Movie Review - Krampus

Krampus (2015)

Starring Adam Scott, Toni Collette, Emjay Anthony, David Koechner, Allison Tolman, Conchata Ferrell, Stefania LaVie Owen, and Krista Stadler

Directed by Michael Dougherty

The Christmas horror comedy Krampus has its moments of cleverness, but the flick never quite comes together in a way that cohesively meshes.  When young Max (Emjay Anthony) is taunted by his relatives over his Christmas list for Santa, the boy tears up his note and sends it off into the cold winter wind.  Little did he realize that this lack of belief causes the hideous Christmas demon Krampus to come to town and wreak havoc on Max's family.

With such a simple story, the film needs a little extra pizzazz to really lift it above the average and that never happens.  Told in a very Gremlins-esque manner -- meaning the horror is never played for blood and gore, rather for slight chills that are certainly appropriate for any twelve to fourteen year-old -- there are certain scenes involving Krampus's minions which include nasty gingerbread men, fang-bearing stuffed animals, a demonic tree-topping angel, and a snake-like jack-in-the-box that liven up the proceedings, but whenever they're not onscreen, the story feels limp.  Adam Scott and Toni Collette hold the proceedings together trying to make the most of the disappointing screenplay, but they're not really matched by the rest of the ensemble who, while decent, feel like they're part of a campier movie.  (That inherently begs the question as to whether Scott and Collette should've been campier as well since Krampus certainly qualifies as being campy.)

The RyMickey Rating:  C-

Movie Review - My One and Only (2009)

Starring Renée Zellweger, Logan Lerman, Chris Noth, David Koechner, and Kevin Bacon
Directed by Richard Loncraine

My One and Only opens with a shot of a nuclear bomb exploding with Renée Zellweger's name popping up mid-explosion. That's pretty much how I feel about her career. How this woman is popular is beyond me. She is absolutely one of my least favorite actresses working today and the fact that she has an Oscar is inexcusable. She does herself no favors with this really horrendous movie.

Zellweger is Anne Deveraux who, at the beginning of the film, discovers that her husband (an awful Kevin Bacon) is cheating on her and decides to take her two sons out of NYC and travel from place to place hoping to find a new man to support her. Each man that she meets seems worse than the next and, in the end, she really doesn't learn her lesson. In one way or another (although albeit in a slightly different manner than she expected), she's still reliant on a guy to support her in the end.

But, really, this isn't a movie about Anne. It's a movie about her son, George, who we know is both smart and "different" from his superficial mom because he likes the book "The Catcher in the Rye." He just wants to be in school and learn and get smart...and his mom just wants to run around the country like a floozy, looking for a man. It turns out this flick is loosely based on the life of "actor" George Hamilton and I couldn't care less.

The only thing saving this movie from a complete failure is Logan Lerman (who was also recently in Gamer) as George. He was actually decent and he did what he could to negate Zellweger's heinous face scrunching which she equates with acting.

The RyMickey Rating: D-