Shadows on the Wall | Candy Cane Lane

Candy Cane Lane

dir Reginald Hudlin
scr Kelly Younger
prd Brian Grazer, Eddie Murphy, Charisse Hewitt-Webster, Karen Lunder
with Eddie Murphy, Tracee Ellis Ross, Jillian Bell, Madison Thomas, Thaddeus J Mixson, Genneya Walton, Ken Marino, Nick Offerman, Chris Redd, Robin Thede, David Alan Grier, Timothy Simons, Danielle Pinnock, Trevante Rhodes
release US/UK 1.Dec.23
23/US MGM 1h57

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It's tricky to find the balance between Christmas movie sentimentality and outrageous silliness, and this comedy at least makes an effort in the earlier scenes. This makes it easy to watch and even sometimes gently amusing up until the moment the somewhat haphazard script simply abandons any sense of internal logic. So while the movie is never laugh-out-loud funny, it's charming enough as a slice of fantastical holiday cheer.

In Los Angeles, Chris (Murphy) is proud of the hand-crafted Christmas decorations he places in his front-yard as his street enters its annual over-the-top Candy Cane Lane competition. But he has just lost his job, and needs to win the cash prize this year. So he buys a 12 Days of Christmas tree in a magical pop-up shop run my mischievous elf Pepper (Bell). But this comes with a catch, and he'll need help from his wife Carol (Ross) and their equally theme-named kids: teen athlete Joy (Thomas), musician Nick (Mixson) and youngster Holly (Thomas).

An army of lively supporting characters adds colour to each scene, including rival neighbour Bruce (Marino), a pair of local cable hosts (Simons and Pinnock) and three tiny figurines (Offerman, Redd and Thede) who were previously caught in Pepper's trap. While Younger's script never quite connects the dots in the plot, feeling rather like an underdeveloped first draft, Hudlin keeps things relatively grounded by encouraging the actors to aim for warm rather than arch. So the best humour emerges in deranged bursts of nuttiness.

While it's not a demanding role, Murphy has plenty of charm in the lead role as a father trying to hold his family together amid various personal crises. And of course, he becomes more engaging when he allows everyone to work together to solve the problems. The actors around him each get a chance to amusingly steal a few scenes of their own. Offerman almost gets away with an absurd British accent, Redd is unusually smutty for a family movie and Bell is completely bonkers, while Grier is a snappy Santa.

All of this is accompanied by a range of uneven digital effects, the best of which are the animated figurines. And there's no chance of the audience missing the movie's simplistic family-is-everything message, since it is the topic of a full-on sermon in the final act. But along the way, there's plenty of fun to be had in both the visual extravagances and the smaller throwaway jokes.

themes, language, violence 29.Nov.23

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