11 days into The Third Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films and we arrive at 2002’s About a Boy. Which is about a boy. And also some other people.

Adapted from the 1998 novel by Nick Hornby (an author who occupies God-like status in my esteem)  About a Boy is not really like any other movie. And that is a very much a good thing. It deals with some pretty serious issues such as mental health and bullying but manages to remain light in tone and eminently feel-good throughout. A young Nicholas Hoult gives an early indication of the career that awaits him and delivers an excellent performance as Marcus, the ‘boy’ of the title. This is very much Hugh Grant’s movie though. Being a fan of the book, I wasn’t especially convinced that Grant was the right choice for the role, but with the benefit of hindsight, it’s hard to imagine anyone else playing the part of shallow but self-aware Will.

About a Boy is a near perfect adaptation of what is arguably Hornby’s best novel. Thow in a completely original soundtrack by Badly Drawn Boy and it really doesn’t get much better.

 

Score for Christmasishness

It’s not ostensibly a Christmas movie but two Christmases feature in the story – one at quite a pivotal stage in the development of the relationship between Will and Marcus and one at the denouement of the movie, which wraps the narrative up rather appropriately. Throw in the fact that Will’s bachelor-pad lifestyle is funded solely through the royalties generated by a Christmas song that his father wrote and there is certainly enough to evoke a Christmas(ish) feeling to this film.

 

 

Door 10 of The Third Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films brings us 2002’s The Rules of Attraction. Which is not the helpful guide that you might imagine it to be. Indeed I’m not sure that there are any rules of any description on offer.

As with Door 7’s entry  Less Than Zero,  this movie is an adaptation of a Brett Easton Ellis novel. According to those in the know (which definitely doesn’t include me, given that I have read only one novel by this particular author and isn’t either of the above) The Rules of Attraction is more faithful to the original novel.

The movie is, much like Less than Zero, largely about some fairly unpleasant and overprivileged young people who seem to not like anyone, least of all themselves. Starring James van der Beek, who at the time was probably best known as being Dawson off of Dawson’s Creek and …er… probably still is, the film is possibly easier to follow if you’ve read the source material.

But, as I haven’t, it all seemed like a bit of an incoherent mess.

 

Score for Christmasishness

It’s not especially Christmas(ish) but the movie does begin at what appears to be a New Year’s Eve Party (dubbed the ‘End of the World’ party). The film then back tracks to the beginning of the academic term (so presumably circa September/October) before events lead up to the same party, which is where the film concludes. There are, therefore, visible Christmas decorations for enough of the running time for this to be considered, at least a bit, Christmas(ish). Also there is a lot of snow at the denouement of the film, which always helps.

As it is very much the 9th Day of December, it seems only right that we open door number 9 of The Third Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films.

And behind the door we find John Shaft II, protagonist of 2000’s Shaft, which is a sort-of-reboot/sort-of-sequel to the 1970’s trilogy of movies. Starring Samuel L. Jackson as the nephew to Richard Roundtree’s original John Shaft (although I believe that has been retconned in a subsequent sequel to him actually being his son), the 2000 iteration is an entertaining enough affair. Jackson is a suitably charismatic lead, while Jeffrey Wright and Christian Bale more than hold their own as the two (very different) main antagonists.

 

Score for Christmasishness

Ok, this is one of the more tenuous films to make the cut (although probably not the most tenuous). Christmas is largely irrelevant to most of the movie, but the opening scenes do appear to be set around Christmas. However those scenes also depict the aftermath of a particularly brutal and racially-motivated murder. So not really one to get you in the festive mood.

 

As we move further into December, so too continues The Third Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films. Today we are on door number 7. ‘7’ is a positive integer and therefore is ‘more than zero’. But the movie behind door number 7 is  Less than Zero.

This is not really a movie about negative numbers as such. Although debt does play a part in the narrative. So it is sort of about negative numbers. But I don’t think it’s really the point of the movie. Although I’m vaguely at a loss as to what the actual point is.

Sort-of-but-not-really adapted from  a Brett Easton-Ellis novel of the same name, it’s a fairly cheerless examination of drug addiction amongst the overprivileged and most of the characters are fairly unsympathetic.

It is, however, worth watching for a stand-out  performance from a young Robert Downey Jr.

 

Score for Christmasishness

It is definitely a movie set at Christmas time, and though it is utterly joyless for the most part, there is no denying that Christmas is integral to the plot. So it deserves a high score for Christmasishness, but it’s far too depressing to ever be a ‘go-to’ Christmas movie.

I vaguely remember 2012. It wasn’t the best year ever if I recall. I enjoyed the London Olympics. One of my cousins got married, which was nice. Other than that I don’t think it was a vintage year.

Still, I think we can all agree that the world didn’t end.

Which was something I suppose.

It was certainly a better outcome that was predicated by Roland Emmerich in 2009 when he delivered the dreadful movie 2012.

Which is a film about how the world would end in 2012.

And frankly, once you’ve sat through 158 minutes of this dirge, you might welcome the apocalypse.

The movie boasts a surprisingly decent cast who do nothing to redeem this mess.

It doesn’t even have the decency to be ‘so bad it’s good’.

It’s just bad.

 

Score for Christmasishness

It’s not even remotely Christmas(ish). I watched it on the basis that the entire premise of the film is the realisation of a Mayan prediction that the world would end on the 21st December 2012. Although this date is vaguely referenced during the movie, there are no indications that any of the events of the film take place in December. Because there are no signs of Christmas at all. But if I omitted the film from the list then I’d have to acknowledge that I sat through this crap for no good reason at all. And I just can’t do that to myself.

Well it seems like only yesterday that we were enjoying the beginning of the final month of 2019, yet here we are already on December 2^nd.

Happily, that does mean it’s time for door number 2 of The Third Annual James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films.

But wait, the door won’t open.

It looks like someone has changed the locks.

Maybe it’s because we haven’t paid our rent.

Much like the protagonists of 2005’s musical drama Rent. A movie in which a bunch of struggling artists and political idealists seem to believe that they are entitled to live in a building for free. Which they aren’t.

Rent is not an especially good film. I suspect some people love it, but I suspect they will be people who also love the stage show. Which is supposedly very good. I wouldn’t know, I haven’t seen it, but it won awards and seems to be fairly well thought of.

I think that, in part, the stage show was critically acclaimed for dealing with topics such as drug addiction and AIDS. Which was pretty ground-breaking stuff for a stage-show in 1996. Possibly less so for a movie in 2005.

Another issue with the movie is possibly the decision to recast many of the original stars of the Broadway show in the movie. They are clearly all very competent performers, but they all seem to be a little bit older than the characters they are portraying in the film. If I was to be specific, I’d say they are about nine years too old.

Ultimately Rent (the movie) is largely inoffensive stuff (in spite of its best efforts to be challenging) and mostly plays like an homage to the original stage-show, rather than a genuine attempt at cinema in it’s own right.

Score for Christmasishness

To be fair, while it’s not a great movie, for the purposes of The James Proclaims Advent Calendar of Christmas(ish) Films it’s actually a bit of winner. Although the timeline supposedly spans a whole year, most of the action is set over the Christmas period, and the fact that it’s a musical (albeit one that deals with some quite depressing topics) only adds to the Christmas cheer. So if you’re going to bother watching it at all, then Christmas is by far the best time to watch it.