Holiday movie wrap-up

By Jackie Ammons     1/14/10 6:00pm

From a studly detective to a blossoming queen, this year's holiday films delivered delightful gifts wrapped from top to bottom. As they often do, a deluge of notable films flooded theaters over the past few weeks in order to take advantage of vacationing moviegoers and attempt one last swipe at an Oscar nomination. While the wealth is often distributed fairly equally during the winter months, 2009 propelled one film to the head of the class handily. James Cameron's (Titanic) Avatar outperformed any other film over the holidays by bringing in more than $441 million at the time of this writing - plus $906 million internationally - to make it the second-highest grossing film of all time. Even with its two-and-a-half hour runtime and middling plot, Avatar's stunning visuals pleased audiences and critics alike and earned four Golden Globe nominations.

On the other end of the fiscal spectrum, flops performed up to - or below - par, including Everybody's Fine and 0Did You Hear About the Morgans? The former, starring Robert De Niro (Righteous Kill), Drew Barrymore (Whip It) and Kate Beckinsale (Nothing But the Truth), failed to place in the top-10 grossing films of the holiday season, amassing a measly $9.2 million. Advertised as a feel-good movie in which the family is, in fact, fine, the film was a disappointment with a depressing ending: One son dies, the cocktail waitress daughter has an illegitimate baby and the other daughter's husband cheats on her. Everybody's Fine wasn't quite the happy movie that the title projects. No wonder it was a failure.

Meanwhile, in Did You Hear About the Morgans?, Hugh Grant (Music and Lyrics) and Sarah Jessica Parker (Sex and the City) performed up to task in the story of a New York couple who enter the Federal Witness Protection Program after witnessing a murder. While it contained funny moments, the film became more of a low-brow, slapstick comedy, with most laughs originating in rural, Red State-Blue State jokes, such as Parker falling off of a horse and Grant avoiding a bear attack. Still, Grant's witty verbal humor, perfected over the last decade, was entertaining in spite of the film's overall corny nature.

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Of course, there were films that fell in the middle of these extremes. Three major films opened on the big screen on Christmas Day: Nine, Sherlock Holmes and It's Complicated, with the latter receiving the most Golden Globe nominations of the trio, including Best Picture (Comedy or Musical) and one of Meryl Streep's (Julie & Julia) two nominations for Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical (the other nomination is for Julie & Julia).

However, It's Complicated was not quite so complicated and out-of-the-ordinary as one would hope to see in such an acclaimed film. It lacked the unique story that typically characterizes a film of Best Picture caliber, as the most original part of It's Complicated was the fact that a divorced woman (Streep) has an affair with her married ex-husband (My Sister's Keeper's Alec Baldwin) 10 years after their separation.

Although Steve Martin (The Pink Panther 2) stepped in for the occasional laugh, his character wasn't that funny; rather, he was simply a watered-down version of his otherwise hilarious talent. At times, It's Complicated kept the audience laughing, but it really wasn't anything that special - and it certainly makes you wonder what the Golden Globe nominators saw in the piece.

While not as decorated as It's Complicated, Nine and Sherlock Holmes still made it into the top-10 box office performances of the season, with the musical Nine bringing in $17.2 million - not much, but still nothing to sneeze at - and the action-adventure film Sherlock Holmes with $167 million, second only to Avatar.

Within the realm of independent films, The Young Victoria stood out with its understated, refined tone and fantastic action and production. The Young Victoria tells the story of the first few years of Victoria's (Sunshine Cleaning's Emily Blunt) lengthy reign as Queen of England. Thrust into the monarchy at the age of 18, she marries Prince Albert (Cheri's Rupert Friend) and wins the favor of her country's people. The film's magical costumes, Martin Scorsese's (The Aviator) careful production and Blunt's flawless performance made this film exceptional in every way and quite deserving of her Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Drama.

While none of this season's holiday films are instant classics, they satisfied. Gems like The Young Victoria and blockbusters like Avatar ensured plenty of traffic in theaters. "Good" - though not really "great" - is the word to describe the holiday's films.

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