Off his tree
CANDY CANE LANE
12
My plan was to call Eddie Murphy’s unhinged festive movie “an overstuffed turkey” until I realised how much I was enjoying it. I suppose Christmas is pretty bonkers too and this feels like the product of a drug-fuelled brainstorming meeting.
You can imagine Murphy and his Boomerang director Reginald Hudlin asking for ideas for a festive film based on their favourite carol, The Twelve Days Of Christmas. Then they were so impressed with the suggestions they decided to cram them all in. Because Candy Cane Lane, which takes its name from a real Yuletide house-decorating contest in California, isn’t just a carolthemed fantasy.
It’s also a knockabout comedy about competitive neighbours, a family drama, an action movie, and a workplace satire.
Murphy is family man Chris Carver who’s determined to win this year’s contest because he’s just been laid off and a sponsor has coughed up a $100,000 prize.
So Chris buys a giant pop-up tree in a Tardis-like Christmas shop run by Pepper ( Jillian Bell), a sinister lady who turns out to be an evil, oversized elf. It looks great in his front garden until its carol-based decorations come alive and try to ruin the Carvers’ Christmas.
Chris’s wife (Tracee Ellis Ross) is pelted with eggs from flying geese, his daughter is assaulted by leaping lords, there are nasty hens in berets and a milkmaid who uses a cow’s teat as a firehose. I’ll leave the rest to your imagination.
So the Carvers join with a set of talking Dickensian ceramic figurines (don’t ask) led by an unconvincing cockney (Nick Offerman channelling Dick Van Dyke) to hunt the “five gold rings” and end the curse.
Not all the jokes work but the film’s so gleefully nuts, you never know what’s going to happen next.