‘Candy Cane Lane’ Review: Eddie Murphy in a Cozy and Rather Loopy Christmas Movie
variety.comOwen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic “Christmas is not about money,” says Pepper (Jillian Bell), the passive-aggressive Christmas store elf in “Candy Cane Lane.” “Except that it is.” She could almost be describing Christmas movies.
From the start, they’ve paired a celebration of the Christmas spirit, in all its enveloping toastiness, with a theme of raw economic desperation.
You can trace this right back to the original Christmas movie — “A Christmas Carol,” and by that I don’t even mean the assorted film versions (though I grew up with them and especially loved the 1951 version with Alastair Sim) but the Charles Dickens novella, published in 1843, which essentially invented the modern Christmas.
It was a tale built around money, and the fear of poverty as embodied in Bob Cratchit. A century later, “It’s a Wonderful Life” was essentially a remake of “A Christmas Carol,” albeit it with a small-town American mensch at the center and Scrooge displaced onto the figure of Mr.
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