BEFORE: Sean McCann carries over from "Atlantic City", and I'm forced to watch a Christmas movie (umm, sort of, I think) in order to keep my chain going, and get to my Father's Day film. I look for little signs that my chain, or my life, might be out of balance, and since we're just about as far as possible from Christmas right now, something definitely feels out of whack. Sure, we're still feeling the effects of COVID effectively cancelling all holidays for a year, but still, something just doesn't feel right. Maybe I just have to treat today's film as a heist film and ignore the holiday aspect of it?
Similarly, my work schedule feels very out of whack - I've worked three night shifts at this movie theater, and I really want to quit. All I've done is sweep up theaters and empty trash cans, and I know that's work that has to be done, but it's not where I want to be in my life, working as a janitor. Again, all respect to janitors, but the job's just not what I thought it would be. Now I'm desperately searching for something else, and it's making me question everything - a couple months ago I was aching to get out of the house and DO something, even physical labor to get back in shape after so much downtime, and mentally working in a theater made perfect sense at the time, it checked all the boxes.
But now that I'm living that reality, I've learned that it's not what I want. My sleeping schedule is much worse than it was before, and that's saying something. I'm not interested in watching any of the movies currently screening at the theater, so I'm just showing up, working my shifts, hauling trash and trying not to bitch about that. But still, I hate it. Now I'm longing for the days when I was sitting at home, bored and occasionally desperately job-hunting. The city's opened up, great, people are celebrating and dining out and getting back to movie theaters, and now I'm the guy with the broom cleaning up their popcorn from the floor. FML.
THE PLOT: Residents of a friendly Pennsylvania town foil three brothers' plan to rob a bank on Christmas Eve.
AFTER: Ugh, this film has "bad movie" written all over it - and I don't think I'm letting my current state of affairs color my perception of the movies I'm watching, I'd hate to think that was the case. Even if I ignore the horrible combination of bank robbery movie and Christmas movie, there's still the horrible depiction of people with mental impairment - one of the robbers is both a kleptomaniac and has some form of autism or diminished mental capacity, and there's also one of the police officers in the small town who's similarly impaired. Was this made before everybody got so P.C. about mental illness? How was this such a source of "comedy" in 1994? It's just ill-advised all around to try to mine this topic for laughs.
The plot here concerns three brothers, who happen to look NOTHING alike, so bad casting job there. (Also, who decided that Nicolas Cage should be in the same movie with Dana Carvey and Jon Lovitz? This must have been prior to Cage's career in action movies, because putting the two types of actors (serious/action + slapstick comic) just also seems very ill-advised. It's not even one of those peanut butter plus chocolate things, it's more like putting chocolate on an onion, it's not going to work. Two of the brothers are getting released from jail, and the third brother, the "good" one (and he's only good because he thinks twice about stealing money from a found wallet, but then I guess does it anyway and feels bad about it) picks up the other two after their release and then somehow is then responsible for them. I'm not entirely sure, but I don't think this is the way that our parole system works.
The two brothers heard rumors from the other inmates while in jail, about a bank in Pennsylvania that's very easy to rob, because there's one elderly security guard who naps a lot, and the money is poorly protected. Some very well-connected mobsters in the prison had been planning to rob this bank for some time, so naturally they told everyone within earshot about their plan? Yeah, that doesn't make sense either, but it advances the plot in a very wonky way. The two brothers (again, one of them is mentally impaired, remember) then remember every detail of the mobsters' plans and once they're released, they manipulate their brother to get them to this town of Paradise, PA. Again, this is wonky, wonky, wonky, and too many wonky things means that the whole movie is questionable, and makes no logical sense.
Once they all arrive in Paradise (which is outside of New York and therefore the two former inmate brothers are in violation of their parole) they get the lay of the land, buy some guns and facemasks and set up the best time to rob the bank, which of course turns out to be the WORST time to rob the bank. The bank manager is eating lunch in the diner across the street, which means the brothers have to take everyone in the bank hostage, then also everybody in the diner for some reason. Basically, everyone in the whole town ends up as part of the hostage situation in the bank. How did these three inept brothers even get this far, they all seem too stupid to tie their own shoes? Yes, even the "good" brother somehow comes around to the "stupid" brothers way of thinking, that robbing this little bank was somehow a good idea, which it wasn't.
Of course there's going to be that "It's a Wonderful Life" meets "Dog Day Afternoon" scenario, which means that the brothers are going to realize how wonderful and generous these small-town Americans are, and this is accomplished by having the brothers be so stupid that they can't even figure out how to drive away from this town in a straight line. They literally make four right turns, travel in a circle, and end up back where they started, so that's some horrible getaway attempt. Again, very wonky. When the brothers come face-to-face with the people of small-town America, who welcome the same people who robbed them (umm, without KNOWING those are the same people who robbed them...) the brothers do the only thing they can think to do, which is to give the money back.
Sure, the movie gets to a good place, but life's a journey, not a destination, right? The journey is very awkward and doesn't make a lick of sense, but it's very obvious that some writer had a destination in mind, and was willing to do whatever it took to get there - and that means logic went right out the window. The best part is probably the frustration shown by Richard Jenkins as the FBI agent (or whatever he is) when he can't prosecute the three bank robbers because there's no evidence, the townspeople volunteer alibis for them, and the money turns back up, meaning no robbery took place. (Only it DID, the robbery did still happen, and just because someone returns stolen property, it doesn't mean that the property wasn't stolen in the first place...)
To prove my point, late in the film, when the FBI agent is trying to prove that these three brothers robbed the bank, and the whole town is trying to prove that they DIDN'T, it comes down to them having purchased guns and ski masks. Now, buying guns is probably common in Pennsylvania, and buying ski masks is common almost anywhere in winter. But buying the exact combination of those two items does suggest "bank robbery", so you'd think that some kind of proof that the brothers did this would be a strike against them, proof that they robbed the bank. But somehow, in a completely illogical way, the kleptomania of one brother, the fact that he stole extra ski masks, the fact that he HAS three ski masks on his person, is taken as proof that they DIDN'T rob the bank, when it actually should prove the exact opposite, which is that they DID rob the bank. Now I'm more confused than ever. Did anybody making this film pay any attention at all to the plot points, to what things MEAN? It just doesn't feel that way.
Also starring Nicolas Cage (last seen in "The Family Man"), Jon Lovitz (last seen in "Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond"), Dana Carvey (last heard in "The Secret Life of Pets 2"), Mädchen Amick, Florence Stanley (last seen in "Flatliners" (1990)), Vic Manni, Frank Pesce (last seen in "Creed"), John Ashton (last seen in "Down with Love"), Donald Moffat (last seen in "Cookie's Fortune"), Angela Paton (last seen in "Some Kind of Wonderful"), John Bergantine, Richard Jenkins (last seen in "The Rum Diary"), Sean O'Bryan (last seen in "Beatriz at Dinner"), Gerard Parkes, Richard B. Shull (last seen in "Klute"), Jack Heller, Paul Lazar (last seen in "Beloved"), Andrew Miller, Bernard Behrens, George Gallo Sr, Zoe Erwin, Marcia Bennett (last seen in "Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium").
RATING: 3 out of 10 boxes of Cap'n Crunch
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