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Movie:		5.0
Picture:		6.0
Sound:		1.0
Extras:		2.0
Score:		1.0

Director(s):	Juha Wuolijoki
Writer(s):	Marko Leino
Starring:	Hannu-Pekka Björkman • Kari Väänänen
Genre:	Children & Family • Fantasy
Release Date:	November 03, 2009
Rated:

List Price:	DVD - $19.97
Amazon:

It’s been a long, long time since I’ve seen a movie with as much heart and as little brain as Christmas Story. No, this isn’t Another special edition of Bob Clark’s A Christmas Story, it’s a Finnish film called Joulutarina, and in a dumb, sappy way, it makes me want to cheer. Nothing I’ve watched in the past year has had the balls to pull some of the heartstring cords this sucker does without a second’s hesitation. Angelic glows illuminate characters being hit with glossy Finnish winter sunlight through frost-baked windowpanes. It’s all very cinematic, and as much as the lover of overt “Do it in the most movie-centric way possible,” but the realist in me—not the frostbitten cynic—just can’t accept the sheer… Public Broadcastingness of it.

There was a moment when I put the DVD in and looked at the menus, when I thought to myself precisely the options I was being presented with:

“Play Movie”
“Play Trailer”

Not knowing at the time that the film was dubbed, I chalked it up to a typical no-budget holiday release. A distributor like Anchor Bay picks up the rights to some foreign flick they can trick dumb Americans into buying, slap a cheap graphic on it for the DVD art and the menu, and if you’re lucky, you’ll get a trailer. Well, as many times as I’ve been faced with this exact scenario, particularly since writing for JPP (I’m the Lionsgate direct-to-DVD horror receptacle around here) almost never has any of the dreck I’ve had to invest 80 minutes in felt like a chore to watch. I think, were I able to see Joulutarina in its original language, with some Christmasey subtitles poeticizing the dialogue instead of the rape/murder effect the dubbing gives off, I’d like it a lot more. I’m really sorry to say, though, that I don’t think that’s ever gonna happen. Ten times out of ten when a critically-acclaimed (as Joulutarina is) foreign work like this gets picked up for a seasonal release, it’s a one-time deal. So I seriously just can’t recommend a purchase or even a confident rental here. The dubbing is, at the very best, almost passable; and at the worst, simply bewildering. One scene in particular at about the 70 minute mark seems like it must have been a joke the voice actress pulled after a blown take to make fun of herself, and whoever was handling the American release thought it was somehow inspired.

I assure all, it isn’t.

I mentioned how the film has a lot of heart. It does indeed, to a fault even. The Christmas Story in question is the origin story of Father Christmas, who spends half his life developing into an unnecessarily giving person and the second half hiding his secret identity like Spider-Man—even at one point delaying a search for a missing girl, who in all likelihood has already frozen to death, to disguise himself in Everyman’s garb. The film does an admirable job at cueing visual metaphors to bring back childhood dreams about how awesome Santa looks when he’s putting on his suit in montage ala Matt Cordell, or why exactly Santa loves giving people gifts on Christmas. The tagline of Christmas Story should be “Now… the true story.” There should be a trailer ripped off of Blair Witch or something.

To be serious for a moment, though? It’s honestly not a horrible film. I can see why without horrendous audio problems (including sound levels in general, which are stupidly high) it’d be a popular film. I’d be interested in seeing it again, maybe. Wink, wink, Anchor Bay. I’m honestly just shocked to see a DVD released 3 years into Blu-ray’s lifespan that has forced dubbing. If the next time I watched The Story of Ricky I wanted to have a miserable time instead of an awesome one, I could turn the dubbing off and switch back to Cantonese. That’s a bootleg of a Hong Kong bargain basement disc from 2000 or so. Why does it have more A/V options (read: any) than anything released nearly a decade later? For a company that loves to see its consumers consume as much as Anchor Bay, I’m honestly shocked they let the disc slide this way.

Though maybe they’re pulling an Evil Dead and are gonna keep rereleasing it 5 or 6 times before they lose the distribution rights. Somehow I don’t think there are gonna be many folks double dipping on this one.