'CHRISTMAS IN THE SPOTLIGHT' & 'HOLIDAY TOUCHDOWN: A CHIEFS LOVE STORY'......HALLMARK AND LIFETIME CASH IN ON TAYLOR SWIFT/TRAVIS KELCE

 Christmas In The Spotlight (2024) & Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story (2024)

       "Deck The Halls with Swift and Kelce,tra-la-la-la-la...la-la-la-la"

        Thus spoke the Lords of the Lifetime and Hallmark channels currently flooding us with their annual onslaught of Christmas romances......

       And what romance captured the Zeitgeist more than that of Pop Princess Taylor Swift and football star Travis Kelce?

        No wonder the streaming-TV magnates salivated over high ratings and advertiser dollars at the thought of cashing in on America's Official Lovebirds. 

         So they presented us with their very own sanitized-for-your-protection versions.......

         But only one of them, the Lifetime 'Christmas In The Spotlight' had the nerve to actually depict characters blatantly modeled after Swift and Kelce. 

         The Hallmark Film, officially sanctioned and endorsed by Kansas City Chiefs with real Chiefs notables in cameos, took a tamer, respectful route. It simply grafted a standard, generic Hallmarkian couple into a background steeped in Chiefs lore.  

        No surprise here, really. The Lifetime movie is way more fun and fascinating to watch......it takes a full plunge into what we've all contemplated: how does a romance work between a worshipped pop star and a popular jock? What the hell would they even have in common, other than public adoration?

        (We haven't figured that out ourselves. But ain't love grand?)

        So the road to love-dovey-kissy-kissy becomes just as bumpy and hazardous as we imagined. And the script, unfettered with Hallmark limitations, freely doses its dialogue with Swift song name drops. No doubt Swifties everywhere squealed and chuckled at every Taylor meta-quip that made its way into the plot. 

        The Hallmark movie holds weightier issues on its mind......the power of fandom faith to carry on through subsequent generations.  Here, the resident cutie-pie represents the third generation of an  extended family of Chiefs fans. 

          We didn't bother to sort out the large cast assembled to play various parents and grandparents......except for  Ed Begley Jr who looks and sounds like he's heading for big goalpost in the sky.

         The leads are bland, the Christmas-y feels are minimal, but as you might expect, there's a ton of Chiefs stuff in the plotting and on display. Outside of Kansas City, you can make out the sounds of millions of yawns.......(or did Hallmark not realize that football team love is fiercely territorial?)

          Best moment:  For a mushy sentimental finale, the all the family's generations address the crowd at a fully packed Chiefs game. Finally, coach Andy Reid yells at them to get off the field. 

           Bravo, Andy. We would've loved it better if you'd just sent Travis Kelce to physically shove 'em all back into the bleachers. 

           As this blog's designated referee between these two movies BQ calls a penalty on 'Holiday Touchdown'....boredom. 2 stars (**).

            We immediately award on additional star to "Christmas In The Spotlight", bringing it up to 3 stars (***).  At least this movie's team did an actual fictional copy of Kelce-Swift and even eked out a bit of fun with it. 

'DUST'.....AMID CLIMATE CHANGE CHAOS, PARTIALLY DEAF TEEN COMES OF AGE.......

 Dust by Alison Stine (2024)

     So much of this book did truly haunt me and pull on the heart strings with its depiction of a teen girl besieged by both a catastrophic climate and parents who've essentially imprisoned her away from the outside world.

     Set in what I'm assuming is the not too distant future, the book offers up a preview of dreaded coming attractions - overwhelming floods in one part of the country and terrible droughts and dust storms in another.

     Thea's father, obsessed with premonitions, has taken her, her little sister and mother away from the floods of Ohio to try farming amid the stark arid plains of Bloodless Valley in Colorado. It's an unforgiving landscape of little or no water for crops and afflicted with whirlwinds of dust that build into cataclysmic storms the rival those that swept across the land in the 1930's depression.

     Even worse for Thea, whose hearing is partially impaired, her father imposes a 'live off the grid' life for his family.. Meaning no friends, no phone, no internet, no social contact with outsiders unless necessary and only the most amateur attempts at home schooling. that don't interfere with farm chores.

     Allowed a part time job in their little town to help family finances, Thea begins to experience everything she's been denied - friendships, the town library, a sense of empathetic community and the sweet stirrings of first love with a deaf boy who can teach her how to converse with ASL. And even as the brutal existence in Bloodless Valley reaches near Biblicial proportions, Thea faces a reckoning for her to break free of her father's severe constraints, and for better or worse rejoin the world at large.

     Author Alison Stine vividly creates a bleak, nightmarish environment surrounding Thea and all the well drawn charcters who fall into her orbit, forever changing her. 'Dust' must have really kept a grip on me when I realized how fast I found myself racing through it. That's the sure sign of highly recommended read.

         5 stars (*****).

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'WICKED'.....THE GREAT AND POWERFUL UNIVERSAL STUDIO COMMANDS YOU TO WATCH THIS MOVIE.....AND DAMN WELL LOVE IT.

 Wicked (2024)   Has there ever been a movie musical more self-congratulatory and self-loving than this one?

        Has there ever been such a deluge of corporate cross-promotions of a movie than this one?

         Has there even been a movie more hammered into the pop culture universe than this one?

         Phew......we're exhausted already and we haven't even started this review yet. 

         In the golden age of movie musicals, the films existed simply to show you a good time.....make you hum the tunes, appreciate all the craft that went into the singing, dancing and staging.  Musicals just wanted to lift your spirits for a few hours and show you a good time. 

          'Wicked' doesn't want to just entertain you.

           The movie adaptation of the hit Broadway show wants to pound you on the head with all its many glories......and keep pounding you until you fall to your knees and pray to it. 

            'Wicked' doesn't beg for applause. It demands worship. 

             And you damn well better get in line for your opportunity to praise it the skies. 

             As for us?  Nah. Pass. 

             Let's leave the rarified air of the Land of Oz and get real for a few moments......

            First off, it's so bloated with ego (the studio's, the show's creators, the filmmakers) that it's overlong by at least a half an hour. It's a punishing sit for any reasonable adult. God only knows how antsy kids get through it. 

           It's stuffed to its rafters with dead, superfluous scenes that cry out for an editor.......like a Blu-Ray special edition where every useless deleted scene was jammed back into the movie. 

            And worst of all, it falls into that unholy practice that we'd hoped we'd seen the last of with the 'Twilight', 'Hunger Games' and 'Harry Potter' series.....the spectacle of studios, their mouths foaming with greed, dragging out their IP tentpoles to excessive lengths. 

           Yes, this whole 'Wicked' nightmare will return, like a horror movie slasher, for a second half next year. 

          (Oh, and by the way....memo to filmmakers:  Nobody gives a flying f*** how Galinda's name became Glinda. Give it a rest, will ya?)

        (Oh and second by the way....do we really need to see the CGI monkeys experience sprouting their wings as if going through the shrieking agonies of childbirth? Was that footage left over from a Blumhouse movie?)

            Now you might ask, is there anything at all in it we liked?

           We did.

           Cynthia Erivo provides a beating heart and resilient soul that this movie needs. She's by far the film's shining MVP. 

             We nurse a sneaking suspicion that Ariana Grande's very funny Good Witch is an only slightly exaggerated version of her public persona.......a self-absorbed, superstar pixie forever floating in her own bubble, far removed from us mere mortals.  Well, whatever. Her comic timing is impeccable and why studios haven't snapped her up for multiple rom-coms is beyond us.

             (Which brings us to the best comedic meta joke we've seen all year (and that includes Ryan Reynolds' endless Disney snarking).......the sight of original Broadway Glinda Kristin Chenowith slamming her hand over Ariana Grande's mouth before she tried to sing.....)

              Jeff Goldblum as the addled, mumbling, vaguely sinister Wizard Of Oz?  Genius casting, especially when it's revealed the Wiz is a Trumpian fascist, keeping himself in power by giving Oz-ians minority groups to hate......which apparently covers Munchkins, talking goats and assorted weird looking people.  So those grumpy apple trees from the 1939 film would be shipped off to internment camps.....and the Horse Of A Different Color would have to stay white all the time.

          And yes, the dance numbers go all out with the kind of aggressive Broadway pizzazz that earned 'Wicked' its original reputation. 

         But Universal Studios decision to grab America by the throat and insist we anoint the movie with our undying love left us weary. Enough already. 

         2 & 1/2 stars (**/12)  A shame, because somewhere deep in that overkilled, overdone mess, there's a 5 star 1 hour and 50 minute movie struggling to get out.  Maybe next year........