ctinsureme-96940

There's so much about this movie that's wonderful I don't know where to begin. The underdog story, the music, the actors (especially Pete Davidson who KILLS IT in this!), the framing of the scenes, the humor, the tangible stress of what's happening and where it will likely end. Nearly a perfect movie...loved it!!

It's great to see guys like Seth Rogen and Nick Offerman play A holes knowing that personally they aren't those dudes. Both are stellar in this, and I can't imagine better casting for those parts. Vincent D is amazing in everything so that goes without saying, and the female characters are all exceptional IMO. Just a killer film.

Candy Cane Lane is not the next Christmas Vacation. It's not A Christmas Story, or Elf, or any of the other long time classic Xmas movies. But it could be. CCL has enough charm, silliness, and holiday cheer to possibly land it on "best of" lists as years pass. Eddie Murphy, in most of his late career films it seems, has this sort of "throttled" Eddieness that reveals glimpses of his earlier brilliance, but never goes full tilt. He's funny in this movie, but never over the top nor tries to steal a scene. The rest of the family are excellent, and although with any of these movies one needs to suspend disbelief a bit, the characters never seem ridiculous. The elf "Pepper" is somewhat annoying but she's a great actor, and the animated characters are all excellent. This movie has wit, great pacing, a solid family story, and although it will annoying the Jesus sycophants because of a couple MILD slights about the religious aspect of the holiday, it's still a wonderful family film (with only some tepid adult references here and there). Loved it, and glad Eddie is out there working regularly again :)

It's almost unfathomable that this movie stinks...but it does, sadly. Confused characters bumbling through scenes, awful development of backstory, no chemistry, hardly any laughs and just a mishmash of WTF-ery :(