The Christmas Half Watch

We've all done it. You settle down to watch a film and before you know it, you're snoring away in the corner like a grizzly bear with a serious cold. Or, you flick on a film over the holiday season just as a relative marches in to demand you play the traditional game of Scrabble or some other assorted board-based torture method. They're known as the Christmas Half Watches - the films you caught a glimpse of, possibly never to see again, before shuffling off to find some more Christmas cake. Here are our seasonal confessions and incomplete opinions from this Holiday period.

The Illusionist

Not the animated one from this year but the 2006 Edward Norton vehicle that kind of got forgotten due to the fact that it was released around the same time as the distantly similar The Prestige. I actually watched most of this and the film didn't hold up to my original viewing. The accents are all over the place, the revelatory conclusion comes out of nowhere and there's so many sepia tones and soft focus shots that it rather feels like you're watching a celebration of the colour beige.

The March Of The Penguins

During the hour or so of this I caught, I lost count of how many times Morgan Freeman's silky tones had pointed out the dead penguin who 'wasn't quite so lucky', which rather made it less a celebration of the circle of life, more the apparent first entry in new genre 'penguin death porn'. More than that it wasn't cinematic and I've seen equally good camera work in BBC nature documentaries. Not completely uninspiring but certainly far less important than it thinks it is.

Happy Feet

In an interesting bit of counter-programming, Happy Feet was scheduled to follow The March Of The Penguins, presumably to pick those who hadn't all slit their wrists up to something approaching holiday cheeriness. It seemed, perhaps predictably, like a fluffy and completely dispensable floaty pile of nothing. There was some dancing, some singing, some more dancing and a bit more singing but very little of what could be called 'script' or 'plot'. One for the very young only perhaps?


Viggo Mortensen on a horse. For ages. Rather ruined by family members talking over it (and one in particular who kept on referring to the horse as 'Trigger') but there didn't seem a huge amount there to enjoy in the first place and the saccharine conclusion was unbearable. May have justified a full and proper watch based on the star alone but on this evidence I'll probably give it a wide berth.

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse

Less a half-caught watch, more a futile attempt at avoiding watching it for a second time. The opening scene bubbled with potential but was slowly ruined by the problems that have blighted the series since its inception; poor scripting and wooden acting. It all culminates in a group of weak final scenes, one of which appears to have been filmed in a winter wonderland made out of left over polystyrene.

Shrek The Third

Turned it on. Heard one awful pop culture joke. Turned it off again.


  1. Great post,but I enjoyed Hidalgo.

  2. In all fairness, it probably did enough to just about warrant a watch when it's next on but ends like that just grate with me - big feature of the 'man and animal bonding' sub-genre and HIDALGO does nothing to play against it.

  3. Oh, dear family members talking over 'Hidalgo.' Film Intel, no external elements like family were required to ruin a film like that one. The movie itself already took care of that job.

  4. Oh dear, not a fan then Edgar?

  5. I like Viggo Mortensen as an actor and liked the notion of a cowboy who didn't fit the stereotypes by demonstrating openness towards the First Nations and what not, but 'Hidalgo' felt like a paint by the numbers family friendly adventure film on par with 'The Mummy' which I also didn't enjoy.

  6. I like Mortensen as an actor too but what you've said pretty much fits what I thought of the bits that I saw. Based on what Ricky said here and what a few others have said in person I'm willing to give it a go but I must admit I have my doubts.