From wholesome family wonder to something a lot darker next, with Disney’s One Magic Christmas from 1985. This one starts out well enough then goes absolute batshit crazy, turning proper dark about halfway through. I can't recall many holiday films where daddy gets murdered in a bank robbery before the suicidal robber crashes his car into a frozen river with a child hostage in the back seat. It's nuts and distressing, with half of me ready to applaud the filmmakers' audacity while the other half wonders what on earth they were thinking. They're clearly going for some sort of Scrooge/It's a Wonderful Life 'your life could be so much worse' vibe but it's waaaay too heavy handed.
The plot follows Mary Steenburgen as Ginny, a mum who’s becoming crotchety and moody as the holidays approach. To be fair, she's got a good reason - she's working her butt off at the grocery store to support the family after her hubby Jack (Gary Basaraba) got laid off. Money's tight, they're losing the house and all anyone can talk about is bloody Christmas. Jack's earning some cash on the side fixing bicycles but is secretly squirrelling money away to donate to the town's underfunded Christmas tree lighting ceremony. I question this man's priorities and, if I were Ginny, would give him a slap.
Ginny - in my opinion, very sensibly - decides that there will only be a few small gifts for the family this year and for this the film paints her as some kind of monster. For what it's worth, I'm on Team Ginny, even if she goes slightly overboard with the humbug stuff, coming dangerously close to telling adorable six-year-old moppet Abbie (Elisabeth Harnois) that there’s no such thing as Santa. The film bugs me as the overriding message seems to be that we should heartily embrace the commercialism of Christmas and spend every penny we’ve got on the kids, whether it ruins us or not.
Into their world wanders Harry Dean Stanton’s mildly frightening quaker-esque angel Gabriel. Gabriel wanders around town, pesters the kids, then uses angel magic to save Abbie from a flying hockey puck, then a speeding car. Later he interrupts the child on her way to post her letter to Santa and vows to help sort out her mum’s allegedly Grinch-y ways and Save Christmas. I’m surprised that Gabe’s plan involves having daddy murdered and the children kidnapped. Seems a bit drastic. I mean, I assume it’s all going to be a dream or a vision or something, but it goes on for ages and for a long time I start to think “I guess Jack and the kids really are dead, then.”
All this happens after little Abbie has a psychedelic ‘trip’ to a North Pole that seems suspiciously like it's meant to be Heaven, where she meets Santa (Jan Rubes) and is told that his helpers aren’t elves but the spirits of dead do-gooders. It’s a film full of bizarre, out-of-the-blue moments like this. Lessons are learned and the ‘was it all a dream’ ending really feels half ‘Thank God!’, half contrived cop-out.
Call me a cynic, but I find it hard to enjoy a film where the moral seems to be ‘believe in Santa or your family will die.’ I’ve moaned about the lack of originality in many Christmas films but this one is too much. I keep asking myself “Is this really a Disney film?” What kind of “Magic” Christmas is this? “Black Magic?” It’s entertaining at parts, even if it morphs into more of a nerve-racking thriller than heart-warming family treat. This is proof, if any were needed, that kids were a lot more hardcore in the ‘80s.
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