At last, it’s November 26th 2021, the beginning of the final month of my foolhardy Christmas movie quest. Today, the World Health Organization declares a new coronavirus variant to be "of concern", naming it Omicron and very probably raining on many a yuletide parade. But balls to that – Santa’s Coming!!! Yaaayyy!
I truly cannot wait and find I'm looking forward to this year’s yuletide more than any other since that time I got a Ninja Turtles blimp.
To see things out with a bang, I’ve deliberately saved the best for last, doing my best to keep aside a load of highly-regarded movies that frequently appear on numerous ‘Best Of’ lists, including Rotten Tomatoes coveted ‘100 Best Christmas Movies of All Time.’
As a little treat to myself, I’ll also squeeze in a few ‘stragglers’ I meant to watch but couldn’t quite fit in, including one or two brand new ones that have piqued my interest.
First up is a film that, to my shame, I’d never heard of, yet was excellently reviewed, especially by American critics following its release in 1984 and was made just along the road from where I grew up. Comfort and Joy is a small but absorbing Scottish film from Gregory’s Girl helmer Bill Forsyth, features another stirring, atmospheric score from Dire Straits’ Mark Knopfler and is an offbeat, largely forgotten gem.
This one starts out incredibly Christmassy, then seems to forget it’s a Christmas film for a while, veering off in some strange, surprising directions before landing firmly back in festive territory for the finale. If anything, this one’s more about ice cream than winter snow but is compelling nonetheless.
Bill Patterson is Alan “Dicky” Bird, local radio disc jockey and a minor celebrity in Glasgow. He’s happy with his lot in life until his sultry but kleptomaniac lover Maddy (Eleanor David) dumps him in the run up to Christmas. I’m pleased to find that the film’s opening sequence is set in one of my most favourite places to go at Christmas, Glasgow’s beautifully decorated House of Fraser department store. The camera follows saucy Maddy through the store as she carefully pinches various items, slipping them inside her coat. We then see Alan watching her and assume he’s maybe a cop or store detective, until he grabs her outside the store and they kiss. He’s not just in on it, but really gets off on the illicitness of the whole thing. It’s great stuff.
However, free-spirited Maddy is fed up with Alan and decides to leave him, though neglects to share this information until the removal men turn up. This puts Alan in an existential funk, pushing 40 and heading into the holiday season suddenly alone. He’s not fully invested in his radio show and people are noticing, including his exasperated boss, brilliantly played by Scottish comedy legend Riki Fulton. Alan dreams of doing something more worthy, like "a documentary", while those around him implore him to get over himself and move on.
Fate injects some much-needed excitement into Alan’s life when, driving home, he glimpses a cute girl (Clare Grogan) smiling from an ice cream van and decides to hornily give chase. Before he knows what’s going on, he’s embroiled in a local ice cream gang war, much like the real one that took place in Glasgow in the ‘80s, after masked nutters jump out and smash the van up, stopping long enough to ask for a shout out on his radio show. It’s terrifying, ridiculous and hilarious all at once. Soon Alan becomes a ‘Go-between’ for both sides of the feud as the warring factions try to come to some sort of tete a tete.
It’s funny because the real ‘Ice Cream Wars’ saw vans used as a front for selling drugs but here the opposing families really are just trying to sell ice cream. It’s barmy but also very humorous, Forsyth’s film striking an odd tone all of its own. This one was marketed as a “serious comedy”, which is probably about right.
Part of the fun is how Alan really seems to enjoy being mixed up in all this chaos. He’s convinced that this will all be exactly what he needs for his “serious” documentary while anyone he talks to about it assumes he’s losing his marbles. More than anything, this is a film about the crazy lengths some men will go to in dealing with a mid-life crisis and confirms that the festive season is a really shitty time of year to get dumped.
Forsyth’s wry film is a near-perfect fusion of absurdity and kitchen sink realism and the filmmaker, already an established master at this sort of thing, knows precisely how to rein in the daftness just enough to make it all work. It’s a joy to watch Alan go through all of this before getting his head out of his ‘erse and reconnect with what’s important in the world, as he finds inspired ways to bring the warring tribes together just in time for Christmas with a plan involving, of all things, banana fritters. The film’s unsoftened Scottishness makes this one feel very familiar to me, yet this is also unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Top banana.
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