citizen kate: day three

as day three dawns, so does a realization. i am in a bad relationship. i find myself staying at work longer than i have to now. i look for something, anything, to do rather than come home. time spent at home now is mostly grim with just enough flashes of what used to be to remind me of how things aren't anymore. i would say it's not you, it's me but that would be a lie. queue, it's definitely you. it feels like we are manacled together for eternity. speaking of, we start today with another abc family production, ron underwood's holiday in handcuffs (2007).

hi! i only shop in malls. i only eat processed foods. i get up at 3 a.m. for black friday. i think wedding cake toppers with the bride dragging the groom are a real hoot. have you checked out the latest self-help/diet/inspirational publication they were talking about on good morning america? it will change your life! don't forget to have a drink, watch football and have babies!

abc family thinks you're an idiot. 6.7 million of you are eager to prove them right. i only bother to outline the plot here to illustrate how asinine this is. a floundering waitress who can never please her parents needs to make a good impression over the holidays so she does what anyone would do in that situation - she kidnaps a complete stranger at gunpoint in the middle of a busy restaurant and takes him to the country to pass him off as her handsome, successful boyfriend. wouldn't you know it! they fall in love, he calls off his wedding and instead decides that life with an imbalanced felon is preferable. what a crazy world! these productions are to real movies as contemporary christian is to rock music. at a glance they seem like they could be the genuine article but there's almost immediately something about the way they sound, the way they move, some frequency they hit that clearly sets them apart and somehow only their fans are deluded that they pass for the real thing. anyone on the outside just sees a collection of pastels, marketing triggers and code words that no one but them uses in that context, like "joy". if i have to watch another one of these this week i am going to commit seppuku with the shards of a precious moments figurine. look for my suicide note scrawled on the back of the nearest thomas kinkade painting.

let's take a break from christmas for a bit. instead we'll hang out for a while with tim skousen's the sasquatch gang (2006).

it's the story of a group of nerdy misfits who stumble upon evidence of a bigfoot while walking in the woods. unbeknownst to them, it was planted there by a couple of nitwits who plan to exploit its discovery for enough financial gain to pay off a delinquent credit card bill and buy more corn dogs. young love blooms, friendships are tested, lessons are learned and carl weathers licks sasquatch poop. here's what happens: an indie movie comes out of left field, becomes a surprise success and a number of imitators try to cash in on that before the corpse gets too cold to hump. for example, tarantino blew up and as a result we are stuck with truth or consequences, n.m. (1997). well, in the wake of napoleon dynamite (2004) there was a glut of transmissions from off-kilter loserville and this is one of them. it's actually the most closely related, as our director here was that film's first assistant director and both jons, gries and heder, show up in this. it's all in the family. actually, if it was all in the family it would have been funny. instead it was mostly irritating and mawkish. justin long's mullet is a stillborn joke ten years too late and carl weathers hits an all time low, and i am saying that about a man who participated in this:

that may not be the original music.

i did like addie land as sophie. she seems like a sweet kid and, while maybe not a stellar actress, she has a quality about her that makes you pull for her. can't say the same for the rest of them, the most egregious case being joey kern as shirts (he never wears a shirt! get it?!) jokum:

who, in developing his characterization, was apparently under the impression that none of us had ever seen american movie (1999).

the sasquatch gang - i'm sure it's funny when you're too high to remember where you put your copy of napoleon dynamite.

the last volley fired by the hate tank that is today is andy fickman's you again (2010).

so many of my favorite tropes in one delectable bon bon (am i right, ladies?) that i don't even know where to start. take two cups "high school sure is hard and you never get over it", one cup "how things work in the girl world" (a direct quote) and ladle on a hearty dollop of wacky wedding shenanigans. half-bake in a lukewarm oven for 105 minutes and then stick it directly up your ass. i'm not talking about it anymore. i've had enough today.

tomorrow we're going to blah blah blah. who even cares?