give him credit.

[31:46] His last name aptly describes his height.

[31:48] Well, yeah, that's what I was going to give him credit for.

[31:51] No, I was also going to give him credit for,

[31:52] no matter what he's in,

[31:54] like, whether or not you like the performance,

[31:57] he is not phoning it in.

[31:58] Like, he is really-

[31:59] He's going for it.

[32:00] Like, he is the person who looks the least tired

[32:03] in Santa Claus 3.

[32:05] Yeah.

[32:05] Yeah, I mean, he's-

[32:06] He's staying away from the Sandman.

[32:07] Yeah, he's-

[32:08] He's very up for it.

[32:10] He puts on a very good rendition parody song

[32:14] of New York, New York later.

[32:16] He's great.

[32:17] That's my favorite part of the movie.

[32:18] If you've got Martin Short in it,

[32:19] have him do a big old-time showbiz type number, like-

[32:23] That's what he wants to do, you know?

[32:25] Okay, so the council agrees to let Jack

[32:28] do community service to help Santa with the toy delivery,

[32:32] which seems like a mistake up front, but it's okay.

[32:35] I mean, we need to have a story, right?

[32:37] So Santa decides that he's going to bring family

[32:42] to the North Pole to make his wife happy

[32:44] now that he's got extra help from Jack Frost.

[32:47] So he first goes to visit his brother?

[32:50] I don't-

[32:51] He goes to visit-

[32:52] Sister and brother-in-law?

[32:53] Is that-

[32:54] No, no, no.

[32:55] Judge Reinhold and family.

[32:56] No, no, that's his ex-wife.

[32:57] That's his ex-wife.

[32:58] And her family.

[32:58] Thank you.

[32:59] Judge Reinhold.

[33:00] And his son.

[33:01] Yeah.

[33:02] His pre-Santa son.

[33:03] Thank you.

[33:03] Yeah.

[33:04] This makes a lot more sense.

[33:05] So he goes to-

[33:06] Who has no claim on the throne.

[33:07] No.

[33:08] Yeah.

[33:08] No claim to the coat.

[33:09] No.

[33:10] So he-

[33:11] The dough fag.

[33:12] He goes to visit the family.

[33:13] We are introduced to a pair of farting reindeer puppets,

[33:16] which apparently are regulars in the series.

[33:19] Yeah, I don't think they got featured

[33:22] that much in the first one,

[33:23] but definitely largely in the second one,

[33:25] there were a lot of reindeer puppetry,

[33:27] a lot of reindeer reaction shots.

[33:30] And when we say puppets,

[33:31] we're talking, you know,

[33:32] like Creature Shop style animatronics.

[33:35] They aren't, you know,

[33:36] just like hand puppets of reindeer.

[33:38] At least, to be clear.

[33:39] That would be hilarious.

[33:40] They're just two marionettes,

[33:41] and Santa is like,

[33:43] come on, guys, pull the sleigh.

[33:45] Sherry Lewis is standing behind them,

[33:46] moving them out.

[33:49] So with a little bit of work,

[33:50] Santa's able to manage to convince his, what,

[33:54] ex-family to join him in the North Pole.

[33:58] I would say he convinces them.

[33:59] I think that they are like-

[34:00] They really want it, yeah.

[34:01] They want to come and help.

[34:02] They're like, oh, she must be-

[34:03] They're gagging for it, right?

[34:04] Yeah.

[34:05] Yeah, having a hard time.

[34:06] And how do you define a family?

[34:08] I think it's really great-

[34:09] No, you're right.

[34:09] That he's close with his ex,

[34:10] that he's close with his son,

[34:12] that he's close with his ex's new husband,

[34:14] and with their daughter,

[34:16] that he is not blood-related to,

[34:17] but clearly has a very warm relationship with,

[34:19] given by the fact that he always

[34:21] is inviting her to hug him,

[34:23] which could be creepy,

[34:24] but is clearly nice.

[34:25] It's clearly a nice thing.

[34:26] So he's Santa Claus, I mean.

[34:27] Yeah, I just wanted to clarify this plot point,

[34:29] because Tim Allen does not want more people

[34:32] joining him at the North Pole at this point.

[34:34] This is just an extra set of stress

[34:36] that his ex's family will be there,

[34:39] along with his in-laws,

[34:40] along with Christmas.

[34:41] Yeah.

[34:42] Although I don't know why you wouldn't want

[34:43] Judge Reinhold coming to your workplace.

[34:45] That just seems like-

[34:46] He's so mean to Judge Reinhold

[34:47] through the entire series.

[34:49] A man who seems perfectly nice.

[34:51] He does give him a weenie whistle, though.

[34:55] So he-

[34:56] I don't know, I don't remember that.

[34:58] In the first film.

[34:59] That was in the first one.

[34:59] Oh, that's some kind of move.

[35:01] They do that in a public restroom.

[35:03] That was the thing he wanted as a kid.

[35:07] Oh, I see.

[35:08] That Oscar Wilde was actually saying.

[35:09] A weenie whistle costs more, Elliot.

[35:12] You're right.

[35:13] So Santa Amelies him, in a nice way.

[35:15] Okay, yeah.

[35:16] Mike?

[35:17] So he also goes to visit his in-laws,

[35:20] this time with a little help from his pal, the Sandman,

[35:23] and his in-law,

[35:24] and he manages to explain that he's taking them up

[35:28] to visit them in Canada,

[35:31] which is part of his ruse.

[35:32] He has convinced them they've never been to Canada.

[35:34] So they assume that if,

[35:36] with a little bit of set decoration,

[35:37] they can make the North Pole appear to be Canada.

[35:40] So then they blast him in the face with some sleeping dust,

[35:44] and then they all head up North, right?

[35:47] Yeah.

[35:48] So yeah, to recap,

[35:50] they've been drugged and taken to the North Pole.

[35:54] Under false pretenses.

[35:55] Meanwhile, the North Pole is hard at work,

[35:58] changing all the signs to say Canada stuff.

[36:01] All the elves put hats on,

[36:02] so they just look like kids wearing hats instead of elves.

[36:06] Jack Frost is running around looking exactly the same.

[36:10] Well, Martin Short is Canadian,

[36:11] so he doesn't really do anything.

[36:13] It's true.

[36:15] And he-

[36:16] That's what Canadians look like, it turns out,

[36:17] is they have huge frosted tips and-

[36:19] Four wall of chains.

[36:20] And more ears, and you have more wall of chains.

[36:21] Thank you.

[36:22] And he tricks the head elf

[36:25] into explaining the process of the escape clause,

[36:28] which involves saying a specific phrase

[36:30] while holding a magical snow globe.

[36:33] Okay, it's all about snow globes today.

[36:36] Jack Frost-

[36:37] And he has to say,

[36:38] I wish I was never Santa Claus or whatever.

[36:41] Or I-

[36:42] At all.

[36:43] And it's one of those things where it's like,

[36:45] well, if he could have said this in the first movie

[36:47] when he didn't want to be Santa Claus, why didn't he?

[36:50] What was-

[36:51] Did he not want to be Santa Claus in the first movie?

[36:53] He didn't.

[36:54] He was-

[36:55] He spends most of the first movie not wanting to be,

[36:56] as anyone who has a life would not want it interrupted

[36:59] by suddenly having to take-

[37:00] That's the thing.

[37:01] I feel like Ernest was all about it when he had to do it.

[37:03] Well, Ernest was just saving Christmas for a day.

[37:06] Like, I'll be Santa for a day.

[37:07] I don't want to-

[37:08] And he was the liaison to the new Santa.

[37:10] Yeah.

[37:11] Yeah, if I'm Leslie Jones,

[37:12] I just want to host The Daily Show for a week.

[37:13] I don't want to make a career out of it.

[37:14] To jump back, like, Stuart, you will-

[37:17] And kiss ourselves.

[37:18] You will appreciate this.

[37:20] The first Santa Claus is just one step removed

[37:22] from being a horror movie

[37:24] because this man's body changes without him doing anything.

[37:28] He can't do anything about it.

[37:30] He grows beards that, you know,

[37:32] if he shaves them, they're back at the end of the day.

[37:35] You know?

[37:35] The weight gain is instant and ineradicable.

[37:38] It's like the fly a little bit.

[37:39] He is cursed-

[37:40] Yeah, very much so.

[37:41] Santa, unless someone else removes his curse by death

[37:46] as well.

[37:47] And the film never quite acknowledges how horrifying it is

[37:52] to have to leave your life completely behind

[37:56] to become this legendary figure.

[37:58] Well, because why would they, Dan?

[37:59] Everyone in the world loves Santa Claus equally

[38:02] and understands that Christmas is the greatest thing

[38:05] in the history of human civilization.

[38:07] Everyone in the world.

[38:08] Now you sound bitter, Elliot,

[38:09] but I'm not quite sure

[38:11] what you possibly-

[38:12] Am I saying sarcasm?

[38:13] The timing is good.

[38:14] I don't know why you would-

[38:15] I am-

[38:16] You got a real grinch over here.

[38:18] Why would there be any reason for me to take issue

[38:20] with the idea that Christmas is a universal concept

[38:23] that all humans-

[38:24] I don't know, it's almost like we compelled you

[38:26] to do a Christmas movie on our own podcast,

[38:29] even though-

[38:32] It was in no way me acquiescing to the majority culture

[38:36] that I have never been a part of

[38:37] and never will be a part of.

[38:40] So Santa arrives with his family

[38:41] and his in-laws who are asleep and drugged.

[38:44] They run around, they visit,

[38:48] they do all the normal stuff that you would do

[38:51] when you show your family your place of business.

[38:55] Meanwhile, Jack Frost is hunting for the Hall of Snow Globes

[39:00] and he's tricking the various elves and sabotaging stuff

[39:03] while Santa tries to entertain his family

[39:06] and maintain his ruse that they are, in fact, in Canada,

[39:09] and he is a lowly toy maker.

[39:12] A lowly toy maker who employs dozens,

[39:14] if not hundreds, of children.

[39:16] Of children.

[39:17] Who he claims are just what Canadians look like.

[39:19] They are just very short, youthful-looking people

[39:23] with pointy ears.

[39:25] Yes, the cold weather, it keeps them preserved, yeah.

[39:27] All of Jack Frost's skullduggery causes stuff to break,

[39:31] but luckily Santa's father-in-law is kind of a man's man.

[39:33] Alan Arkin's kind of like a how-to-fix-it guy.

[39:36] Mr. Fix-It, yeah.

[39:37] So they're able to fix a lot of things

[39:39] and it seems like they've saved Christmas, so.

[39:43] You say that as if it's the most boring thing

[39:45] in the world for Christmas to be saved.

[39:47] Like many plot points in this movie,

[39:49] they're resolved very quickly.

[39:52] There's no time to even mourn the loss of Christmas

[39:55] before it's saved again.

[39:56] But I just want to point out,

[39:57] this movie comes in at a lean 92 minutes.

[40:00] It's like, this is the shortest of the three.

[40:02] They do not spend much time on anything, including the whopping plot

[40:07] twist, which we're going to get to later.

[40:09] Oddly number two is the longest and you feel it.

[40:12] Santa horny.

[40:13] Um, okay.

[40:14] So, uh, that was the original subtitle.

[40:18] That's why it's Santa Claus to no subtitle.

[40:21] The Santa Claus through the escape clause, because up until they printed

[40:24] the posters, the subtitle was the Santa Claus to Santa horny.

[40:27] And I think at the last minute, Bob Iger stepped in and was like, we can't, we

[40:31] can't, we can't put Santa horny as the tagline.

[40:34] And they were like, look at the poster for a little mermaid.

[40:36] There's a penis on that poster.

[40:38] We're Disney.

[40:39] We can do whatever we want.

[40:40] And, but some prints on Disney plus do still have the Santa horny title.

[40:48] If you squint your eyes on the little thumbnail image, you can see

[40:51] that they're pitching other stuff.

[40:52] Like mistle horny.

[40:55] Again, it's not, it's a horny part is the issue.

[40:57] Not, not that I don't like that, but I think there should be

[40:59] another Christmas pun in there.

[41:02] Horny holidays, the Santa Claus to horny holidays again.

[41:06] What about Santa Claus takes on all comers?

[41:12] Santa Claus to Santa does Dallas.

[41:14] It's not okay.

[41:15] One is inaccurate to the plot.

[41:17] That's my main issue.

[41:18] The opposite direction of what we're asking.

[41:21] Don't even come to me with the iteration of the intergenerational gangbang title.

[41:25] We refuse that two meetings ago.

[41:29] And one person just lowers their hand.

[41:31] That's exactly what they're going to bring up.

[41:32] You guys got more porn parody titles.

[41:37] Probably we could keep going.

[41:38] Yeah.

[41:38] So, uh, I mean, ho, ho, ho, it writes itself anyway, continue.

[41:41] So Santa takes the little girl into the hall of snow globes, Santa Claus to

[41:45] ho, ho, horny guys, guys, guys, guys, guys, guys, guys, guys, guys, guys.

[41:51] We have to recall all the prints.

[41:53] It turns out we're losing the thread here.

[41:59] Uh, and this gives Jack Frost the opportunity to sneak into the hall of

[42:02] snow globes, which Stan described the hall of snow globes.

[42:05] Can you recreate the magical experience of this little girl?

[42:09] Well, I tweeted a picture of it and I said, Santa Claus three in the

[42:12] multiverse of madness, because it's got like this weird, like, I don't know.

[42:16] It's like this infinity of lights outside.

[42:19] It's, I don't, you know, the end of Krampus anyone?

[42:23] Yeah.

[42:24] It's like being Captain Nemo's submarine, except for outside.

[42:28] It's not beautiful water creatures.

[42:30] It's just like space and stars.

[42:32] I don't, I don't know.

[42:33] It's kind of an art nouveau holiday portal to the madness of infinity.

[42:38] Depths of eternity in the dark abyss.

[42:40] And if you stare into that abyss, it stares back into you.

[42:44] It's full of Christmas cheer.

[42:46] So there's lots of floating CGI snow globes everywhere.

[42:48] Yeah.

[42:49] And it's also, and this room is hidden behind what a vending

[42:52] machine in the break room.

[42:53] Yes.

[42:54] Yes.

[42:55] Uh, it's behind like a, uh, a Red Bull parody vending machine.

[42:58] So Jack Frost takes the magical snow globe.

[43:03] The little girl sees him do it.

[43:05] And.

[43:06] Uh, she alerts her parents, which of course means he has to

[43:09] freeze them with his freezing magic.

[43:11] So we get no more judge Ryan old folks.

[43:13] Time to time to click on not catch a break.

[43:16] This guy.

[43:16] Yeah, no, we, we do get to add.

[43:18] At the, at the very end, we will get to see him do what every actor dreams

[43:22] of doing when they get into the business, pretend to be cold as

[43:25] CGI ices falls off of you falls off.

[43:29] It's one of those scenes where I was like, whenever I see actors in a movie,

[43:32] having to do something patently ridiculous like that without, and I know that the

[43:36] effects are not there when they're doing it, there's part of me that's like,

[43:39] uh, they shouldn't have to do that.

[43:40] And then it's probably like, well, that's their job pretending stuff.

[43:43] How's that?

[43:43] Like there's that story.

[43:48] There's that story Mads Mikkelsen tells about being in an audition for Reed

[43:51] Richards and them saying, okay, now pretend your arm is stretching really

[43:54] long and him walking out and being like, I'm not going to do that.

[43:56] And there's probably that's like, yeah, mad stand up for yourself.

[43:59] There's also part of me.

[43:59] It's like, well, how is that any different from pretending that you've been, you've

[44:03] been unjustly accused of child molestation in the hunt, like either they're both

[44:06] pretending something that hasn't happened.

[44:09] Denmark, your father is killed.

[44:11] Like, I don't know why that's any different than how is it?

[44:14] Oh, I'm dying on stage.

[44:16] Uh, you're not really dying.

[44:17] Different than pretending your arm is getting all stretched.

[44:20] If he could stretch his shit out super long, that would have been amazing.

[44:24] He could hold that fucking skull forever.

[44:26] A lot of different ending.

[44:27] For sure.

[44:28] He could have stabbed Polonius from across the room by accident.

[44:31] So easy.

[44:33] Yeah.

[44:33] Now I want to see that where it's, is he's got, he's, he's hit with radioactive

[44:37] cosmic rays in the beginning.

[44:39] And so when he says Polonius through the tapestry, he doesn't run

[44:42] across the room real fast.

[44:43] Like he's, oh man.

[44:46] Fantastic.

[44:47] He has to reach, he reaches across the graveyard to get Yorick skull.

[44:51] Yeah.

[44:51] To be or not to be totally awesome, man.

[44:55] You got to give Laertes some kind of power.

[44:57] That fight at the end is going to be super one-sided.

[45:00] Oh, he's the super scroll.

[45:01] He's got to be.

[45:02] He's got to be super scroll.

[45:03] That's right.

[45:03] Yeah.

[45:03] And I don't know, Fortin Bross is Annihilus or something.

[45:07] Okay.

[45:08] And Osric is, uh, is, uh, that the mailman that always comes by.

[45:13] Willy Lumpkin.

[45:14] Yeah.

[45:14] What about Rosencrantz and Guildenstern?

[45:16] Oh no.

[45:16] I digress.

[45:17] Okay.

[45:18] So well, well, Rosencrantz, well, that's Johnny Storm and White Wingfoot.

[45:21] Yeah.

[45:21] Anyway, because there's, oh no, it's, it's his friends from college.

[45:24] Right?

[45:24] So Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are the thing in Dr.

[45:26] Doom makes perfect sense.

[45:28] Reed Richards, actual friends in college.

[45:30] Oh man.

[45:30] You know, it's amazing how well Hamlet matches the Fantastic Four.

[45:36] And Ophelia is the Invisible Woman.

[45:38] We don't make new stories anymore.

[45:40] It's just universal tales that are spun with different, uh, wallpapers.

[45:45] Yeah.

[45:46] Yeah.

[45:46] Okay.

[45:47] So, uh, Sam is still fucking stressed out.

[45:49] He doesn't even know that judge Reynold got froze and he's super stressed out.

[45:54] So, uh, you would, because his wife still wants him to be around, but it's like.

[45:59] He brought her family up there, dude.

[46:02] Like that was the whole thing.

[46:03] Like, right.

[46:04] Why is she so, why is she ragging on him?

[46:07] Like they're here.

[46:10] That's the thing.

[46:11] And I feel like this is the, this is the, this is the stress.

[46:14] A lot of older guys who marry younger women go through where she's like, I

[46:18] want you to be here for our baby.

[46:19] And he's like, I had babies.

[46:21] I've done this before.

[46:22] This is new to you.

[46:23] And by the way, doing a wig snatch motion while he says that, well, it's

[46:30] worth pointing out though, Santa is freaking out about this impending child.

[46:34] And it's like, dude, you've been here before.

[46:36] Like, I mean, Elliot, I'm assuming child two, you were much more chill

[46:40] about the whole process than very much.

[46:43] The whole thing was so much easier and, and yeah, much more.

[46:45] It was like, we've been through this before.

[46:47] We're not, it was still, it was still, you're still anxious.

[46:49] You're still frightened.

[46:50] But I didn't have the same feeling of once the baby is born, if I don't look

[46:54] at him constantly, 24 hours a day, he'll stop breathing and die because I have

[46:58] to constantly look at him and make sure he's still alive, but the second baby

[47:01] I was like, his body, it's not, it's not based on my, my observing him will

[47:05] not change reality that much that, that it's the only thing keeping him alive.

[47:09] Raising a child at the North pole has to be hard.

[47:11] I mean, what are the schools like?

[47:13] Is he going to be taken away by packs of wolves?

[47:18] They do have to protect him from the wolves.

[47:19] That's a fair point.

[47:21] Uh, and the, but he, I feel like.

[47:23] This movie is setting it up, especially for someone who we've established

[47:27] can stop time, right?

[47:29] To deliver packages.

[47:31] It's really established a conflict that one kids cannot relate to.

[47:35] I do not think kids can relate to being pulled in two directions by your

[47:39] job and the stress of starting a family.

[47:41] Kids shouldn't be related to this.

[47:43] And two that he has magic powers.

[47:44] So it, like he shouldn't be as, he shouldn't be as stressed out.

[47:48] And, but it's a fake, I guess Santa Claus, Santa Claus having to deliver

[47:53] presents on the same night a baby is due is a fake conflict you

[47:56] would never see in reality.

[47:59] But if it happened in real life, it'd be pretty crazy.

[48:01] Yeah, it's true.

[48:02] If it happened in real life, it would be nuts, I'm sure.

[48:04] Yeah.

[48:04] You gotta admit it.

[48:05] I'll admit it, just playing devil's advocate, playing by are you afraid of

[48:08] the dark rules?

[48:09] If I was in this situation, I probably would be stressed, but it's not a

[48:12] situation that from the outside is that stress.

[48:14] Well, I mean, also you can't fold time and space the way that Santa had the

[48:17] cancer.

[48:18] Presumably he can deliver all the presents to all over the earth in one

[48:21] night and be at the side of the doula while his wife goes into labor.

[48:26] This thing.

[48:26] Yes.

[48:26] And, and here's the other thing.

[48:28] Here's the other thing.

[48:29] Jack Frost fucking things up.

[48:30] That's Santa's problem for delegating to the wrong person.

[48:33] That's exactly why it's at the end of the day.

[48:36] Well, Jack Frost, you're clearly trying to steal this holiday from me.

[48:39] Maybe I'll put you in charge.

[48:40] That's a bad, I'm going to bring you in.

[48:43] Yeah.

[48:43] He's not a, I mean, it's a big villain performance.

[48:45] He's not pretending he's a good guy, but I want to ask though, like the thing

[48:50] that bugs me out about Santa is like, so Tim Allen, you know, as Santa Claus in

[48:56] the, the Santa Claus films seems to be experiencing time normally when he's

[49:01] delivering presents.

[49:03] It's not like he's super, it was like speedy, like he's within it, you know?

[49:08] So is every Christmas an eternity to him?

[49:11] Is he constantly like, like, you know, 365 days of the year he's with his family,

[49:16] but then like that one day he's away from his child is like thousands of years.

[49:22] Is that what's going on?

[49:23] Interstellar or some shit.

[49:24] Yeah.

[49:24] I bet that's what it feels like.

[49:25] And no time has passed for them or minimal time.

[49:28] It was, so it's like, he's traveling at the speed of light.

[49:29] Yeah.

[49:29] So it's a terrific, except the opposite, it's the opposite.

[49:33] Yeah.

[49:34] It's like Interstellar, uh, but with holiday Yuletide cheer.

[49:37] And he has to visit everyone in the world because everyone loves Christmas.

[49:42] Everyone, everybody, every single person in every part of the year is both equally

[49:48] loves Christmas and is equally beloved and rewarded by Christmas.

[49:52] Okay, guys, uh, we've had enough goofs.

[49:54] Now it's time for this movie to get fucking serious.

[49:56] Right.

[49:57] Okay.

[49:57] Because, uh, wait, wait, before you do.

[50:00] I just want to say, basically, Stuart, so Santa Claus's experience is like the kid in that Stephen King story, was it the jaunt?

[50:06] The jaunt, yeah, where he rips his fucking eyeballs out, it's so gross.

[50:09] Because for his family it's been hours, but for him it's been an infinite amount of time in the void.

[50:13] It's a long jaunt, dude, it's a long jaunt, daddy.

[50:16] Longer than you think, daddy.

[50:19] Oh man, what a good ending. What a good ending! That's how you end a story, Stephen King!

[50:25] Or how you reach the high point in Event Horizon and then go downhill from there, pretty much.

[50:31] Maybe my favorite Stephen King short story, and they're making it into a movie and I cannot understand how that is possible.

[50:39] Oh, they are? That's not gonna be very good.

[50:41] Maybe it's a 60-minute adventure, who knows?

[50:44] I mean, because it's basically all set up for a kid ripping his eyeballs out, right?

[50:48] Yeah, I mean, even 60 minutes is stretching that story quite a bit.

[50:52] Take five, maybe.

[50:55] I was gonna say, is Andy Rooney in that?

[51:00] I guess, I don't know what you mean, but sure, why not?

[51:03] 60 minutes?

[51:04] Oh, okay.

[51:05] See, it was on 60 minutes, yeah, makes sense.

[51:07] Yeah, that's the bit.

[51:09] Alex, just add more jokes to that.

[51:11] Make sure everyone knows what's going on.

[51:13] Sprinkle some magic trick powder on that.

[51:15] Spring and fart noises?

[51:17] Yeah, put stuff on it.

[51:19] Boings, yeah.

[51:20] Stuart, you were saying let's get serious.

[51:22] Guys, I've fallen into my own trap of making more jokes.

[51:24] Alex, stop with the jokes and add in some serious sounds.

[51:28] Maybe a spooky organ or some kind of bump-bump-bump.

[51:31] Some wind rushing by in the background.

[51:33] Thank you, I want to be extra spooky.

[51:35] Maybe a lonesome owl somewhere.

[51:36] Because there's nothing spookier than getting tricked by Jack Frost into holding onto a magical snow globe

[51:41] and being tricked into saying the exact words so that you enact the escape clause.

[51:46] And at the last moment, Santa Claus realizes the enormity of what he's done.

[51:50] It all comes crashing down on him.

[51:52] And you see the look on his face.

[51:53] Tim Allen's performance, oh my lord, it's amazing.

[51:55] Where he realizes the weight of all of his transgressions.

[51:59] It hits him all at once.

[52:01] It's kind of like the end of Michael Clayton where he's riding in the back of that car

[52:05] and you just watch the emotions travel across his face.

[52:08] It's incredible.

[52:09] I finally learned that, as the Bible says, the wages of sin is not being Santa Claus anymore.

[52:13] Dan, what were you going to say?

[52:15] We've pulled it back to the future here, right?

[52:17] We've changed the past.

[52:18] Yes, yes.

[52:19] It's funny you should say that.

[52:20] But I am confused by how time travel works in this because then we're back in present day of the movie.

[52:29] Tim Allen's life apparently has continued as it would have had he not been Santa in the meanwhile.

[52:36] So he just was dreaming and now he leaps back into that body.

[52:40] But now he has the memories and consciousness of having been Santa Claus.

[52:44] I do not understand what we are to believe here.

[52:48] I think because he was trying – it's like in Time Cop where he manages to fix the timeline.

[52:52] He does the splits?

[52:53] And Santa does the splits.

[52:55] And you look at his butt.

[52:56] It's like in Time Cop where he saves the day, which means he now has a child whose name he doesn't know,

[52:59] and he's going to have to pretend he remembers everything about their life up to this point.

[53:03] Time travel is hard for the people doing the traveling.

[53:05] Alonzo, you time traveled.

[53:06] What were you going to say?

[53:07] Well, yeah, yeah.

[53:08] I really don't want to talk about it.

[53:09] But what I think they're doing here obviously is this is the It's a Wonderful Life section.

[53:13] So in the same way that George Bailey and arguably Clarence is the one person who knows the Bedford Falls version of all the awful people that he's encountering in Pottersville,

[53:24] Scott Calvin is now like, yes, possessed of the knowledge of having been Santa Claus but also having continued his life,

[53:32] which means he forgot he knew it until now because he's somehow become more successful and more terrible and like ruined a bunch of people's lives.

[53:41] But now it's all rushing back to him.

[53:42] This movie is very baffling with that stuff.

[53:44] But it does bring me to why this movie is a flashback because I have a suspicion this was like a tight 88.

[53:51] And then somebody at Disney was like, you know, this gets a little dark and scary now where Scott is no longer Santa Claus, where Jack Frost is Santa Claus.

[54:00] He ruins Christmas and everybody's miserable.

[54:02] And the kid is like the wife is unhappy.

[54:06] Everybody's sad and terrible and awful.

[54:08] And I think they thought that children would be too wigged out by this part.

[54:12] They need the reassurance.

[54:13] Exactly.

[54:14] Of knowing that if they know it's a flashback.

[54:15] She does not get eaten by the eels at this time.

[54:18] Exactly.

[54:19] That actually that makes a lot of sense considering my kids definitely they do not.

[54:24] It hasn't yet gotten into their bones yet.

[54:26] The thing we all know now going into stories where we're like, I know this kind of story.

[54:31] It's going to turn out OK.

[54:32] Like there's no way the story is going to end with Jack Frost being Santa forever and everyone's life being bad.

[54:37] But my kids, they haven't internalized that and they get very anxious at the parts of movies where it looks like things are not going to turn out OK.

[54:44] So I get that. That makes sense.

[54:45] I'm in no way a defender of the Santa Claus three.

[54:48] No, no, no.

[54:49] But no, no.

[54:50] I just thought that thing that there is a reason for it.

[54:53] That's serving a real plot.

[54:54] That's serving a real emotional needs of the audience purpose, which actually that thinking that if I admired that thinking quite a bit, that they that they were looking at it from a kid's point of view and not an adult's point of view.

[55:04] Since so much of this movie otherwise feels like it is a total point of view.

[55:08] Yeah.

[55:09] So, yeah, as we said, enacting the escape clause sends Jack Frost and Scott back in time to the exact moment he became Santa Claus.

[55:18] What?

[55:19] Fifteen years ago, 13 years ago, which means we see Santa Claus die at least twice.

[55:23] Yeah.

[55:24] If you get off on that.

[55:25] Oh, boy.

[55:26] This is going to be great.

[55:27] Get ready.

[55:28] You're going to be spent like Dan.

[55:29] Yes.

[55:31] Yeah.

[55:32] And so and this ends with Jack Frost taking the code of Santa Claus, the mantle, and that sends them hurtling back into the future where, again, Scott is a successful but very lonely businessman whose personal life is in shambles.

[55:50] His ex-wife hates him.

[55:51] Judge Reinhold hates him because it forced his marriage to dissolve as well, all because he had to take care of Scott's son.

[56:00] Yeah.

[56:01] It's kind of wild.

[56:03] It wrecked the father-son dynamic between Judge and the son.

[56:06] And that's shown by the most horrifying thing of all, that Scott's son doesn't want to spend time with his mom on Christmas Eve but wants to drive around with his friends, a terrifying dystopian vision of regular life as it is done by most teenagers, I suppose.

[56:22] And speaking of terrifying visions, we see the North Pole has now been turned into like a G-rated Biff-verse where Jack Frost, now Santa Claus, is flaunting his status.

[56:35] He has made everyone aware.

[56:36] He has – for some reason, he has turned Christmas, a time of joy, into this like entrepreneurial capitalist thing, which is wild.

[56:46] It's basically – he turned the North Pole into like FAO shorts and there's like screaming reindeer and pens that record your voice.

[56:54] It would take a monster of Jack Frost level to turn Christmas into this capitalist mercantile, cash-only society.

[57:01] And it's like you have to – and the one joke I thought was funny was in this part was – other than the song, which I did enjoy, was Jack Frost over loudspeaker.

[57:09] And Jack Frost dressed up as like a weird hybrid of Jack Frost and Santa Claus, which is even more Guy Fieri than before.

[57:16] Oh, for sure.

[57:17] Which makes me realize Guy Fieri is just Jack Frost and Santa Claus mixed into one person and he likes to eat crap.

[57:23] So that Jack Frost is booming over loudspeakers.

[57:28] Kids, make your parents buy you things.

[57:31] It shows how much they love you, which I think is just a funny – just them saying the subtext of Christmas.

[57:37] But I guess he – I mean is he still giving out free toys?

[57:41] Are the free toys now a lost leader for giving people in the door at Christmas World?

[57:46] I think he does not give out free toys at all.

[57:47] He only charges.

[57:48] Well, but he does charge people to be on the nice list.

[57:50] So presumably the reason you want to be on the nice list is to get the free toys.

[57:53] Oh, right, is to get the free toys.

[57:56] It allows you to edit your tweets.

[57:59] It allows you to get some kind of status, et cetera, et cetera.

[58:02] There's many reasons to be on the nice list.

[58:04] You might be able to block not nice people and drive them off the thing.

[58:09] Mind you, this is the Walt Disney Company telling you this.

[58:12] The idea that like – let's talk about like parents having to buy crap for their kids.

[58:16] Yeah, you take your children to Disneyland and tell me how that goes.

[58:20] Oh, by the way –

[58:21] It makes this the most – one of the most subversive things about the parent company that I've seen from a Disney movie.

[58:29] I was watching The Old Lion King with my kids a while back, and it was like when Ronat can start singing, it's a small world after all, and Scar goes, no, no, no.

[58:40] Like at that point, that was about as subversive as you could get in a Disney movie was admitting that that's an annoying song.

[58:48] This is – I mean the anti-capitalist message, as hypocritical as it is, is maybe not a bad message.

[58:54] But speaking of weird messages in Santa Claus movies, I didn't talk about the fact that part of Santa Claus 2 was Santa blaming Elizabeth Mitchell that maybe her – maybe Santa's son would be a better kid in her school if there were some Christmas decorations around the school.

[59:15] So it like briefly becomes this more on Christmas thing.

[59:17] Wow.

[59:18] That is incorrect.

[59:20] That is a bad message.

[59:22] I don't like that at all.

[59:23] He's still carrying that one through to the Santa Clauses on Disney Plus where he makes a joke about, oh, it's so problematic to wish somebody a merry Christmas now.

[59:30] Yeah, what a surprise.

[59:32] And it's funny.

[59:34] That joke is happening in a world where on Halloween fully I think a third of the houses we went to said, happy Halloween, merry Christmas, and it was like, are you kidding?

[59:42] Like not only do people still say merry Christmas.

[59:44] They're saying it on a holiday that's almost two months before Christmas.

[59:48] Like it was – and my kids –

[59:49] Got to cover your bases.

[59:51] And that was the thing that bugged my kids.

[59:52] They were like, why is everyone telling us merry Christmas?

[59:54] This is Halloween.

[59:55] It's not Christmas.

[59:56] Because the Hallmark movies already started in late October, Elliot.

[59:58] I guess that's true.

[1:00:00] think of it yeah okay you more that you're like you're like my busy season keeps creeping up

[1:00:04] earlier and earlier does it end so we do uh this is when jack frost does put on a very solid parody

[1:00:11] of new york new york this is pretty funny it's great very funny martin short sells it for sure

[1:00:16] as only yeah uh and then scott manages to sabotage the performance he causes a big distraction

[1:00:22] he somehow gets the globe into jack's hands and then he plays a recording of jack saying the exact

[1:00:28] words to escape to enact the escape clause this has taken maybe 10 minutes of movie time okay i

[1:00:33] wanna yeah this this dystopian world where he is not santa claus i was flabbergasted by how little

[1:00:38] time this takes in the movie but dan you're gonna say well there are multiple things one of them is

[1:00:42] along the lines of that as alonzo points out yes this is the it's a wonderful life thing and granted

[1:00:47] it's a wonderful life also that's true only has the dystopia at the very end of the movie for a

[1:00:52] much shorter time than everyone remembers but the rest of the movie is filled with like a beautiful

[1:00:58] portrait of george bailey's life whereas this movie up until the point the plot kicks in it's

[1:01:03] not called it's not called it's a wonderful life pottersville like this is called the santa claus

[1:01:07] three the escape clause yeah the escape clause is barely in the movie but sorry dan you know

[1:01:11] like this movie is an experiment of like what if we make the whole movie out of the padding

[1:01:15] also i just like santa claus tim allen uh tells his like his exes and new husband's uh like

[1:01:25] daughter lucy to steal the snow globe for him while he creates a distraction i found that

[1:01:32] very upsetting where he's like enlisting this small child to do his dirty work you do the

[1:01:37] dangerous part and i'm gonna i'm gonna hog the spotlight and turn this into the jack frost

[1:01:42] stunt show yeah well you go well you go do all the hard part but also then like apparently i guess

[1:01:47] it doesn't matter that uh jack frost said the words and was holding the globe at two different

[1:01:52] times as long as he plays a recording of it it's fine they just need proof that he you know he

[1:01:58] could have said the words i don't know this is like lawyer up scott that's like if if mr

[1:02:05] mckesson played a recording backwards of superman exactly his own name or something

[1:02:11] yeah yeah that's yeah actually why hasn't sumer never done that that would have solved the whole

[1:02:14] problem instantly he should just carry around a tape recorder just play it back but it but you're

[1:02:18] right it's i don't think it would hold up in in claus court uh santa's got a lawsuit on his hands

[1:02:24] now but and just imagine how different it would be now making this movie when you can just have an

[1:02:28] ai have have jack frost voice say whatever you want and just feed it in okay just deep fake him

[1:02:34] yeah make a video of it so the snow globe was like well i saw it and heard it yeah you're not

[1:02:39] saying anymore so we go back in time again luckily it's not going to hurt your brains too

[1:02:43] much because the previous jack frost santa claus thing that was there that's not there okay so it's

[1:02:49] just this current version of jack frost and scott i guess we get to see time travel splits off a new

[1:02:56] a new timeline each time that's why there's that's why kang is after the yeah that makes sense or

[1:03:01] something yeah that's right so uh so of course this time uh scott manages to put the coat on

[1:03:08] and he is santa claus again in like less than 10 minutes of movie time they get zapped back to the

[1:03:14] future how crazy would it be if they went back and the other jack frost and santa were there

[1:03:18] and santa was like i've got to kill them all you can't have all these extras running around

[1:03:23] and each time they he kills when he gets stronger yeah yeah yeah and and he gets jack frost power i

[1:03:28] guess that way but unfortunately makes a rookie mistake he buries them under the snow that's

[1:03:32] gonna melt in warm weather those bodies show up you're in t-rubs although by then i guess he's at

[1:03:38] the north pole no extradition treaty there can be only one class yep so uh yeah that's a good name

[1:03:49] um so he he makes up to his wife he explains to miss claus what happened i guess um and then he

[1:03:54] decides he reveals the sos that's right secret of santa to his in-laws and we get to see alan arkin

[1:04:01] deliver the most berserk monologue i love it because it's like they're just like they have a

[1:04:07] fixed like camera on alan arkin they're like he'll he'll just sell this and he looks like he's funny

[1:04:13] because alan arkin but he also looks so bored like he's doing the lowest wattage version of

[1:04:18] his already low watt persona of like and he's what he's piecing the he's putting the he's he's

[1:04:24] putting the pieces together batman the movie from 1966 style where it's like yeah yeah bat yeah toys

[1:04:31] sure and if uh if this is so this must be a toy show hole and that toy shop so who makes toys

[1:04:37] around the north pole oh you're santa like it's yeah it's he's led to it it's literally the movie

[1:04:43] being like show's almost over folks let's wrap it up come on let's just do this just felt like

[1:04:47] they're like told alan arkin to improvise this realization and just let the camera run

[1:04:53] to be fair he is one of the legendary improvisers i mean he's he's a founder of the compass uh

[1:04:58] players just keep the camera rolling stretch stretch figuring it out and by the way and

[1:05:07] margaret screen legend is like could her role could have been played here by like

[1:05:12] a vacuum cleaner like she has given nothing to do i'm delighted to see her but she is not used

[1:05:18] and it looks she looks fantastic it looks like she hasn't aged a day since grumpy old man which

[1:05:23] was like 12 years before this or something like that like you know but it's yeah they get for

[1:05:28] i mean i'm hoping she and alan arkin got to like have fun and catch up and talk about the lunches

[1:05:33] i'm sure were you know it was great talking about mike nichols together yeah she she does she does

[1:05:37] get to sing she gets to sing i think three lines of uh of uh what the that mel torme christmas song

[1:05:43] the chestnuts were open the christmas song the most uninventive title this is it but it's the

[1:05:51] christmas song are you are you sure there's a lot of christmas songs no like this is the one

[1:05:57] famously so many christmas they have a whole it's a whole genre they have a name for it no no

[1:06:04] uh so all of the magical legendary figures show up uh jack frost faces justice for his crimes and

[1:06:11] he receives a magical hug that turns him into a fucking nerd and unfreezes the frozen family in

[1:06:16] the aforementioned very cheap looking scene of judge reinhold and the actors who plays his wife

[1:06:24] uh unfreezing now obviously this is a case where we're talking about uh digital animators probably

[1:06:31] working under a time crunch with no money but it looks very laughably bad judge uh the ex-wife um

[1:06:38] long career nothing like that really jumped out at me other than she was also harrison ford's wife

[1:06:44] in air force one wendy cruz is her name yeah yeah um okay and then uh mrs claus has a baby

[1:06:51] and everyone's happy end of the movie yay did i miss anything guys no that was that was three

[1:06:58] exhausted it was uh the first for the first time in a flop house uh in a long time movie i checked

[1:07:04] for bloops and there were bloops guys there were so many bloops yeah bloops of uh of the easter

[1:07:10] bunny hitting on ann margaret and look i cannot blame that bunny there were other other groups too

[1:07:16] but there were plenty of that yeah it was like i was like i don't think that the the makers of this

[1:07:20] movie have acknowledged how weird it is that a large human-sized bunny man is hitting on an

[1:07:25] apartment right now it seemed like a good idea on the set but then later we were like yeah there's

[1:07:31] the moment where he is he's helping out and he's hopping along and he goes oh those pellets behind

[1:07:34] me i'll clean those up and i'm like i don't want to joke in this about the easter bunny shitting

[1:07:38] all over the floor of the factory but that's not okay and based on his size those pellets have to

[1:07:43] be huge they would be i mean they'd be the size of ostrich eggs maybe yeah soccer balls horrible

[1:07:50] the size of a giant squid's eye like horrible but they uh but the bloops the bloops really gave me

[1:07:55] the idea that tim that tim allen was kind of like the king of that set and was just kind of doing

[1:07:59] whatever he i don't know i didn't i i don't know what maybe i'm reading again too much of this but

[1:08:03] it felt like there was a real power imbalance on in some of those bloops but anyway um all right

[1:08:08] well now you know what we do we judge it we we give our final judgments we we don't just judge

[1:08:13] it we ryan hold it yeah um was your life bad was this a good bad movie a bad bad movie a movie

[1:08:21] kind of like i want to i want to put this in context for myself um the first santa claus is

[1:08:27] where does it fit into your life the first claus is a a weird sour movie that in a way that

[1:08:35] you may not recall and has a lot of stuff that i don't like about you know making fun of the new

[1:08:42] dad uh forget about the therapy stuff just like for the health of your son he's not treating judge

[1:08:48] reinhold very well but um but it works kind of in spite of itself it has a clear premise and

[1:08:56] you know by the end sure fine whatever the santa claus what you're saying is not since not since

[1:09:02] judge reinhold was walked in on while masturbating has he been this embarrassed on screen exactly uh

[1:09:08] santa claus 2 actually is probably my choice for if you're watching it ironically because

[1:09:17] it despite it being the longest one it kind of moves more sprightly than this one did uh

[1:09:24] and it has some really wackadoodle stuff in it that you're like why is this in a santa claus movie

[1:09:32] um but i still honestly might give this a marginal uh good bad it's just so dumb and

[1:09:39] bright and it doesn't stick around that long and it's really just a bunch of stuff that happens

[1:09:45] it's amazing how little movies are just a bunch of narratives no but this is like has no

[1:09:50] like usually the stuff has some relation to the stuff that came before it whereas this

[1:09:54] just seems to be like jumbled stuff um but i kind of still dug

[1:10:00] it as a bad movie, but what do you guys have to say?

[1:10:02] Stuart, what do you think?

[1:10:03] Well, I'm gonna say it's a bad, bad movie.

[1:10:06] It, I mean, it obviously-

[1:10:08] I just saw Dan's self-regard crumble when you said that.

[1:10:11] No, but I mean, like, there's a certain,

[1:10:14] I don't know, like, it's, like, it's,

[1:10:16] I'll hopefully forget that I ever saw it.

[1:10:21] I mean, it's just so, like, slim and, like, silly

[1:10:25] and kind of just slides off the brain, right?

[1:10:28] Slim and silly, sounds great to me.

[1:10:30] I don't know, like, I mean,

[1:10:32] maybe if I had seen the previous installments,

[1:10:35] it would have, like, it would have captured the magic for me.

[1:10:38] I do want to point out, you guys just came up with,

[1:10:41] you guys just came up with two great

[1:10:42] Stephen King bad guy names,

[1:10:44] Jumble Stuff and Slim and Silly.

[1:10:45] Yes.

[1:10:50] I'm gonna, I'm also gonna say a bad, bad.

[1:10:52] I think, frankly, if you, if you,

[1:10:54] if your kids love Christmas,

[1:10:56] you could sit them in front of this movie

[1:10:58] and leave the room and they'd be fine.

[1:11:00] But I think it's not worth a grownup watching

[1:11:03] both either for genuine enjoyment

[1:11:05] or insincere, ironic enjoyment.

[1:11:08] There's just, there's so much,

[1:11:10] there's so much other even Christmas stuff

[1:11:11] that you could watch for those kinds of enjoyments.

[1:11:14] It does, it really feels like a movie that,

[1:11:17] where everyone's kind of go,

[1:11:18] everyone except maybe Tim Allen is going through the motions

[1:11:21] and he seems to really like playing Santa Claus

[1:11:24] some of the time and other times not really enjoy it.

[1:11:28] And I kind of would rather watch a documentary

[1:11:31] about the making of the Santa Claus 3

[1:11:33] that was like really open and honest,

[1:11:34] like the some kind of monster about Santa Claus 3.

[1:11:37] Like I'd like to see that

[1:11:39] more than I'd like to watch the movie.

[1:11:40] Alonso, what about you?

[1:11:41] You've seen every Christmas movie.

[1:11:42] How does this stack up for you?

[1:11:44] Believe me, I'm still, still working my way through.

[1:11:47] It is a giant genre as, just like songs.

[1:11:50] And there is thankfully,

[1:11:51] no one has made the Christmas movie yet,

[1:11:53] but I'm sure they will.

[1:11:55] I think this is a bad, bad movie.

[1:11:58] I think the first one is a lot of fun.

[1:12:00] And I mean, yes, it is kind of,

[1:12:02] you know, I'd say it's maybe one of the best

[1:12:04] of the kids movies about a overworked,

[1:12:08] you know, middle manager.

[1:12:11] But this one is just, is so frenetic.

[1:12:14] Like this, it's one of those films where you can tell like,

[1:12:17] okay, we're going to lose the kids

[1:12:19] if we don't pack every second with like noise

[1:12:22] and things falling down and, you know,

[1:12:25] like running around crazy blah.

[1:12:28] There's so many cartoon sound effects.

[1:12:29] Yes.

[1:12:30] Dubbed into scenes like boing, ah, thump,

[1:12:32] crash, I'm very surprised by that.

[1:12:34] If that's your intention, I mean,

[1:12:36] hiring Martin Short was the right call

[1:12:38] because he is great at doing that.

[1:12:40] Like constantly doing stuff.

[1:12:42] Yeah, and the thing is like, I mean, I love Martin Short,

[1:12:44] but I think so much of, you know,

[1:12:48] we hit the thing that he brings to a project.

[1:12:50] It does ultimately kind of come down to the material.

[1:12:52] And so like, he's giving all the Martin Short sauce

[1:12:56] that you want, but in the service

[1:12:58] of a really dumb script, I think.

[1:13:00] And so, yeah, I think this is, you know,

[1:13:03] we talk about like three quills as being like

[1:13:05] where the fatigue is really setting in.

[1:13:07] And I, this one, it's kind of like,

[1:13:10] where else is there left to go for this franchise?

[1:13:12] Of course, you know, joke's on me.

[1:13:14] It's a TV show now.

[1:13:15] TV show, that's the only answer.

[1:13:17] They decided to add even more material.

[1:13:18] I mean, it really, this is a strange moral to take

[1:13:21] from the Santa Clause Three, the escape clause,

[1:13:23] but it makes me even more enamored

[1:13:25] of the recent Planet of the Apes trilogy,

[1:13:27] which managed to like kind of up the ante

[1:13:29] with each movie in an exciting way, you know.

[1:13:32] Yeah, how many other third movie in a series is still good?

[1:13:37] I mean, there's that, there's the Evil Dead movies.

[1:13:39] Ninja Three, The Domination, that's true.

[1:13:42] I mean, well, that's what they finally realized

[1:13:43] what they were doing.

[1:13:44] Halloween Three, Season of the Witch.

[1:13:46] Yeah, Ninja Turtles Three, Turtles in Time.

[1:13:49] Yeah, of course, yeah.

[1:13:49] I'm Miffy Wadiwe, the host of Maximum Film.

[1:13:56] I'm Alonzo Duralde, also the host of Maximum Film.

[1:13:59] And I'm Drea Clark, yet another host of Maximum Film.

[1:14:03] Every week, we hosts huddle up.

[1:14:05] Usually with an illustrious guest,

[1:14:07] and we talk about films.

[1:14:08] We have film news.

[1:14:10] We have film quizzes.

[1:14:11] We answer your film questions.

[1:14:14] It's like the maximum amount of film talk.

[1:14:17] That's why we call it Maximum Film.

[1:14:22] Maximum Film, the movie podcast

[1:14:24] that's not just a bunch of straight white guys.

[1:14:26] New episodes weekly on MaximumFun.org.

[1:14:31] It could happen to you.

[1:14:33] You're all grown up now.

[1:14:34] A professional adult with diverse interests and hobbies.

[1:14:37] And one of those hobbies is video games.

[1:14:40] You just can't help it.

[1:14:41] They're so good now.

[1:14:42] If that's you, we're here to tell you,

[1:14:44] you are completely normal.

[1:14:47] I'm Maddie Myers.

[1:14:48] I'm Jason Schreier.

[1:14:49] And I'm Kirk Hamilton.

[1:14:50] And together, we form TripleClick,

[1:14:52] a podcast about video games.

[1:14:54] If you think you might be a person who likes video games,

[1:14:57] we hope you'll give TripleClick a listen.

[1:14:59] TripleClick, new episodes every Thursday on Maximum Fun.

[1:15:05] Our show today is sponsored by Microdose Gummies.

[1:15:09] Microdose Gummies deliver perfect entry-level doses of THC

[1:15:14] that help you feel just the right amount of good.

[1:15:16] You've probably heard about microdosing.

[1:15:18] Lots of people are doing it,

[1:15:19] including this guy, Dan McCoy,

[1:15:21] who has tried the Microdose Gummies from LumiLabs.

[1:15:25] I've used them and enjoyed them.

[1:15:27] And they have helped me relax, sleep,

[1:15:32] sort of just be generally kinder towards the world.

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[1:15:48] Links can be found in the show description,

[1:15:50] but again, that's microdose.com, code FLOP.

[1:15:54] Elliot.

[1:15:55] Thank you, Dan.

[1:15:56] We're also sponsored by HelloFresh.

[1:15:59] That's right, it's that time of the year,

[1:16:00] time to cozy up and save money by cooking at home.

[1:16:04] Come on, restaurants, we can do what you do.

[1:16:07] This is the perfect time to experience the delicious taste

[1:16:09] and unparalleled convenience of HelloFresh.

[1:16:12] If you're not familiar with HelloFresh,

[1:16:13] here's what you do.

[1:16:14] You subscribe to it, check save money

[1:16:16] off of your holiday to-do list, and that's it.

[1:16:18] Well, maybe I should explain a little bit more.

[1:16:20] HelloFresh sends you stuff in the mail,

[1:16:22] sends you the ingredients you need in the mail

[1:16:25] to make great meals.

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[1:16:30] I've really enjoyed the food.

[1:16:31] The ingredients do come fresh, they taste really good,

[1:16:35] and they help someone like me who does not like cooking

[1:16:38] and also hates measuring things

[1:16:40] to get the best out of my kitchen

[1:16:42] instead of throwing away money

[1:16:44] on the food services industry.

[1:16:45] You know what I'm talking about, Stuart,

[1:16:47] food and drink services.

[1:16:48] No thanks, who needs them?

[1:16:49] HelloFresh is 25% cheaper than takeout

[1:16:54] and less expensive than grocery shopping,

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[1:16:58] with made-without-animal products of any kind.

[1:17:00] It does, and you can enjoy meals

[1:17:01] like sweet chili tofu bowls or spicy coconut curry stir fry.

[1:17:05] I, of course, go for the meat ones, but that's okay.

[1:17:08] That's the thing about HelloFresh

[1:17:09] is you can choose the kind of thing that you wanna make.

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[1:17:55] And we also have a, yeah, we also have a Jumbotron today.

[1:18:00] Jumbotron, tron, tron.

[1:18:03] And this message is from Wright, Nate,

[1:18:06] Orion, Josh, and Targris.

[1:18:09] And they say,

[1:18:11] dear Stu, we're commandeering the voice of your fave flopper

[1:18:17] to wish you a very merry holiday name withheld

[1:18:20] and a happy 2023.

[1:18:23] We know that it's been a hard year,

[1:18:26] but you're a delight to be around,

[1:18:28] and we love you as much as you love elves

[1:18:30] and the calendar of Harptose.

[1:18:33] And that's a lot.

[1:18:35] A lovely message.

[1:18:37] That is very sweet.

[1:18:37] I like, you put a lot of energy into that.

[1:18:39] I like it.

[1:18:40] Yeah, it's as sweet as it is incomprehensible to me.

[1:18:45] Yeah, happy holidays to you, recipients.

[1:18:51] And you.

[1:18:52] And you, Stu.

[1:18:57] You know, a thing that we do on this podcast

[1:18:59] is answer letters from listeners.

[1:19:02] Yeah, why not?

[1:19:03] Why don't we jump into that just for a change?

[1:19:05] Let's do it.

[1:19:06] Let's do it.

[1:19:07] Grip it and rip it, that's what I say.

[1:19:09] I don't say that, but yeah,

[1:19:11] you don't want to rip it and then grip it,

[1:19:13] because it's just harder to grip something that's been ripped.

[1:19:15] Yeah.

[1:19:16] This first one is from Alan Lassay Withheld, who writes.

[1:19:19] Smithy.

[1:19:20] Arkin.

[1:19:21] Oh.

[1:19:22] Writes, have you seen my movie, The Santa Clause 3?

[1:19:25] No, I'm taking issue with you saying it's your movie,

[1:19:28] Alan Arkin.

[1:19:28] I don't blame him for withholding.

[1:19:31] If you had a sandwich named after you,

[1:19:33] as many celebs eventually do,

[1:19:35] what would you want it to be?

[1:19:37] Bonus points if I can make and take it to work

[1:19:39] to eat and or bug you on Twitter

[1:19:41] about my attempts to recreate them.

[1:19:43] Many thanks.

[1:19:44] Alan Lassay Withheld.

[1:19:46] Alan, I'm not, you know, here's what, here's the thing.

[1:19:49] I'm not gonna try and make it about my personality.

[1:19:52] I'm just gonna give you what I think

[1:19:53] will be a good sandwich.

[1:19:55] Yeah, that's what he's asking for.

[1:19:57] All right.

[1:19:57] I get, you're kind of challenging him in a way.

[1:19:59] Yeah.

[1:20:00] that is not a challenge.

[1:20:01] Dan McCoy.

[1:20:02] Yeah, let's see here.

[1:20:03] What's the Dan McCoy?

[1:20:04] You're going to get a little like ciabatta roll, like a sort of a midsize when you slice

[1:20:10] that up.

[1:20:12] Maybe toast a little.

[1:20:13] Maybe.

[1:20:14] Fuck it.

[1:20:15] Put some.

[1:20:16] Hey, you're the boss.

[1:20:17] Put some olive tapenade on it.

[1:20:19] You lost me.

[1:20:21] Some prosciutto.

[1:20:22] OK, I'm back.

[1:20:25] Some arugula.

[1:20:26] No, thanks.

[1:20:29] Maybe a little like sprinkling of balsamic vinegar or some lemon juice to get some acid

[1:20:35] in there.

[1:20:36] And hey, you can throw a little bit of provolone on there if you want.

[1:20:43] I like that you're giving so many options.

[1:20:45] You're not directing people.

[1:20:46] It's not a gourmet.

[1:20:47] This is a family of sandwich that is sort of like it's customizable.

[1:20:52] It's like the Mr. Potato Head sandwich, which normally is just a piece of bread, a Mr. Potato

[1:20:57] Head and then another piece of bread, not a satisfying sandwich.

[1:21:00] Oh, yeah.

[1:21:01] So, man, obviously, if you're going to do a sandwich based on me, you probably want

[1:21:05] to be tied in with my a lot of what I like to eat, right?

[1:21:09] You want to think you're eating like a steward.

[1:21:12] So let's see.

[1:21:13] We're going to start with a layer of almonds, a hearty scoop of protein powder on that shit.

[1:21:20] Vegan protein powder can't handle the lactose.

[1:21:24] And a couple of dried mangoes on top, a schmear of almond butter.

[1:21:29] And then let's see.

[1:21:32] I don't eat a lot of bread anymore, but if I were, I would probably sandwich all that

[1:21:37] between two slices of a toasted almond, two slices of a toasted blueberry bagel, I think.

[1:21:43] Yep.

[1:21:44] Oh, wait.

[1:21:45] OK.

[1:21:46] Interesting.

[1:21:47] So a blueberry bagel.

[1:21:48] A lot less healthy at the end.

[1:21:49] I got it.

[1:21:50] Yeah, I don't know.

[1:21:51] I don't eat a lot of bread.

[1:21:52] Is that not healthy for you?

[1:21:53] And just cover the whole thing with maple syrup.

[1:21:56] Should I wrap it all up in like a like a lettuce wrap or something?

[1:22:00] And you just wrap it in fruit roll ups.

[1:22:02] Yeah.

[1:22:03] What you want to do is you're going to you're going to freeze some sheet lard.

[1:22:09] And oh, wow.

[1:22:12] I guess you can do that.

[1:22:13] OK.

[1:22:14] So that's two rings.

[1:22:15] Yeah.

[1:22:16] That's two sandwiches out of the way.

[1:22:17] OK.

[1:22:18] Either with with Elliot Kalin, you got to you got two options.

[1:22:22] I mean, the sandwich I go to now usually is a pastrami sandwich, but that's kind of

[1:22:25] boring.

[1:22:26] There's already a name for that.

[1:22:27] It's probably called the Sid Caesar or something like that.

[1:22:29] So when I was at the sandwich, I would get for lunch when I went to the Daily Show, I'd

[1:22:34] get turkey pastrami with pickles on it.

[1:22:37] And then I would have them toast the bread so it would not be totally mushy.

[1:22:41] That's a simple sandwich.

[1:22:42] That's fine.

[1:22:43] Even simpler.

[1:22:44] The sandwich that I would have as a child where it's just Hebrew national salami on

[1:22:48] bread.

[1:22:49] That's all you have to do.

[1:22:50] Like the original Earl of Sandwich said, just give me a piece of meat, some bread on

[1:22:53] it, make it Hebrew national salami.

[1:22:55] No other kind of salami will do.

[1:22:57] And you're not gonna be able to find it at a lot of places.

[1:22:59] So that's why I'm calling this the hidden Elliot Kalin sandwich.

[1:23:02] You got to find a place that serves the right kind of salami.

[1:23:05] Alonso, what about you?

[1:23:06] So, yeah, I was like, you know, I think, well, the sandwich that I usually get at a deli

[1:23:10] is already at a deli, so I don't need to, you know, so it's like if I want to make up

[1:23:13] something that was going to have my name on it, that this would not be like an easy take

[1:23:18] to work sandwich, but it would be a great make it for me in a kitchen restaurant, especially

[1:23:22] because now your kitchen is going to smell like this and not mine.

[1:23:26] It would be fried bologna with Swiss cheese melting between the pieces of the fried bologna

[1:23:32] while they're hot on toasted Texas toast with a thick slather of Duke's mayonnaise and maybe

[1:23:41] some red onion.

[1:23:42] Oh, wow.

[1:23:43] That's good.

[1:23:44] Oh, that sounds like four delicious sandwiches you could eat a lifetime for somebody to ask

[1:23:51] me what my celebrity sandwich would be, though.

[1:23:54] So thank you, Alan.

[1:23:55] Last thing with.

[1:23:56] I mean, I love that you put so much thought into not just what's on it, but how you would

[1:24:00] assemble it and like that you're interlacing the cheese with the meat.

[1:24:04] Oh, yeah.

[1:24:05] That's how it gets.

[1:24:06] It's all melty.

[1:24:07] It's great.

[1:24:08] Yeah.

[1:24:09] Yeah.

[1:24:10] It's like the people who got mad at Subway because they weren't layering the the the

[1:24:13] stuff on the sandwich in the way that made the best use of the surface area.

[1:24:16] And they had a big campaign to have them tessellate the stuff they were putting on the on the

[1:24:21] sandwiches.

[1:24:22] Yeah.

[1:24:23] That was the biggest PR issue Subway's ever had.

[1:24:24] Right.

[1:24:25] The big Subway otherwise has had a sterling brand with themselves or their spokespeople

[1:24:30] bread that smells artificial and tastes worse from the stuff that's in yoga mats.

[1:24:36] I mean, you're talking to people who used to work in an office that was right next to

[1:24:41] a subway.

[1:24:42] Yeah.

[1:24:43] I mean, in New York, we're all about subways, right?

[1:24:46] Yeah.

[1:24:47] That's a good point.

[1:24:48] Yeah.

[1:24:49] Yeah.

[1:24:50] But it is.

[1:24:51] It is funny to have a spokesman like I lost a lot of weight eating Subway sandwiches like,

[1:24:53] yeah, but you could take a couple of bites and throw it away because you don't want more

[1:24:57] of the prospect of not eating suddenly seems more attractive.

[1:24:59] Anyway, so this episode is brought to you by Subway.

[1:25:06] We have another letter.

[1:25:07] It's from Eli Lasting Withheld.

[1:25:09] Eli Roth.

[1:25:10] Hopefully it's not Eli Lilly.

[1:25:11] Who writes?

[1:25:12] Hello.

[1:25:13] Anyway, this episode is also brought to you by Eli Lilly.

[1:25:16] Oh, no.

[1:25:17] Hello, peaches.

[1:25:18] Last night, my wife and I decided to watch So I Married an Axe Murderer on Tubi for the

[1:25:25] first time in some 25 years to see if it lived up to our memories.

[1:25:29] Probably not.

[1:25:30] And a couple of things really stood out.

[1:25:32] First of all, it was very heavily set in San Francisco with all of the cliched sites.

[1:25:37] And neither of us remembered this.

[1:25:39] But more importantly, it came in at a tight 133, which I think is due to the use of not

[1:25:45] one but two montages to yada, yada, yada over all the relationship developments, which leads

[1:25:51] me to my question.

[1:25:53] Our movie is longer these days because these cheesy montages have gone out of style.

[1:25:58] I don't think that's why movies are longer, but I also don't have a better answer.

[1:26:06] You just saw Avatar yesterday, right?

[1:26:08] So why is that movie so long?

[1:26:10] Is it because there's no montages of them?

[1:26:12] I assume.

[1:26:13] I assume training to ride fish, flying fish or something, you know, they're well, I mean,

[1:26:18] they do train to ride fly fish, but it is not a montage.

[1:26:21] I mean, I was just watching the first one yesterday to prepare for learning the way

[1:26:26] of water.

[1:26:27] And there were a ton of montages in that one, too.

[1:26:31] Yeah, there's not a critique, not of the same kind of type that I think that are being talked

[1:26:37] about here, where it's like literally like a pop song plays and there's one scene of

[1:26:43] like, you know, someone getting something on their nose and laughing about Jim Cameron

[1:26:47] and more pop songs skipping by the water or whatever the fuck they do in movies.

[1:26:54] It's hard to answer that question in December because all the movies are really long now

[1:26:58] because it's a one season and it's like you are not going to be taken seriously if you

[1:27:03] are under 215.

[1:27:05] The Academy won't even look at you, you know, that's what I was watching.

[1:27:08] I watched Tar the other night.

[1:27:10] That's a long, right?

[1:27:11] It's a long one.

[1:27:12] And there's part of me is like, I don't know if we needed so many scenes of her pulling

[1:27:14] her suitcase from one place to another, but at the same time, it provides kind of a little

[1:27:19] breather between the scenes of her being a horribly abusive person.

[1:27:22] Yeah, I wouldn't argue against the length in Tar because I think that that is all sort

[1:27:27] of yes, a cumulative effect, like part of the effect is I wouldn't even argue against

[1:27:33] in Way of Water probably, I mean, it's a little long, but that builds up so much like

[1:27:40] care for the characters before they get into the final fight.

[1:27:44] Like that's the thing that even though Way of Water is like, I liked it a lot.

[1:27:51] It's just it's a tight 184 minutes.

[1:27:53] I liked it a lot.

[1:27:54] It's still like one of its lower down on my list of Cameron films, but I still liked it.

[1:27:59] But James Cameron still has the ability to like everything he's doing is to make you

[1:28:04] really like want to hiss the villains and cheer at the end.

[1:28:08] Like the payoff is is good.

[1:28:10] I would say that in general, movies are probably longer because I would guess that a lot of

[1:28:15] it has to do with now they feel like, oh, we got to give people their money's worth.

[1:28:19] Like the way that streaming is so big now, they're like, we have to make this a movie.

[1:28:23] We have to make it worth your time.

[1:28:25] Well, that's what I was going to say is partly movie tickets have gotten so expensive and

[1:28:29] it's so much effort to go to the movies now.

[1:28:31] If you have anything like if you're if you're a Dan McCoy or a Stuart Wellington, there's

[1:28:35] nothing holding you back.

[1:28:37] But like for a lot of people, not all people, but a lot of people, it's a big effort to

[1:28:41] go to the movies.

[1:28:42] You kind of feel like if you I was we were watching a Christmas story the other day because

[1:28:48] Sammy had never seen it.

[1:28:49] And I was like, you know, I feel like there's no movies out like that anymore.

[1:28:52] But I feel like if I took my family movies, that's 100 bucks if we buy any food.

[1:28:57] And then to see a movie like a Christmas story, I might be like, I just spent one hundred

[1:28:59] dollars to watch, you know, something very fun, but like very light, you know.

[1:29:03] But I also think so many of the movies that come out now, the big ones at least, are in

[1:29:07] that are in the Marvel mold of like, we're also going to service other other things related

[1:29:13] to this.

[1:29:14] And like, I haven't seen the new Wakanda movie yet, but it's hard for me to imagine that

[1:29:17] there's a real justification for it being like two hours and 40 some odd minutes long,

[1:29:22] except that there's so much that I assume they have to service in that universe.

[1:29:25] You know, I don't think you might think I mean, I think the Black Panther movies so

[1:29:30] far have kind of been their own neighborhood of the of the MCU in terms of having similar

[1:29:36] to Wakanda.

[1:29:37] Thank you.

[1:29:38] Yeah, isolation.

[1:29:39] They are under their own dome, if you will.

[1:29:41] And so, yeah, it's not like a whole ton of like, oh, and the Avengers are doing blah,

[1:29:45] blah, blah, blah.

[1:29:46] Then why is it so long?

[1:29:47] Again, I haven't seen it.

[1:29:48] It's a very stirring memorial.

[1:29:50] Solid meditation.

[1:29:51] There's a lot going on.

[1:29:53] OK, I mean, but there's also like I've seen solemn meditations on loss that are not that

[1:29:58] long, but I guess they don't have.

[1:30:00] Guess it wasn't that much loss.

[1:30:02] Yeah, movies are getting longer.

[1:30:05] If I had gone to the movie theater and decision to leave was not over two hours long, would

[1:30:11] I feel like I was cheated?

[1:30:12] Probably not.

[1:30:13] Yeah.

[1:30:14] And speaking of Cameron, I mean, it used to be this was not considered a selling point.

[1:30:17] I remember when Paramount actually put out a thing saying that Titanic was two hours

[1:30:21] and 75 minutes to fool people into thinking that it wasn't longer than three hours.

[1:30:28] And then, of course, it became a giant hit anyway.

[1:30:31] But maybe it's Titanic's fault, actually, that all the movies are long.

[1:30:34] I don't know.

[1:30:35] Well, that's I think that actually is.

[1:30:36] I mean, there were a few very tremendous James Cameron's movies are on now.

[1:30:41] Yeah.

[1:30:42] But like they're tremendous hits like Titanic and Avengers Endgame.

[1:30:46] You know, there are these Lord of the Rings movies like they're very long movies and people

[1:30:51] are like, oh, I guess that's what people like.

[1:30:52] Well, and you know what?

[1:30:53] And it's another it's another ripple effect.

[1:30:55] And there's a number of these from the fact that there's fewer small movie houses and

[1:31:00] more big chain multiplexes where it used to be a movie couldn't be too long because it

[1:31:04] ran it cut into the number of showings you could do during a day.

[1:31:07] But if but like if it's on five screens.

[1:31:10] Yeah.

[1:31:11] If you can run Avatar on five screens, then why not make it three hours long?

[1:31:13] Because they're all it's you can you have infinite time.

[1:31:15] I remember when when multiplexes started and a lot of the thing was like now you can have

[1:31:19] the screen some screens for the big movies and some screens for the little.

[1:31:24] What if we just played all the big movies with the same kind of philosophy that has

[1:31:28] hollowed out every industry in the United States of America?

[1:31:30] What if we had a streaming service but we didn't stream anything?

[1:31:35] It's like it's the idea of like, OK, I'll get us I'll get this fountain soda.

[1:31:39] No ice, please.

[1:31:40] Wink.

[1:31:41] Because that ice is just taking up valuable real estate.

[1:31:45] Less soda.

[1:31:46] In this case, the ice are the smaller art house movies that actually make you think

[1:31:51] that add the chill.

[1:31:52] Kind of like the ice storm.

[1:31:54] OK, well, let's move on to the final segment where we recommend movies that we've seen

[1:32:03] that maybe would be a better use for these dwindling hours than Santa Claus three.

[1:32:11] Hard to imagine that's possible.

[1:32:13] I I'm, you know, it's going to recommend Avatar.

[1:32:17] That being said, I mean, it is the thing I saw recently that I enjoyed the most, but

[1:32:23] I don't think it needs my help.

[1:32:25] So that being said, I'm going to.

[1:32:27] Yes, it does.

[1:32:28] It does.

[1:32:29] Yeah.

[1:32:30] I'm going to do a more qualified recommendation of a thing I enjoyed, but, you know, wasn't

[1:32:34] over the moon about.

[1:32:35] I just watched the Adult Swim Yule log thing that was put out.

[1:32:40] That was it starts out like a normal Yule log, as one might have on a streaming service.

[1:32:46] And then I don't want to spoil the many bizarre directions it goes in to.

[1:32:50] It was directed by the person who made too many cooks, which will give you an idea.

[1:32:54] I will say that it works better as a bizarre, unexpected TV experiment than like a movie

[1:33:03] in its own right, which is fair because that's what it is.

[1:33:07] I think that at an hour instead of 90 minutes, it may have played better for me and it touches

[1:33:12] on some uncomfortable like it gets pretty like extreme and touches on stuff that actually

[1:33:22] could be related to real life trauma.

[1:33:25] I don't want to like get too specific because, you know, it does it does into history in

[1:33:31] a way.

[1:33:32] Yes.

[1:33:33] Yeah.

[1:33:34] Like I don't want to ruin anyone's surprises, but I would say that there's some material

[1:33:38] that it handles more glibly than the material warrants.

[1:33:42] But if you don't surprise coming from Adult Swim.

[1:33:46] Yeah, exactly.

[1:33:47] But if you don't mind that kind of like goofball, like horror stuff in your horror movies, then

[1:33:56] that's fine.

[1:33:57] It's a very interesting thing, if nothing else.

[1:33:59] It's clever.

[1:34:00] That's what I would say, Stuart.

[1:34:03] Speaking of movies that are probably a little bit too long, I'm going to recommend a movie

[1:34:07] that is probably a little too long that just dropped on Netflix recently.

[1:34:12] It's called The Big Four.

[1:34:14] It's a big old Indonesian action movie from writer-director, I can't say his name, Timo

[1:34:21] Tiahanto, who made The Night Comes for Us, which is a super bloody badass action movie.

[1:34:28] And he made some shorts in like the VHS series.

[1:34:32] This is a big action movie.

[1:34:35] It's also an action comedy, so it's filled with tons of very silly, goofy jokes.

[1:34:41] It's kind of reminiscent of a series that I recommended some time on this podcast, The

[1:34:47] Fable series, which are also like balls-to-the-wall action movies that also have a ton of weird

[1:34:53] silly stuff.

[1:34:56] It's also clocking in at over two hours, which is unnecessary.

[1:35:00] But if you're looking for a fun, over-the-top, very bloody action comedy, The Big Four is

[1:35:08] a blast.

[1:35:09] I'm going to recommend, and I was talking about movies that are too long or whatever,

[1:35:13] I'm also recommending a movie that's over two hours.

[1:35:15] This is ridiculous.

[1:35:16] What are we doing?

[1:35:18] We're playing right into Hollywood's hands.

[1:35:19] I'm not complaining.

[1:35:20] I like long movies.

[1:35:22] Oh, okay.

[1:35:23] I have less time in my life to spend on movies, so actually I like them when they're long

[1:35:26] too.

[1:35:27] Anyway, this is a movie I saw recently that I liked a lot.

[1:35:29] I don't know why, but my last few recommendations I feel like have all fallen into the category

[1:35:33] of women going for what they want in different ways, and this one is no exception.

[1:35:39] This is a movie called Mahanagar, which means The Big City, and it's a Satyajit Ray movie

[1:35:45] starring Madhavi Mukherjee.

[1:35:48] She plays a housewife in the 50s in Calcutta, and her husband's job is not paying well.

[1:35:55] They support themselves, and also their son, and also the husband's parents, and the husband's

[1:36:01] sister, I believe, and she ends up having to take a job as a saleswoman, and that leads

[1:36:08] to complications in her family, but also complications in her feelings about herself, and also the

[1:36:14] way she interacts with the world, having this experience with the professional world.

[1:36:19] It was a movie that I really loved, and it felt very real to me, and the conflicts that

[1:36:24] come up are not the straightforward black-and-white, I can't have a wife that works, I'm the man

[1:36:29] of the house type of thing.

[1:36:30] The characters feel like real, kind of believable characters, and the ending I found genuinely

[1:36:37] very moving, and very lovely, and full of love between the characters, and that the

[1:36:42] film holds for the characters in the film, too, and the performances are great in it,

[1:36:46] and there's a real lightness and humor to a lot of it, considering it's a movie about

[1:36:52] a woman getting a job at a time when women don't necessarily work, and da-da-da, it's

[1:36:57] not a soapbox movie, it's very much a movie about people, and I really enjoyed it, so

[1:37:01] I loved it, and it's on HBO Max until they pull all the Satyajit Ray movies off of HBO

[1:37:06] Max, so go see it there, it's the big city.

[1:37:08] I think they're shooting to be the first streaming service to, in fact, have no content, like

[1:37:13] we previously mentioned.

[1:37:15] It's like, what if we only made tax write-offs?

[1:37:18] What if all of our money came from tax write-offs?

[1:37:21] It's nuts.

[1:37:22] If the numbers are working, what can I tell you?

[1:37:24] It's weird to be living at a time when there are so many very valuable brand names that

[1:37:28] are self-dismantling themselves, like that, and Twitter, where you're just, everyone,

[1:37:32] it's like, you know.

[1:37:35] What if we sold ourselves for parts?

[1:37:38] Exactly!

[1:37:39] Like, how much is this arm worth?

[1:37:41] Rip it off me.

[1:37:42] Do it.

[1:37:43] Yeah, I mean, it was like, what, like a year or so ago when OnlyFans was like, we're not

[1:37:46] gonna allow pornography anymore, and then almost immediately we're like, whoops, just

[1:37:50] kidding!

[1:37:51] I mean, if only other services took OnlyFans' lead, and we're like, wait, okay, that was

[1:37:57] a mistake.

[1:37:58] Let's turn the boat back around.

[1:38:00] Hold on, everybody.

[1:38:02] Now we're calling it OnlyPorn.

[1:38:03] We gotta be up with our strides.

[1:38:04] Alonzo, do you have any recommendations for us?

[1:38:08] I do.

[1:38:09] I was gonna recommend Spirited, but it's a little late for a Christmas movie, and it's

[1:38:13] awfully long also, so I thought- How long is it?

[1:38:17] It's a little over two, but it's a musical, and that's allowed, you know.

[1:38:21] That's fine.

[1:38:22] I'll get that.

[1:38:23] But anyway, so I thought I would go for a movie that I really, really liked in 2022

[1:38:27] that I feel like kind of went under many folks' radar and is also only 98 minutes, and you

[1:38:33] guys may well have recommended it at some point, and forgive me if I'm repeating myself,

[1:38:37] but Confess Fletch.

[1:38:38] Oh, yeah.

[1:38:40] The return of the Fletch franchise to the big screen, barely, it kind of went straight

[1:38:45] to streaming, I think, with Jon Hamm stepping in as the iconic Wiseacre investigative reporter

[1:38:51] created by Gregory McDonald.

[1:38:54] It's directed by Greg Mottola, who did The Day Trippers and Adventureland and a lot of,

[1:38:59] like, I think a lot of episodes of Arrested Development.

[1:39:02] Hamm totally gets this character, and it's a funny movie.

[1:39:06] It's the kind of, like, breezy crime comedy aimed at adults that we just got all the time

[1:39:11] in the 70s and 80s, and nobody makes anymore, and it would be nice if they did.

[1:39:15] And this one is a really good example of that.

[1:39:17] Marcia Gay Harden has a supporting role as a Portuguese-Italian countess who constantly

[1:39:22] calls him Fletch, who is hysterically funny throughout the film.

[1:39:27] This has been a very good year for Marcia Gay Harden, if you watched her on that Netflix

[1:39:32] show with Neil Patrick Harris or on CBS's So Help Me, Todd, but anyway, yeah, Confess

[1:39:38] Fletch.

[1:39:39] Fun, ensemble cast of people, and just, like, breezy and zippy and real entertaining.

[1:39:45] Yeah, you rarely see Marcia Gay Harden just get to be that goofy.

[1:39:50] Yeah, like, it is just, like, unleashed, and it's a lot of fun.

[1:39:54] Yeah, that's a movie that, since I've seen it, I haven't rewatched it yet, but I keep

[1:40:00] like, maybe I just want to re-watch my best Fletch so he's got that vibe.

[1:40:05] I think part of what it is like, the Fletch character is goofy, but not like a big character,

[1:40:12] so you can surround him with like big side characters that are funny.

[1:40:17] Like what's her name, from Barb and Star, who's really great, Andy Momolo, yeah, she's

[1:40:22] fucking great in it.

[1:40:23] Yes.

[1:40:24] Absolutely.

[1:40:25] Yeah, that was a lot of fun.

[1:40:27] I haven't seen it yet.

[1:40:28] I only watch old black and white movies from other countries.

[1:40:30] Sorry, folks.

[1:40:31] I thought, so why are you mad about movies being long like these days?

[1:40:37] Rolls right off your back.

[1:40:38] I just did my list of movies I saw for the first time in 2022 and The Big City was one

[1:40:42] of them and it's great.

[1:40:44] It's really great.

[1:40:45] Yeah.

[1:40:46] Well, speaking of things that were a lot of fun, it was a lot of fun to have you on, Alonzo.

[1:40:50] See?

[1:40:51] See that?

[1:40:52] That's not casting, guys.

[1:40:54] That's the kind of smoothness that only comes from doing this show for 15 years.

[1:40:58] And it comes and goes.

[1:41:00] Yeah.

[1:41:01] Segway King.

[1:41:02] Alonzo, is there anything that you want to plug before we do our sign off stuff?

[1:41:07] Sure.

[1:41:08] Yes, please.

[1:41:09] As Ellie mentioned at the top of the show, check out my Christmas movie books.

[1:41:12] I have another book project that I'm working on now that will be happening in 2024, so

[1:41:16] more on that later.

[1:41:18] You can read my stuff at The Wrap and of course, check out my podcast, Linoleum Knife, which

[1:41:22] I've been doing for a mere 12 years with my husband, Dave White.

[1:41:25] Also, Breakfast All Day with Christy Lemire.

[1:41:27] I'm a frequent contributor to Deck the Hallmark and here on the Maximum Fun Network, of course,

[1:41:32] you can catch me on Maximum Film with Iffy Waterway and Dre Clark, so please do.

[1:41:38] And it's always a delight to hang out with you guys and do the show and wishing everybody

[1:41:43] a very happy holiday.

[1:41:44] Thank you.

[1:41:45] Thank you very much.

[1:41:46] Thanks so much for joining us today.

[1:41:47] There are a lot of great podcasts that you're involved with.

[1:41:50] Linoleum Knife is a particular favorite of mine and I feel like for any listener who

[1:41:53] hasn't tried it, you should and if you like the idea, if you like that this episode had

[1:41:57] a mix of talking about a movie and talking about a sandwich that you could make, I feel

[1:42:01] like that's the kind of promise Linoleum Knife fills constantly where I feel like it's like

[1:42:05] I want to know what Dave's been cooking and I want to know what movies they watched and

[1:42:08] what they thought about them.

[1:42:10] That's as good a description as I've ever heard.

[1:42:13] Well, as for us, we are, as Alonzo mentioned, on the Maximum Fun podcasting network.

[1:42:19] Go to MaximumFun.org.

[1:42:21] Check out Alonzo's show and other shows.

[1:42:24] Some of them are funny.

[1:42:26] Some of them tell you stuff.

[1:42:27] Some of them do both.

[1:42:28] What more do you want?

[1:42:31] Thank you to Alex Smith, our producer.

[1:42:34] He is at HowlDotty on Twitter, although these days I'm like, should we even be telling people

[1:42:41] what our Twitter handles are?

[1:42:43] Is that a thing we want to do?

[1:42:44] Who cares?

[1:42:46] But as long as, you know, it's happening, we'll just let you know and maybe we'll check

[1:42:52] in every once in a while and say hi.

[1:42:54] Anyway, that was a real side tangent at the very end of the episode.

[1:42:58] But for the Flop House...

[1:42:59] That kind of elegance only comes with doing the podcast for 15 years.

[1:43:03] Stuart's nodding.

[1:43:05] I'm Stuart Wellington of the Flop House podcast.

[1:43:08] I'm Dan McCoy, podcast.

[1:43:13] I'm Ellie Kalin.

[1:43:14] I'm not even going to try to say the name of the podcast because I'll mess it up.

[1:43:17] And we've had...

[1:43:20] Oh, we...

[1:43:21] What?

[1:43:22] Oh, Alonzo.

[1:43:24] Oh, my God.

[1:43:25] Hi.

[1:43:26] I've been Alonzo Duraldi.

[1:43:27] Thank you for listening.

[1:43:28] Oh, man.

[1:43:29] You know, I'll take the heat on that one.

[1:43:31] I kind of messed everything up.

[1:43:33] No, no.

[1:43:34] No, no.

[1:43:35] We went over this earlier, but...

[1:43:37] I'm really sorry.

[1:43:39] It shows what a natural fit and what a great guest you are for us.

[1:43:43] It's like we need a guest who's great at what he does but also messes up sometimes.

[1:43:48] We mess up all the time.

[1:43:50] Make us look normal.

[1:43:51] Done and done.

[1:43:52] I feel like anyone who comes in who's too professional makes us look terrible.

[1:43:56] Just confuses us.

[1:43:58] I'm talking about you, Roman Mars, being so good at what you do.

[1:44:03] Anyway, for the flop us, that's been us.

[1:44:06] We'll talk to you next time.

[1:44:07] You don't have to do it again, Dan.

[1:44:08] Bye.

[1:44:09] Bye.

[1:44:10] Yeah, just tell Alex to, like, fade that last bit kind of out a little bit.

[1:44:18] No, but, guys, I'm about to drink this Waterloo pineapple-flavored seltzer.

[1:44:23] Is it going to have a positive effect on my loads, Elliot?

[1:44:27] Based on the erotic fiction I've read, yes, probably.

[1:44:31] Great.

[1:44:32] I think we're acting out a pineapple maybe, but I think given that most fruit-flavored seltzers

[1:44:37] just sort of waved in front of a picture of that fruit, I think I wouldn't worry about it.

[1:44:41] I told him it might make him seem a little fizzy.

[1:44:44] But get back to us later and let us know.

[1:44:46] Again, this is only based on my reading of the erotic literature for my very specific fetish.

[1:44:52] That, of course, is the Rat-A-Spewie series about a rat who cooks food and then ejaculates onto it.

[1:44:57] So he always eats fresh fruit so it tastes better.

[1:44:59] That's the secret ingredient.

[1:45:00] And they can't let the restaurant critics know or the health department because that would be –

[1:45:05] Or the customers.

[1:45:06] They'd instantly shut down a restaurant or the customers for that matter.

[1:45:08] No one is happy about this arrangement other than the rat.

[1:45:11] And the rat loves it.

[1:45:13] But oh, the flavor profile.

[1:45:15] Maximumfun.org, comedy and culture, artist-owned, audience-supported.

Ep.# 386 - The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause, with Alonso Duralde

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