Rating: 1/20
Plot: Santa gets himself and his sleigh--sans reindeer for some reason--stuck in Florida sands, and no animal that random children summoned by apparent telepathic powers bring to him can help him get unstuck. So Santa tells a story about a woman going to a defunct amusement park called Pirate Island and listening to a story about Thumbelina. Then, the titular Ice Cream Bunny.
Holy Ice Cream Bunnies! This was an excruciating way to spend an hour and a half, and I'm really glad I didn't subject my Bad Movie Club friends to this one. It probably would have swallowed Bad Movie Club whole and left me friendless and alone.
I don't know what I'm complaining about. You get two movies for the price of one here. The Thumbelina story is about the creepiest children's story you're likely to see, a few notches more terrifying than Eraserhead. There are motionless papier-mache birds and people in mole and crow costumes in sets that looked like they might have been constructed for a performance on a middle school stage. The Santa story bookends that and manages to be creepy itself. The sound-so-obviously-recorded-elsewhere gives this a weird, otherworldly feel, disconcerting and the very antithesis of Christmas. I was at the 6 minute and 22 second mark when I started to wonder if I had found a movie that was so weirdly bad that even I--a bad movie connoisseur--would be unable to finish it. We start with child elves singing, almost together, while admiring and/or stroking dog stuffed animals. Then, we move to Santa who confirms that this is indeed a Worst Musical Ever candidate with a lonely solo explaining that he's stuck in Florida. He waves his hands, conducting absolutely nobody, shots of his hand interrupted with random dizzying shots of palm trees, dog tricks, a kid playing with a giant umbrella, jump ropers, etc. Turns out that it's Santa's echoing voice summoning them because kids start to drop what they're doing to run in slow motion, the kind of slow motion where you're not sure if it's intentional or if the film is messing up. And then, Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer show up to watch the proceedings, really for no good reason unless the producers of this wanted to see if they could cause Mark Twain to roll in his grave. Kazoos play "Old Man River," and I start to wonder what the hell is happening to me.
So the kids start bringing animals to help out. First, a little girl runs home to get her pet (I assume it's a pet) guy in a gorilla suit, a scene that wouldn't feel complete without what I can only assume are gorilla orgasm sound effects. A kid drags in a donkey. Then, a pig, because that would somehow have more success than a donkey or a gorilla? Then, a sheep, a cow, a horse. Animals may not have been harmed in the making of this film, at least physically. You know they're in emotional distress just being a part of this mess. The sheep looks particularly disturbed. "What did I sign up for?" he seems to ask as he looks at us from 50 years ago.
Oh, it's not fifty years ago? This movie was made in the early 70's? It doesn't seem possible. This was the only movie R. Winer directed, and it seems like it comes from another time and maybe even another planet. It's two stories patched together, as clumsily as you can patch any two things together. Hans Christian Andersen is given writing credits, and I'm surprised he didn't come back from the dead just to sue to have his name removed from the credits. I believe Pirate Land put together this little Thumbelina movie, probably a long time before the release date, as a way to advertise their shitty amusement park.The tone's considerably different than the frame story with Santa Claus. Santa telling the story about a woman hearing a story on a scratchy speaker that the makers decide to show over and over again makes this an almost avant-garde story-within-a-story-within-a-story. Both chunks get their own opening and closing credits, the middle chunk with shots of people having a gay old time at Pirate World, an amusement park made antiquated with the arrival of Disney World. The songs in the Thumbelina portion of this are superfluous, nearly endless. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that people have committed suicide during the screeching, deafening "If I Were Thumbelina" that plays after Santa starts telling his story about faith. Thumbelina's played by Shay Garner. I can't find a birthdate for her to decide whether or not I can write about her legs, but she did use this as a launching pad to a career that would get her an appearance in a Keanu Reeves/Olivia D'Abo movie that I've never heard of. She has an extended dance thing in this that was one of the worst things I've ever seen, something that made me more embarrassed for another human being than I think I've ever been. The frog in the Thumbelina story? He's amazing; unfortunately, I don't see a frog in the credits, so I can't find out if this guy graced the screen in animal costumes in any other movies. "Skateboard Donkey Boy" is played by "Mike" though, uncredited. The rest of the animals in the Thumbelina story range from creepy to disturbing, especially the old mole man who wants to marry the titular hero and singlepawedly brings pedophilia and bestiality into our story. It made me feel a little better about checking out those legs though. Mrs. Mole, played by Pat Morrell in her lone screen appearance, proves that it is possible to act badly while wearing an animal costume. An effect that shows Thumbelina riding on a bird is as cheap as effects get, but my God, it sure is arousing.
And let's talk about that Ice Cream Bunny. He eventually arrives, following the end credits for Thumbelina's story, on a firetruck. He arrives and arrives and arrives in a ten-minute sequence that is about as excruciating as an arrival of a person in a bunny suit can be. Ten minutes doesn't seem like a long time when compared to all of human history or even the average human life span, but this ten minutes, you feel, has, if not a profound negative impact on the universe, the ability to make one human being watching this thing a profoundly more-depressed individual. It's what happens when whimsical fails, epically, and I'll never shake the combination of a broken siren and dog sound effects out of my nightmares. Loads of talking happen during the sequence when the bunny reaches Santa, but you only hear Santa and that dog. And again, things get otherworldly, surreal. And then, the inexplicably-named Ice Cream Bunny winks, and you just want it all to end. Mercifully, it does.
I'll challenge anybody to find a worse Christmas movie than this one.
No comments:
Post a Comment