(courtesy IMP Awards)
The Bad Guys: A Very Bad Holiday
So, you’re likely used to the rather appealing idea that Christmas is all giving and doing unto others etc and not about grabbing and stealing and having a narcissistic time of it. Well established as that may be as a selfless idea, no one, it turns out told The Bad Guys (or they told and they close to ignore being the self-serving rogues that they are). Based on the book of the same name by Aaron Blabey, and featuring the long-running gang of loveable Scholastic thieves, Mr. Wolf (Michael Gordore), Mr. Shark (Ezekiel Ajeigbe), Mr. Piranha (Raul Ceballos), Mr. Snake (Chris Diamantopolous) and Ms. Tarantula (Mallory Low), Dreamworks’ The Bad Guys: A Very Bad Holiday (which functions as a prequel to 2022’s The Bad Guys movie) kind of reverse Scrooges things with a series of events, many of them caused by the gang themselves, leaching the Christmas spirit from the city, meaning that their planned Holiday Heist-tacular, where they steal from all the unattended buildings on Christmas Day, is in danger of not happening at all.
This is a BIG problem because (a) they like the loot and (b) it keeps them snugly and welcomingly on Santa’s Naughty List which is good for their criminal cred but which also gives them coal which tech whiz Ms. Tarantula regards as a highlight of her year. To get their criminal undertakings and reputations back on track, they need get everyone back in a festive frame of mind and do it fast and without somehow earning them bonus points for being good from Santa. It’s a tricky balancing act and as is the case with many a kids’ storyline, it does go even remotely to plan, resulting in visual hijinks, snappy oneliners aplenty and a permeating sense of the ridiculous that ensures this is not your usual festival holiday tale.
In fact, it’s far from the usual sort of tale which makes it a welcome addition to the roster. Granted it contains many of the usual rescue Christmas elements that we know and love and which makes festive specials so good for the soul but every single of them is resented by The Bad Guys who don’t want to make it onto the Good List or restore peoples’ flagging Christmas spirits or do any good to anyone but themselves.
With some hilarious Scrooge idealisation (“That guy’s a legend! He parties with ghosts, and wears a dress to bed!” says Mr. Piranha with breathlessly enthusiastic admiration), a Die Hard reference that outs Hans Gruber among the pantheon of festive villains and some gloriously good slapstick moments that will make you view snowcones and ice creams in a whole other light, The Bad Guys: A Very Bad Holiday is an absolute delight, full of fun, comedy, mixing up of tropes but in the end the very Christmasness these guys abhor, and happily for Christmas 2024, the cliffhanger-y seed for a future festive special.
The Bad Guys: A Very Bad Holiday is streaming on Netflix.
(courtesy TV Guide (c) Dreamworks / Netflix)
Do you want colour and pizzazz and friendship so rampant it has the very real potential to suffocate you under layers and layers of effervescently bright glitter? What about a special so vibrantly upbeat that you can’t help but emerge feeling really good about the world and happy that someone somewhere decided to turn the colour and bonhomie and selfless goodness up to 111 on a scale of 10? If all of that sounds hugely appealing, then run, do not walk, to the Play button and give 2017’s Trolls Holiday special a whirl.
Naturally set in the same universe as the slew of Trolls films, including his year’s effort, Trolls Band Together, Trolls Holiday embodies all the zest, vivacity and musicality that we’ve come to love from the franchise. In this outing, which came relatively hard on the heels of 2016’s first outing, Trolls (itself based on the Good Luck Trolls dolls created by Thomas Dam), Queen Poppy (voiced by Anna Kendrick), whose optimistic gung ho attitude to everything is undimished and undimmed, is determined to find the Trolls once antagonistic enemies, now best buds, the Bergens a new holiday, Trollstice, upon which they used to, ahem, eat Trolls. With Queen Poppy and the Bergen Queen Bridget (Zooey Deschanel) now BFFs, the leader of the Trolls, in typically ill-thought out but wholly well-intentioned fashion decides to find the Bergens a new holiday and considering that the Trolls have a surfeit of their own such as Balloon Squeal Day, Tickle Day and Toss Your Friend Day, thinks it’d be a great idea to give them one of their own.
Much of the humour of Trolls Holiday comes not only from the sheer unbridled exuberance of Poppy, all of which sits not so well with new reformed friend Branch (Justin Timberlake) but from the delightfully hamfisted way in which she sets out to convince Bridget and her beau, King Gristle Jr. (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), spruiking the appeals of various candidate Trolls holiday with an approach so invasively over-the-top that she doesn’t stop to consider that none of the holidays will appeal to her new friends.
And, rather hilariously but meaningfully they don’t, and after an uncharacteristic downer of a moment, in which Poppy feels like she’s manifestly failed (and yeah, sweet though she is, she kind of has), the Bergens come up with their own celebration which is theirs and which pays homage to something they like very much, all of which coming into existence with very Christmassy overtones.
Toss in some upbeat, very bright and fun songs like “Holiday” and “Love Train” – like its predecessor Trolls, Trolls Holiday is a jukebox musical that pivots its plot around some cheery sung exposition – some fantastically imaginative, colourful and very funny slapstick-y scenes such as their wormbus going down a psychedelic wormhole that has some fantastically original effects, and the endearing sweetness and exuberance of the franchise, and Trolls Holiday, while not explicitly referencing Christmas, is a perfect seasonal joy-filled delight that makes you want to hug someone and be glad you have them in your life.
Trolls Holiday is streaming on Netflix.