Christmas Special Part II

 This week on Pass, Pirate, Pay, it’s Christmas special: Part 2! We’re diving into the holiday spirit with reviews of Joyeux Noel, the wild ride that is Rare Exports, and the new Farrelly Brothers, Jack Black movie Dear Santa. Grab some cocoa, settle in, and let’s unwrap some festive film gems! 🎄🎥 

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Chapters

• 0:00 Joyeux Noel
• 17:30 Rare Exports
• 28:57 Dear Santa

Transcript

- Whoo!
- Whoo!
(upbeat music)
- Hello everybody!
Merry Christmas once again!
Merry Christmas again everybody!
- Welcome to the second Christmas episode
of Pass Pirate Pay!
My name is Ken, I'll be your host
alongside my co-host Andy.
Andy, how are you doing?
- Oh, holy shit Ken!
(laughing)
Another Christmas episode.
- That's right, we are deep into it now.
We are in the spirit of the season.
- Feeling very Christmasy,
you will tide gay as we are.
(laughing)
- Yeah, so today we're gonna be discussing
three Christmas movies.
We're gonna be talking about 2005's "Joy You Know Well."
We're gonna be talking about 2010's "Rare Exports"
and 2024's "Dear Santa."
- Yeah.
- So yeah, three, I would say very different
to Christmas movies, these are these.
- Yeah, yeah, runs the gambit.
- Yeah, we're totally running the gambit on these.
We're going all through the different kinds
of Christmas movies.
- Let's just jump right into it.
- Yeah, okay, let's start with...
- That's our first one.
- Let's go with "Crawl, I'm just gonna order."
- Okay.
"The You Know Well" 2005, directed by Christian Carian.
This is a French movie.
"Joy You Know Well" is French from Merry Christmas.
- Uh-huh.
- You know, for those of you who don't speak French.
- This movie is actually multilingual.
There's a lot of languages.
- Yeah, so there are three main groups of cast members
in this movie.
There's this "A World War One" movie.
The groups are French soldiers, German soldiers
and Scottish soldiers.
So this movie is going back and forth
between French German and English.
- Based on a true story, right?
- Yeah. - Based on a true story.
So yeah, this is the true story of soldiers
in the first year of "World War One" fighting on the trenches
who decide to have a ceasefire on Christmas Eve.
They just basically get together, throw down their,
put their guns down and decide to drink together
and sing songs and, you know.
- And this is like gritty, nasty trench warfare.
- Yeah, exactly. - Like "World War One"
trench warfare.
- Yeah, exactly.
- So when I heard the premise of this movie,
I was not enthused.
It just kind of sounds like--
- You and I thought the same thing.
Is it was gonna be syrupy?
- Yeah.
- I thought this movie was gonna be
yes, drenched in sap.
- And it was not at all.
- Yeah, so I--
- It was a very realistic look at this.
- Yeah.
So the movie starts with a bunch of school children
standing in front of the classroom,
talking about the wars, I guess,
where they were talking about exterminating the enemies
from their other countries.
- In all the different languages.
- Yeah, in English, French and German, yeah.
And then we start off with a pretty hard hitting
and brutal battle in this trench warfare kind of thing
where at one point a bunch of the French soldiers
are just gunned down with a machine gun inside a trench.
- But like pretty.
- Merry Christmas.
- Yeah.
(laughing)
And it's a pretty intensely shot battle scene.
- It is.
- So there's a few shots of like,
slow mo people dying.
And then there's these two Scottish brothers
and one of them dies and the other one is like
crying over the brother's body and like kisses him
on the mouth and it's just like,
it seems like it's, it made me continue to be worried
about this movie, right?
Where I feel like this movie is going to be too much, right?
You know, 'cause it's way too easy to take this premise
of this movie and make it hokey and sappy and,
and you know, do too much with it.
And man, this movie does not do that at all.
- No, it's an uneasy piece the whole time.
- Yeah, yeah, exactly.
So after the big battle,
they're talking about how Christmas Eve is coming up
and everybody, all the higher ups on both sides are like,
you never can't tell what those people on the other side
are gonna do even on Christmas Eve.
They may be coming to attack us.
Everybody's on edge, right?
Even though it's Christmas,
they're like, what's gonna happen?
But then so one of the German soldiers is a,
a famous tenor, is an opera singer.
- Uh-huh.
- And one of the German commanders,
is it the crown prince?
I think that's what he said he was.
He wants to hear this guy sing on Christmas Eve.
So they take him away from the front lines
so he can go to this party and sing some songs
for all of these rich people.
- Yeah.
- But then he comes back to the front
with his opera singer, girlfriend in tow,
because he wants to sing with the men.
And he wants, yeah, so they're gonna come
and they're gonna sing.
And while they're standing there preparing to sing,
they hear the Scottish guys having a sing along.
There's a bagpiper there.
And the Scottish guys are singing,
oh, come all you faithful, I think at first,
something like that.
- Yeah.
- And then the German guy, the opera singer is like,
well, to complete this game
and he's just start singing silent night.
And that's the point where the whole war kind of stops,
right?
- Yeah.
- Where the German guy comes out of his trench
and he's just standing there.
- And before we've seen,
if you come out of the trench,
you get shot.
- Instantly shot.
- Yeah.
- Instantly shot.
At one point, somebody points a gun at him,
one of the soldiers on the other side,
I think it's a French soldier,
points a gun at the singer as he steps out.
And it looks like he's about to shoot him
and the person standing next to him
like puts his hand on the rifle and pushes it down.
He's like, no, let's just let this guy sing.
And so he starts to sing.
And then the bagpiper joins in
and then soon enough everybody's coming out of the trenches
and they're all like, it's all very tentative.
- Yeah, like, are we doing this thing?
What's going on here?
At first it's just the Scottish guys
and the Germans guys and then the French guys are like,
oh, they're having a summit and they didn't invite us
and then the French,
so the three commanding officers from all three factions
come out in there discussing this thing.
I'm like, we're gonna do this thing,
we're gonna do this thing and they do it.
And like, I was expecting like swelling
or cultural music to be playing this little time
and you know, we're learning lessons
about how, about the greater humanity of everybody.
- That's exactly what I expect.
- It's just not there.
It's just like a really simple human story, you know?
Like these guys are, it was brilliantly directed.
- Yeah, I agree.
These guys, they all start like exchanging photos
of their wives.
There's all these many story lines going on.
And it's not all great too because the guy who's brother got shot,
he's still like, fuck these guys,
- He's super pissed off.
- Yeah, so a German guy has got a bottle of champagne
and he comes over to the Scottish guy
who's like mourning over the body of his brother.
And he's like, hey, let's have a drink, you know?
And the Scottish guy just like gives him a death stare.
- Yeah, like, I thought it was all gonna end right now.
Yeah, I kept expecting that to happen.
I'm like, is this gonna blow up?
It's like it's gonna blow up in any minute.
- Yeah. - Which never happens.
But yeah, the Scottish guy like,
just gives this German dude a death stare
and the guy just backs away slowly.
He's like, okay, I'll just take my bottle of champagne
and go somewhere else, sorry dude, you know?
And then the next day is Christmas morning
and it's like, hey, the German guys come over,
the German commander comes over to the French side
and says, our artillery is gonna start bombing you
in your trench now.
So why don't you come over to our trench and not get shielded?
- Save their lives. - And save their lives.
So what eventually happens is
all of the people on every side start writing letters home
about this miraculous thing that's happened.
And it's war, so all of the letters to home
are being read by commanders and like central command.
And so there's like, these guys did what?
Right?
And so basically everybody involved in the ceasefire
is going to be punished, right?
Like all of the German soldiers are sent to Russia
and there's a Scottish priest who's there
and he's being sent away from the front lines
and apparently he can't be trusted.
And he gives up his faith and hangs up the cross.
- Yeah, yeah, exactly.
That's one thing I didn't expect.
- Is that they all gotten trouble?
- Right, yeah.
- Like the end wasn't this happy, peaceful ending,
all the sides hated each other so much
that they were like, you can't do this,
we're punishing you for this.
- Right, exactly, yeah.
- Can't be over there fraternizing with the enemy.
- Yeah, so the Scottish priest is confronted by like,
I don't know, a cardinal or something,
one of the higher ups in his church
and basically he's told how dare you try to convince
these men that the Germans are the same as us,
that we're all the same people,
that we're all children of God.
- Which is what they all realize
in this whole experiment.
- Yeah, exactly.
So yeah, the point of the movie seems to be that
it's like the real enemy is not the other side,
the real enemy is the generals, right?
Because all of the higher ups are the ones
who come down on everybody for having this truce.
And they all--
- Also, I think the whole point of the movie
is the real enemy is the other.
Yeah, not necessarily the generals,
but the generals are the ones who are pushing this narrative, right?
- But so was the priest.
- Right, well yeah, exactly, but he's a higher up, right?
'Cause it's not the priest on the ground,
it's the priest up in the cathedral or whatever, right?
So it's the guys who are being sung to at the party
by the German and opera singer,
not the guys who are being sung to in the trenches
by the German opera singer, right?
So what we learn is no matter which side they're on,
if you're in the trenches, you're just there to die, right?
And you don't get to decide what you wanna do.
And all you have to do is carry out the will
of these other people.
And the will of these other people is that
I am French, so I hate Germany or I am Germany,
so I hate France.
And that's the thing we have to learn.
And there's even a sermon performed by the Cardinal or whoever,
where he's like, "The Germans are not children of God.
If you think that they are, you're wrong."
- Right, and it will not be solved until they're all dead.
- We have to wipe out all of the Germans.
This is a fucking man of God who's saying this.
This is a theoretically holy person who's saying these things.
It's just like, yeah, so this is another entry
into our religious problems, episode.
But yeah, you're right on.
The thing this movie does best is it nails the tone.
It just, it doesn't go too far.
A lot of the movie is, you could make a movie
that people would love.
- Oh yeah.
- That was just a big syrupy.
Have you, did you watch, there was an animated short,
I think it actually won the Oscar for animated short last year.
And it was produced by Yoko Ono or Sean Ono Lennon,
one of the, and it's based on the Yoko Ono,
John Lennon, Christmas song, war is over.
- I don't think I saw that.
- It's fucking terrible, just awful.
And it's exactly the same kind of thing
that we're talking about, where it's about two sides,
I think it's actually World War One.
It's about two sides.
- You think it might be a version of this?
- I think it might actually, I don't think it's during a ceasefire,
but something happens where both sides come out of the trenches
and they realize that the world is saying it.
- It sounds like it.
- But it's not, I don't think it's an official ceasefire.
I think it's just, like I don't think it,
it might actually be.
I don't, I actually can't remember the movie well enough,
but it's the syrupy garbage version of this movie.
It shows you exactly the wrong way to do this movie.
And this movie does exactly opposite of that.
It does it the right way.
It's just simple.
It's told very scaled down and simplistically
and it's exactly what this story needs.
- Yeah, it surprised me too, the same way it surprised you.
- Yeah, I was expecting, like you said, swelling music.
- Yeah.
- And for the most part, there's not a lot of score in this movie.
Most of the music is just what's happening,
being sung by the people in the movie.
So a lot of the movie is told in silence or with gunfire
or whatever.
- It's just, it's still had its moments though,
but it balanced them out well enough.
- Yeah, it's not an unemotional movie either.
- No, no, there's a lot of emotional parts there.
- Yeah, like when the French commander finds out
that he has a son, 'cause he hadn't been able to hear
from his wife because the lines of communication
have been cut.
- Yeah.
- So then he finds out that he has a son
and then he winds up telling his father
who is one of his superiors that he has a grandson.
And that's like a really emotional scene,
but handled really well.
It's again, it's not over the top.
It's done in kind of a, in kind of a stripped-down way.
- Right, I thought this is the same thing
when the opera singer came out of the trenches
and sang, I thought that was a really awesome scene.
But it was also tense and scary.
They're gonna shoot this guy.
- One thing I thought was very strange,
one problem I had with the movie.
So the female opera singer, she's played by Diane Krueger,
who was, she was in Inglorious Basterds
and National Treasure.
- She's a person, right?
- Yeah.
- She is very obviously not a singer.
And all of the scenes where she is singing
are lip-synced very badly.
I thought I didn't even notice.
- Really?
I couldn't stop watching it, where it's just like,
they didn't even sink her lips correctly a lot of the time.
And it was so obvious that she wasn't the one who was singing.
And it's like, I mean, she's a beautiful woman
who's a good actress,
but there aren't any beautiful German women
who are good actresses who can also sing
that you couldn't get somebody to actually play this part
who could do the singing part.
It's very strange to me.
I don't really understand what that was about.
- But that kind of bugger, it kind of took me out of it.
- I don't know.
I guess it's because I've been burned by stories like this
so many times, I kept wanting to not like it.
Like I kept writing stuff down when I'm,
'cause I always take notes to talk about stuff on the show.
And I kept writing stuff down and like,
"But, so this fucking movie doing?"
But then like immediately after the thing that happens
that I was mad about, it wants of explaining itself.
And it's like, "Oh, all right, well that's reasonable.
That's totally reasonable."
One of the things that happens the day after,
so Christmas morning, both sides decide
that they're going to be allowed to bury their dead.
So they start burying the dead.
And so the priest guy is like, he says,
"Oh, that makes sense, burying the dead
on the day Christ was born, that makes sense."
And I was like, "Does that make sense?
What are you fucking talking about?"
That's ridiculous.
But then they're doing it and they're having this moment of real,
like, I don't know, morning, I guess,
for all of these lost guys.
And like, fuck, this really does make sense.
Like this scene really works.
And the burial scene is really moving and effective.
Did it just do a great job, you know?
Yeah, at every turn on this movie,
like it didn't go to the place I expected it.
That's usually a good movie.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, I really liked how everything up until the point
of the ceasefire was showing just how bad shit is in the trenches.
Yeah.
It's like everybody has headlice and everything is gross.
Like at one point, they're escorting some general
out of a trench and somebody fires off a gun
to make him trip so he falls into a bunch of shit.
It's like there's just shit on the ground everywhere.
It's like, everything is terrible.
This is a fucking horrible place that these people are in,
which makes the moment of the ceasefire so much more powerful,
right?
We're taking a break from this fucking horrible nightmare
that we're all in together.
It's all collectively decided to do it.
And you gotta think, how much of a miracle that was
because it's a war.
And when there's a war, you hate.
Right.
Hate the other side.
For sure.
So how miserable those conditions to where you're like,
I hate these people.
My job is to murder them.
But it's really fucking shitty.
It'd be nice to have a cocktail and just not worry
about that for a day.
Yeah.
Yeah.
All right.
So Ken, is that it?
Yeah, that's it.
All right.
So is Zhu Noelle, is that what he said?
Is Zhuayu.
Zhuayu Noelle is that a past pirate or pay for you?
This is definitely a pay for me.
Yeah, me too.
Pay all the way.
Very nice.
Very nice.
So though, not in a movie I'd watch every Christmas.
Yeah.
I agree with that 100%.
I like Serbian movies at Christmas.
Yeah.
I mean, I might at some point want to show this to somebody else
and watch it again at Christmas time with somebody else.
Yeah.
If this isn't a movie where I'm going to be at home and be like,
"Hey, you know what?
I'm going to pop on.
I'm going to pop on you.
You know what?
If you haven't seen it, it is a good Christmas movie.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
It's like celebrating one aspect of what makes Christmas great.
Yeah.
Like this shared humanity, the brotherhood of man or whatever you want to call it.
Yeah.
This is one of the great things about Christmas and this movie does that very well.
But yeah, you're right.
It is not exactly a fun romp that I would want to experience every year.
This is not this is not elf that is bound for my soul.
No.
Okay, our second movie today will be 2010's Rare Export.
This is a Finnish movie directed by John Murray Hollander.
This is not a movie I had ever heard of.
I had never heard of Joy Unoel or this movie before you decided that we were going to do
the Rare Export when it came out.
Yeah.
And this is an excellent premise for a movie.
I think where this company corporation is digging in Finland.
They're mining for something and they realize they've come across the tomb of Santa Claus while
they're mining and they're going to excavate this mine and they're, I don't know if it's
like they think it's like the Ark of the Covenant where they're going to have this army and
they're going to march with Santa Claus out in front of them.
They're going to take over the world.
Yeah, I don't know.
Is it ever given an explanation of why they want to?
I don't think so.
I think it's like once we, it's just, well, once we control he who controls the Santa controls
the universe.
So isn't Finland where the myth of Santa started?
I actually don't know.
I'm not sure.
Like the myth of the modern Santa not like the St. Nicholas, but like, I know it's somewhere
up in that area of the world, but I can't say for sure that it's Finland.
But yeah, the opening credits of this movie are shown as this kid is going through these
old books about Santa Claus.
And the book is filled with all these pictures of exactly the kind of Santa Claus we're going
to be dealing with in this movie where it's just like he's like robbing graves or he's
boiling children is a monster.
He's a monster.
It's a Santa Claus monster.
So that's just puts us right in the place where we see what kind of thing we're going
to be going to be going to be.
But before that, there's two children and they're watching these minors as they're discovering
the grave of Santa Claus.
Yeah, it's very funny.
I think where it's like you better watch out, you better not cry where this guy is like,
no swearing.
Everybody be on your best behavior because they're about to dig up Santa Claus.
No smoking, no drinking exactly.
No, lots of smiling everybody smile.
Yeah.
And like he's very serious about the whole thing.
And you know, these guys are like flicking away their cigarettes.
I was like, no, we can't have any of that.
Santa Claus is coming.
We all have to be on our best behavior.
So yeah, I thought that was really funny.
But yeah, so the story is told from the point of view of this kid and his dad and they
have a dead mother.
Everyone in this community, I think they're all reindeer farmers.
It seems like.
Yeah, something like that.
Like they sell reindeer meat.
He's a butcher.
Yeah.
He's definitely seen dismantling animals throughout the movie.
But I think they farm and sell the meat of reindeer.
I think that's what the that's how they do it.
So the action of the movie is commenced after these corporation guys start digging up the
grave of Santa, all of the reindeer are slaughtered.
They're all just murdered.
And it's just like, what kind of wolves could have done this thing?
Is this like, well, you know, we're not going there.
We don't think this is wolves.
This is a thing.
And the kid starts realizing that it's Santa Claus, but he doesn't want to tell anybody because
he shouldn't have been there watching the corporation guys in the first place.
And when they get there, they cut a hole in the fence.
And that's how the murderer of the reindeer got out.
So he doesn't want to admit this to his dad.
So the kid knows what's going on the whole time, but he can't really tell anybody.
And that's where like a lot of attention in the beginning parts of the movie.
But then we find what initially we think is Santa Claus.
But it's not.
It's just an elf.
And there are lots of elves in this movie.
And in this, in this movie, all of the elves are skinny old naked dudes.
Yeah.
Right.
Kind of scary looking.
Yeah, they're creepy.
They're old skinny dudes with white beards.
So I guess it makes sense to floppy dicks.
Yeah, dicks everywhere.
So at one point, one of them is captured and he bites one of the guys ears off all of
the violence in this movie takes place off screen.
I think this movie was made for a very, very small budget.
Yeah, they do a lot with a little.
It's very, it feels very jaws like to me.
Yeah, it's just like we don't have the technology, but we're going to, oh, they add the technology.
But we don't have the money.
They don't have the money.
Right.
We don't have the money.
So we're going to create all of this tension by not showing you anything.
So it's just like at one point, the guy's got an ear.
And then next time you see if he's got a bloody stuff where he used to be.
And it's just, there's so many things in this movie happen in that way where all of the
violence and scary stuff that happens happen off screen.
Yeah.
And it's just really effective.
Like, yeah, and I think when they captured what they think of Santa Claus, that whole scene,
all those scenes there in that butcher shop, yeah, we're so like gross and dismal, and
cool, you know, I loved all that stuff.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
And I just think it's so much better to do with that way.
That last week we talked about red one and we have all these like shitty CGI fight scenes.
Yeah.
I would so much rather just don't show it.
Just cut away from it and do it that way rather than show me something that looks like
shit, right?
Yeah.
And so this movie, I think very clearly made that point because there is some amount of CGI
in this movie and it is not good.
Like, are you talking about the helicopter?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I think they dumped all of their money into the helicopter scene.
And it wasn't great.
Yeah.
I mean, I can't imagine how they could have spent, but it looks like it was made on like a Macbook,
you know, like that's the kind of scene.
How long ago was this 2016?
This is no, it's 2010.
2010.
It was a while ago.
Yeah, that's a while ago for sure.
Listen, I don't, I don't really hold the movie's bad CGI against it.
I don't think that.
I didn't either.
Yeah, it's totally, it's totally all right.
But yeah, so eventually we see what the real Santa is.
We don't actually get to see him ever, but we see him inside of a giant ice block.
Yeah.
And they haven't fought him yet, but Santa looks enormous.
He's like two stories high.
He's a gigantic, terrifying giant horns.
Big giant horns.
Yeah.
At one point, a line that I thought was really funny.
One of the kids says the Coca-Cola Santa is a joke.
Because this is the real Santa.
This is the guy we're dealing with here.
Yeah.
Like all the weird stuff that's happening, like weird horror movie things are happening
where it's like everybody in town's radiators have been stolen and like one guy has a bunch
of potatoes and like they stole all my potato sacks.
And like, oh, they took your potatoes.
No, no, they didn't take the potatoes.
They just took the sacks.
They just took the sacks.
Right.
And eventually we realized when we see, when we get to see where Santa is, they've stolen
all these radiators because they're trying to thaw the giant ice block Santa out.
Yeah.
And they've got sacks because, well, you know, Santa, he needs to have a sack.
He's got to carry the, got to carry the toys.
But it wasn't the toys.
Remember, they were sacking up the bad kids.
Oh, right.
Yeah, exactly.
That's right.
They're kidnapping all the kids in town.
So I think like the Santa myth in this is a lot more like crampus.
Yeah.
It does seem very crampacy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Cause yeah, he's got, he's presented as a guy with horns.
Seems very like devil like in the, in the old pictures.
Yeah, it was kind of mix of like Santa and, rampus.
Yeah.
So the way the movie plays out is these farmers have all lost their livelihoods because the
reindeer have all been killed by these naked old man elves.
Yeah.
So then when they have Santa, they're like, well, we got Santa.
Let's sell them back to this corporation.
They want them so badly.
We're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna sell them, sell them to the highest bidder.
Yeah.
They're trying to do it.
But then the elves are not having it and they wind up decapitating the corporation guy.
Yeah.
How are we going to get rid of all these elves and eventually all the problems are solved
in the same way where, like you said, there's a helicopter.
They take all of the kids who have been kidnapped and put them in this giant net and drag them
from the bottom of a helicopter.
Yeah.
So they're flying this helicopter through this giant like reindeer pen, which is like the
velociraptor holding area on Jurassic Park.
And the helicopter is flying there and all of the old man elves are magically drawn
to try to follow these kids.
Yeah, because they're the naughty kids, right?
Exactly.
And that's what the elves are there.
They're, they're there to put these naughty kids in line.
Right.
To feed them to Santa wherever the naughty kids go.
That's where the elves are gonna be going.
Yeah.
So they're all following them.
And then the one kid, the main kid, he's, decides he's gonna sacrifice himself for the
good of everybody.
Yeah.
Because the only way they can drop the net full of kids into the pen is if he goes down
with them and then pushes the button to pen the elves into it.
So he makes, it's like Armageddon at the end, right?
Where it's like, I'm gonna make the ultimate sacrifice myself and it proves that he's not
naughty after all.
He's one of the, he's the one nice kid in the world.
So yeah, this movie is ridiculous.
It's totally insane.
Yeah, it is, but it's, it's kind of insane that I like, it's fun.
It's a fun movie.
The ending of this movie could not be more preposterous, I think.
Like where they package up.
Yeah.
So they decide they're gonna train all of these elves to stop being murderous and start being
like jolly, Santa type people.
And then they're gonna sell them for money to all of these countries around the world that
don't have Santa Claus.
Like at one point, they put a, they slap a shipping label on this country, on this box
to Namibia and they're shipping this old man, else to Namibia.
So he can be the Santa Claus there because they've reformed him.
Yeah.
He's like, what the fuck?
Yeah, I really like this movie.
I think it's really, really fun.
I think it gives no fucks.
I think that it, we said before it does a whole lot with very little.
I think it, it creates a fun dark mood.
Yeah.
I love the mythology of it.
Like I just, I love it.
Yeah, I thought it was great.
I like it.
I don't love it.
I think it's, I think it's, I think it's pretty good.
It's definitely worth watching.
I had a good time through most of it.
I don't know.
I don't know.
Not all of it worked for me, but, but on the whole, the story is, the story was kind of
fun and, you know, it's, you're right.
It's a good kind of ridiculous.
Yeah.
Yeah.
All right.
So is that it?
Yeah.
That's all right.
So, can, what is it for you and rare exports?
Is it past, pirate or pay?
I got rare exports as a pirate.
Okay.
Yeah.
I got it as a pay.
Nice.
Nice.
You need to spend money on this one, but it's definitely worth a watch.
Yeah.
I think it has the same vibe as Gremlins, you know?
Yeah.
Interesting.
Yeah.
I guess, I guess it does kind of have the same kind of feel.
I don't think it gets very scary.
Kind of does.
There's a little bit.
There's a little bit of, of pension building kind of stuff.
Yeah.
I don't know.
I just don't, I don't think it's as much fun as Gremlins or as effectively scary.
So, I don't know.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Pirate.
Still worth watching.
Yeah.
Our final movie today is 2024's "Dear Santa," which is directed by Bobby Farrowley of
the Farrowley Brothers.
He is the brother who was left behind when Peter decided to go off and make Grem book and
win an Oscar for some reason.
Yeah.
That's a thing that happened.
One of the Farrowley Brothers has a, has a best picture winner under his belt.
I didn't hate Green Book, but I hate the Farrowley Brothers.
Yeah.
I know you do.
I hate the Farrowley.
They're the masters of punching down.
I don't love the Farrowley Brothers.
I like a couple of their movies.
I don't know if there's one that I like.
I enjoy there's something about Mary.
I think it's really funny.
I walked out of something about Mary.
Yeah.
But this movie, the idea behind this movie seems to be like he was looking at a word
one day and he's like, did you ever notice that the word?
Santa and Satan have the exact same letters in them?
That could be a two hour movie, right?
That's basically what we're doing here.
Hey, you know, you know who sucks?
Dislexic children, right?
Yeah.
That's going to be the target of this one.
Talk about punching down this movie.
Yeah.
It's right there.
Yeah.
It's like, so the main character is this kid and he's got dyslexia.
And so he writes this letter to Santa Claus, except it's dressed to Satan and it at the North
Lope Lope E.
That's hilarious.
And it goes to Satan who was played by Jack Black.
Yeah.
And yeah, the Satan initially tries to tell the kid that he's Santa and he's going to grant
the kid three wishes, but eventually it's revealed that he is in fact the devil maybe
and then at the end of the three wishes, the devil owns his soul.
So that's where the movie goes.
Yeah.
So his movie, who we, the, the, this is a kid's movie.
I don't know if Bobby Farley has any kids I'm getting him probably does.
I don't know, but it seems like he's never had a conversation with a child in his life.
The kids in this movie talk like adults, right?
They talk like sign-filled characters, basically.
I'm like, there's these two dorky kids who are the main characters of the movie.
And that, I think, we, not just the selected kids, we have to make fun of, but also black
kids with fuck teeth.
Fuck the teeth.
Yeah.
So these two kids, their dorks, nobody likes them and one of them has a crush on this cute
girl in their class.
And they're just, they're, they're having all these conversations and it's just like, no
kid talks like this.
So it's like at one point, the kid is getting away from an awkward situation.
There's a running joke through the movie somehow where he goes, "Toodles."
And he's like, "Oh, just so you know, I've never said the word, "Toodle."
And he's like, "Toodles before."
This is not, it's like, this is not the way kids talk.
This is not, kids don't behave in this way, you know?
It's just like, it's, it's very weird.
And kid actors are bad, right?
That's a rule.
That's generally a rule.
Yeah, I mean, it's a natural thing to be bad as a kid actor.
The kid actors in this movie, the way kid actors are bad is that they're trying to overdo
everything, right?
To playing everything super big because, you know, I'm acting.
Ah, this is how I do it.
And these kids are, there's some of the worst kid actors I think I've ever seen in a movie.
But it's not like they're the only ones because the adults in this movie are way over the
top acting too.
Everybody in this movie is doing way too big.
Wait, wait, even Jack Black?
Well, Jack Black is just doing his Black, Jack Black shit, right?
Yeah, which I think I'm sick of now.
I am, I am too.
I'm definitely sick.
And I wasn't.
I used to really like Jack Black.
Yeah.
I really, I mean, I like Tenacious D. I like School of Rock.
Like even Jack Black with kids, School of Rock, I think is a really good movie.
Yeah, I think that the act is tired.
I think the same thing happened to him, happened to me with Robin Williams, but Robin Williams
kind of grew out of it and grew into more mature, better stuff.
Yeah.
And it seems like Jack Black is just, he's staying in that groove.
He's doing the same things.
Like he's talking about the situation.
He's still doing shit like that.
Where is this?
Yeah.
This is the same joke she's been making for 30 years, bro.
I don't, we, why don't we try to evolve?
I've seen him in other things.
Did you see Bernie?
Uh, no, I didn't see Bernie.
Bernie was really good.
There was one where he played like the polka king con man.
Yeah, I've heard that movie is really good.
That one was really good.
Bernie was the one where he played like the southern gay dude who like murdered somebody.
Okay.
That was, that like he's done substantial roles.
Yeah.
Not too far from the stick, but far enough to where you can go, oh, he can probably branch
out a bit.
Yeah.
This movie, he is not branching out.
He is like in full on I am Jack Black mode.
Yeah.
So last week we talked about Red one, another allegedly kids movie.
Yeah.
And this movie, I find it to be bad in a much more forgivable way than, than, uh, Red one.
How so?
I think if kids watch this movie, they're not going to come away with bad morality at least,
which is weird because it's the devil.
It's the devil.
But like, I feel like this movie's heart is at least in the right place, even if it's brain
is non-existent, but it's a fairly brothers movie.
So they are punching down, but not much, but like, is it?
But like, is it?
The kid, the kid who's the main character is for the most part a good kid.
Like he does the right thing.
And then there's a brief period where he thinks the devil owns his soul where he's going
to, where he's like, well, I don't have to be a good kid anymore.
And he becomes a jerk for a little while.
But then it's quickly, it's, it's quickly discovered that like, that's not making
him happy.
And that's not who he is.
And things are going to be better off if he, if he stops acting that way.
Yeah.
So I, I at least feel like, this is, there were some sweet moments.
It's sweet.
It's a stupid movie.
Yeah.
Like, it's very dumb.
But it's not, it's not offensive to me.
Right.
Like, red one is offensive.
It's, it's offensive in how bad it is.
And it's offensive in the things that it seems to believe in.
Yeah.
This movie is just, it's just a regular bad movie.
And I do think there was some fun rapport with Jack Black as the devil and the kid.
Yeah.
I thought there was some fun interactions between them.
Yeah.
I, I, I, I, I, out of all the fairly brothers things.
And I've watched a lot of them.
I even watched the series that they did about the, where they were making fun of alcoholics.
I don't even remember that.
It's a guy's name.
It's Ron Livingston plays him.
Okay.
I don't remember this at all.
Will Sasso was in it.
Oh.
It was about recovering alcoholic.
Okay.
And I just forget the name.
He's like a dick.
He's like, Ron Livingston's like a giant dick.
Yeah.
I forget it.
But I watched that.
I watched the whole goddamn thing.
And I hated everything.
Yeah.
This is, I think I've hated this the least.
Interesting.
I didn't like it.
Yeah.
But I hated it the least.
Yeah.
So I mentioned that I found the ending of rare exports to be the most preposterous thing.
Yeah.
That was before I had seen this movie.
The end of spoiler alert, the ending of this movie is so far off the rails.
I can't believe that they actually did it this way.
So after the kid has sold his soul to the Jack Black devil, we go down to hell and we learn
that Jack Black is not actually the devil.
So pull back a little bit.
He refrains or making three wishes because the third wish will see the deal.
Exactly.
So he puts it off as long as he can.
But then his parents are starting to break up.
He wishes to his parents.
So this movie has a lot of information that it doles out very sparingly and his parents
are fighting the whole movie and they're miserable.
And we learn that they've moved to this new town for reasons because there was some kind
of tragedy, but we don't know what it is.
So eventually it's revealed that the kid's little brother has been killed in an accident.
And that's why his parents are going through some shit.
They hate each other because they both blame each other for the kid getting murdered or
getting killed in this accident, right?
So yeah, so the kid uses his final wish to get his parents to stop fighting.
Then we go to hell and we meet the actual devil who was played by Ben Stiller.
And that whole interaction is so, so stupid.
Talk about tired stick Ben Stiller is so bad.
Do we just fucking terrible shit as this devil just it felt like AI wrote that.
It's like it was just like bad comedy just awful.
And we learn that there's some kind of it's a wonderful life vibe going on where Jack
Black is trying to get his, he's trying to earn his devil horns by getting getting, getting
control of some lower level demon.
Yeah, yeah, but so he, it's like Clarence not having his wings.
If Jack Black can trick this kid out of his soul, then he can get his horns.
And it's just like what the fuck is going on?
But the devil is so mad that the kid used his last wish to do something noble to get
his parents back together.
And then it doesn't count.
We can't take this kid soul.
You screwed up Jack Black.
You're no, and he gets banished from hell.
We don't really know what that means where where he's going to go at this point, but this
is what's going on.
He's banished from hell forever because he fucked up getting this kid soul.
Yeah.
So I think what the movie is trying to be saying is that Jack Black is going to turn
into Santa Claus because the dad keeps hinting that when he was a kid, he always asked Santa
for a pony and he never got it.
But then Chris' morning comes and the dad gets his pony.
Yeah.
But so Jack Black, after getting kicked out of hell, he meets up with a kid again and he's
like, he, he realized, oh, I really like this kid and they become kind of buddies.
And he's like, well, you know, we didn't use your third wish on your parents getting back
together.
They did that on their own.
So you still have a third wish.
But somehow they decide that the way to end this movie is that he's going to use his third
wish to bring the dead above brother back to life.
Well, he says, I'm just going to use the wish you put in your letter.
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
Right.
Which, yes.
So the kid apparently asked Santa to bring his dead brother back to life.
Yeah.
And that's how they decide to end this movie with Jack Black becoming this wish granter
good guy who brings the dead brother back to life.
And that's it.
Like kids back to life, parents are happy.
Everybody Jack Black is Santa Claus.
Everybody wins.
A very seropie ending totally like I was in shock.
I'm like, they're not really doing this.
How can this possibly be?
And the timeline is all fucked up.
All mixed up too because the dead brother.
Yeah.
It seems like he had never died.
Right.
Right.
Yeah.
So then he gets on the phone with his friend and he's like, he can fight it in his friend
that his brother died.
Yeah.
So he's in a friend and goes, Hey, listen, I got your girlfriend to talk to you again.
He goes, how do you say he goes?
Oh, I played on her sympathy about your dead brother.
Yeah.
So in the friends world, there is a dead brother.
Yeah.
And now he's in trouble.
Like, oh, yeah.
And that's like, that's like the, that's like the 80s sitcom end of the movie is like,
go, oh my god.
I get out of this one.
Yeah.
Brother.
But yeah, you're right.
Because like, they, they moved to the town that they're living in in the movie because
the brother had died, right?
Right.
So after the brother comes back to life, the father is on the phone with somebody from their
old town and they're like, Hey, why do we ever move from that town anyway?
I don't know.
Oh, the kid who gets that.
Oh, yeah.
I beat me.
So the timelines are all fucked up.
They're all screwy.
Yeah.
So the parents, they, as far as their concern and the brother reincarnated brother, obviously,
as far as their concern, the kid never died.
But as far as the best friend is concerned, he had died.
So how are we going to explain?
I guess the best friend knows that the devil's been helping the kid after all.
So he said, maybe that, but well, the devil did it.
But if he never died, if it, like, as he just, as a devil, just tricking this family into
thinking the brother is the kid and his friend, the only ones who know that the, that the
brother was dead and reincarnated.
Who knows?
Who can say fucking terrible, it's so stupid.
It's such a stupid ridiculous ending.
Like, I, I don't know if it was like, were they on a deadline?
I like, we got to end this movie.
We got to start shooting in two hours.
We need an ending right now.
And they're like, well, this is the best we could come up with.
The good, what?
All right, shooting.
Just do it.
I don't care.
I can't, it's so stupid.
I can't believe it.
Can't I believe it?
This, I, so preposterous the way this movie ends.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There's, there's, uh, uh, post Malone is in this movie.
Post Malone is in it.
Quite a bit for an extended period of time.
Yeah, he's like, he's like the second act.
Yeah.
Like, apparently the girl that the kid has a crush on it loves post Malone.
So the devil, Jack Black devil gets them tickets to see post Malone and then hypnotizes
post Malone to thinking that somehow this kid is the, this kid is the inspiration for
his move for all of his music.
Yeah.
Like, how long has post Malone been popular for this kid is 10 years old?
It's like post Malone gets up on stage like, I got to bring up on stage, the person who's
responsible for my, my inspiration for all of my music.
This 10 year old boy and everyone is, oh, 10 year old, this kid rules.
He's the best.
What the fuck?
And there's a big, very dancing up on stage and just real awkwardly, Dan.
It's really, really silly, really like totally ridiculous.
I, yeah.
There's also a, you can't be a fairly brother's movie unless somebody shits their
pants.
Oh my God.
There's a, yeah.
So there's an asshole teacher and he, his, his stick is that he, his shits on everything.
He's talking about, they're, they're talking about a Christmas Carol one point.
I'm like, well, this is the worst, this is one of the worst books ever written and then
this book sucks and this, and that's his whole deal.
So then, yeah, let's give this guy his come up and he's talking to the kid and the Jack
Black devil is standing right there and the Jack Black decides he's gonna give this guy
diarrhea.
So the guy just goes through the various stages of looking like he's going to shit himself
and then like, yeah, it's, uh, that's fairly brother's movie that just, just, just base, just
can't do awful fucking literally shit humor.
Yeah, it's, uh, yeah, that, that is a very long scene and is, I, I, yeah, you're right.
I was thinking Farley's gonna Farley on this one.
It's just the way that they're gonna do it.
They just, they have to do it.
They have to do it.
Yeah, everything they do.
Yeah, yeah, um, yeah, it's, uh, yeah, this movie, mm, mm, mm, any redeeming qualities.
Like I said, I think this movie's heart is in the right place.
That is what I find redeeming about it.
So like the tone of the movie.
Yeah, I don't, I, I don't, I think it's a badly acted, written and directed movie, but
at least it's not morally reprehensible.
Yeah.
That's what that's, that's, that's the, that's my takeaway.
That is something redeemable.
Yeah, I think if I had not seen this movie shortly after having seen Red one, I might have
hated it more, but having seen Red one and then watching this movie within a week, I
was, I was, my thought was, you know, it's not that bad.
It could have been a lot worse.
That's, uh, that's where I was.
I was kind of there too.
Yeah.
I was kind of there too.
It had all the hallmarks of shitty, fairly brothers, but they just weren't as intense.
Yeah.
So that's how I was for it.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's basically, that's basically all I got to say about deer Santa.
All right.
So let's make it official.
Yeah.
Ken is deer Santa, a past pirate or pay?
deer Santa is a pass from me.
Yeah.
It's a pass for me too.
Yeah.
Uh, we are both also like old childless men.
That's true.
This might be like a good thing for families to watch.
Yeah.
That's what I'm thinking as well.
I feel like if I were eight years old and watching this movie, what's your mom and dad
might have liked it on Netflix.
Yeah.
I might have been like, yeah, this movie is pretty funny.
And I'm sure my parents would have liked this is whatever, but at least it's fine.
My nieces and nephews are at age right now where farts are super funny.
Yeah.
Right.
So 20.
I'm at an age right now where farts are super funny.
Oh, man.
But they are at the age where it's like appropriate to be funny.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, uh, yeah.
This week, uh, I ran the gamut.
We got a, we got to pass a pirate and a pay out of me this week because I think it's the
first time we've done that.
Yes.
So we are going to take next week off.
Yeah.
Next week is Christmas week.
Yeah.
So we don't know what we're going to do for the shows after that.
We're probably going to do some kind of wrap up for the year though.
Yeah.
It sounds pretty good.
It sounds pretty good.
Yeah, but it's tentative.
I'm not sure.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We might want to wait on that because there's still a lot of like, uh, Oscar.
We call stuff.
Yeah.
It doesn't, it gets released on Christmas day in LA, but it doesn't come out in the rest of
the country until like mid January.
Until mid January.
So we may want to hold off on that stuff.
Okay.
I don't know.
We'll figure it out.
Okay.
That's fine.
And there's a lot of stuff.
The villain movies come out on Christmas.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Awesome.
Merry Christmas everybody.
Merry Christmas everybody.
We'll see you next time.
Thank you for listening and we hope to have a wonderful new year ahead of us.
That's right.
Peace and love.
Thanks for tuning in to Past Pirate Pay.
This episode was produced by the one and only Andy Morris.
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