The Worst Idea Of All Time - REVIEW: Deck The Halls

Episode Date: April 9, 2020

This was originally a pay-walled episode available only to Patreon supporters. Please consider if you can #PayTheBoiz at patreon.com/join/TWIOAT.Matthew Broderick and Danny DeVito are engaged in a suburban pissing match, the likes of which Massachusetts has never seen before. Some dickhead (Broderick) is gearing up for a a family-focused tradition Christmas when another dickhead (DeVito) moves next door and makes it his mission for his house to be visible from space.Here's some other people who are in this movie: Kristin Davis, Kristin Chenoweth, Alia Shawkat, Fred Armisen, Jorge Garcia. Outrageous. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the peaceful town of Cloverdale, Dr. Steven Finch was Mr. Christmas. This is a busy time of year, so we have to have a game plan. All must-sing caroling requests to be submitted in writing. Until the competition moved in. Who moves in the middle of the night? I'm Buddy Hall. We just moved in across the street. These are my babies. Can I live here?

Daddy, come look. you can see every house in the country from space where's our house you can't see our house hello patreon pals and welcome to the worst idea of all time patreon pal treehouse christmas season um edition one that's what we're calling this monty it's a catchy name unmissable it's really going to take off i think the kids are all about it hey happy thanksgiving is what i would say if we were recording on thanksgiving which we are happy thanksgiving guy uh yeah and happy thanksgiving to you too tim uh on On this day, I am thankful for you and our friendship. I'm thankful for that too. We have not been chatting very much at all recently,

and it's made me oh so sad. I've missed your baritone and your words of wisdom and your kindness, and I can't wait to get you back in my country, which I own, New Zealand. That's right. Aotearoa. I understand that there have been some huge, legitimate changes since I left, and you now rule the land with an iron fist. That's right.

That's why you're coming back, because I have used all of the military and diplomatic powers at my disposal to reach my giant international hand, plucking you from New York City in your apartment and bringing you back here like some sort of friendship extradition. Well, it's a very exciting time and I imagine very scary for those. Very scary. They're not happy about it. I've got a glint in my eye and now i am empowered beyond my wildest

dreams it truly is a christmas miracle you hate to hear about it um speaking of christmas miracles i uh as always was not really involved in the decision making process not even the vetting of the films that would be up for display or screening and I had a pretty big night last night Tim I met with our friend Colin Burgess

beautiful comedian filmmaker all around good guy and we had now if you'll recall when you visited new york for the worst idea tour earlier this year we bought well you actually were in the middle of reading how to change your mind and were very invested in um soliciting and uh inhaling some psychedelics and you bought a bag of mushrooms of which we both ate one each and they were as strong a mushroom as i can remember having um and anyway since i've come back there's

still a bag just chock-a-block full of these things in the freezer at home so colin and i uh had a little dinner uh we added a little garnish. And we had a hell of a night laughing and, you know, solving all the ills of the world that rolled deep into this morning. We were up until 4, 4.30 a.m. I was showing him the YouTube comedy stylings of that guy or Lee Hart, New Zealand's greatest export all of this to say that um i fell asleep and did not wake up until the last fucking moment and i had no i done no research on the film so what a delight it was to hit play on uh deck the halls the 2006 holiday film led by uh danny devito and matthew broderick yes and he's there's

a lot of cars in this movie there's a lot of matthew broderick driving in cars hey before we get into that though um i too sort of got into the holiday season by going to my wife's christmas uh work do and then uh coming home at about 11.30pm, a few sheets to the wind, and putting half of this movie in front of my face, falling asleep in a drunken stupor, and then having to rouse myself at 6.30 anti-meridian to finish off this little 92-minute Christmas gem.

So, you hate to hear it, but I did it. I'm a hard worker i'm dedicated to the cause and um just a heads up i can't even remember if this got votes on patreon but i kind of just got this um blast of inspiration that we should because we've been a little tardy in getting our our content out there on patreon that is a sort of, by way of apology, I've suggested we do four shitty Christmas movies in a row for the month of sort of late November going into Christmas.

So that's what we'll be doing. And this was our first one. Deck the Halls, as Guy mentioned, Danny DeVito, Matthew Broderick, the twin Christens. What did you say? Sorry, The Twin Christens The Twin Christens

Yes, Davis and Chenoweth Oh, I see, yeah, yeah This is like, even just absorbing the cast of this movie the people who have been roped in the roles they've been given and the decisions they've made within those roles like to see matthew broderick married to i know that it's kristin davis performing as a a character called callie finch but essentially married to

charlotte like kristin davis to my eyes has one gear and one gear only and that is charlotte like kristen davis to my eyes has one gear and one gear only and that is charlotte and i i'm on the record as getting pretty frustrated by charlotte although i found uh i found her to be a pretty sort of a pretty strong anchor in this movie i felt like she was probably the the reality to which the rest of these satellites could revolve around. I think that's true, but she also was just Charlotte again, hey? Like it was the exact same character. A hundred percent. And yeah, so to see her married to Sarah Jessica Parker's husband,

Matthew Broderick, who was let loose on three different types of, or three different vehicles, two different types of vehicle. Are you counting the skates, the ice skates? Oh, no, I'm not counting the ice skates. As far as I know, he doesn't have a sort of a Tarnas track record of... We're not going to drill into that yet. But while we're talking about kristen davis being married to matthew broderick guy um can i read you a little piece of trivia from imdb i wish you would

on a 22nd of november 2006 interview on abc's live with callie kristen davis confessed that she had been nervous being cast as the wife of Matthew Broderick the real life husband of close friend Sarah Jessica Parker She said she received approval via email from Parker However, not before a rewrite of the script added what Davis termed a playful kissing scene between her and Broderick Apparently, according to Davis, in her opinion the scene as filmed was too steamy

for the movie to keep a PG rating and would have been cut from the final print. Oh my God. Yeah. So, SJP got wind of some sort of on-camera tomfoolery between her husband and her frenemy and trying to

pass the the sort of tenses in this bit of imdb trivia i think sjp approved them being married on which firstly everyone in this situation is an actor and an adult and it seems insane to me that you would have to seek the written permission of someone to be in a movie with someone else yeah but it doesn't like the kissing scene came after that it doesn't reek of security and uh you know good humor and connection does it no yeah um which surprises me because i kind of i wouldn't have um assumed that sjp was that you know crazy insecure childish i know and this is very reductive and sort of uh you know quite a ludicrous view of the world but just in terms of perception at this just tracking their careers at this point

to me it feels like broderick's the one who's done well for himself he's hanging on to that relationship for dear life you know absolutely he doesn't want to he doesn't want to jeopardize that um so to my eyes i'm like sjp's got nothing to worry about can you imagine matthew broderick sending written permission to whoever is playing sir Jessica Parker's on-screen husband? To big. To Chris Knopf. Hearing that he's reprising the role for Sex and the City 2 and saying, hey, Chris, permission granted again. See, it doesn't hold any water, this logic, which does make me question the story a little bit,

but it's very funny. But the fact that they've got a specific date on ABC's Live With Kelly suggests to me that this is a real verifiable fact. It just seems insane. I've got another fact for you later on in this podcast, Guy, that is going to blow your fucking socks off, so I just want you to get prepared for that.

Okay, I'm very excited. Yeah. So basically Deck the Halls is the Two Bad Neighbors episode of The Simpsons where the Bush family move in next door to The Simpsons, played out over 90 minutes and set at Christmas. Yeah. With a confusing array of stars who are all like i am not a matthew broderick fan of anything post ferris bueller and this is no exception but everyone else in this is

like a good and funny and talented actor um alia uh shortcut how do you say shortcut who is maybe from arrested development is um the daughter in this and uh what a delight to see her really underutilized but then everyone was she's not giving a lot to do danny devito is such as i don't know what the meaning of the word is actually so i probably shouldn't use it scouse scouse as in like the meaning of the word is actually, so I probably shouldn't use it. Scouse? Scouse? As in like the kind of British person? Is that what it is? A scouser?

What's a scouser? I think it's someone from like, I don't know if it's Manchester or what. Oh, it's Liverpool. Well, he's not a scouse. He's not from Liverpool, England. But he's a scamp, I think is what I'm going for. Scamp. He really does get typecast quite a lot and it's a role that he thrives in even in like a pretty uh you know low-end christmas movie he is honestly always

so much fun to see on screen and like totally he just plays these you know these eccentric little screwballs who've got a pretty lenient moral compass. And so, yeah, Matthew Broderick's this uppity optometrist who's trying to instill good Christmas Christian family values in his family, trying to have a very down-the-line Christmas. And then this oddball neighbor, Danny DeVito, moves in with his wife, played by Kristenisten uh chenoweth and they're um i don't think i'm out of line and saying they're sexy twin daughters like the movie

puts a lot of emphasis on the idea that these daughters are very sexy absolutely yeah and sort of uh competitive hijinks and one-upmanship What's the word I'm looking for? Follow. Ensue. That's exactly the word. The entire plot of this centers around the fact that Danny DeVito's character becomes obsessed with the idea of making his house visible from space

through the magic of Christmas lights and putting on a lights display much to the chagrin of Matthew Broderick's character who has to suffer through this light pollution as his neighbor. And that's, that's honestly the film. That is what it's all about. And there's these several like big set, there's about six big set pieces.

It's like an attempt at doing a diehard movie, but just without the budget or talent or without it being an action movie. It's, it's really, um, it was quite a strange film. One of the strangest things is when I, the first thing that struck me when I Googled it is the ratings for this film

are all over the map. Like it's got a 6% on rotten tomatoes, but it's got a five out of ten on imdb but then 84 of users on google liked the film oh so it can i can i say like the rotten tomatoes reviews because i did sort of i skim read uh what you know the critical consensus was i think i went on the wikipedia and checked out what people were saying and i feel like even though obviously bad movies had been made by 2006 it almost seems naive or short-sighted the vitriol people tried to pour in this movie in 2006 i feel like they should have saved for movies that were still to be released because i look back or at least through

the lens of the bad movies i've had to sit through, I thought it was pretty harmless fun. Yeah, man, I'm with you. I'm going to read a review, if I may, from Ebert's Offsider. How do you say his name? Is it Roper? Roper, yeah, Richard Roper, I think. Yeah, but you're absolutely right, i mean obviously timbo and guy guy's

lens for film critique is a little bit skewed from the norm but i really don't think this deserved the hate that it got even though it was a bad movie however this review is sensationally well written so here's roper's uh thoughts on the matter you cannot believe how excruciatingly awful this movie is it is bad in a way that will cause unfortunate viewers to huddle in the lobby afterward hugging in small groups consoling one another with the knowledge that it's over it's over thank god it's over compared to the honest hard labor performed by tens of millions of Americans every day, a film critic's job is like winning a lottery ticket. But there is work involved,

and it can be painful. And the next time someone tells me I have the best job in the world, I'm going to grab them by the ear, fourth grade teacher in 1966 style, and drag them to see deck the halls yeah i i enjoy anyone you know with articulate scorn being poured on something but i like it's the movie's fine there's not a lot at stake like no like you, Danny DeVito becomes obsessed with it. It's called We Earth or something.

It's Google Maps. So it's in 2006. His sexy daughter has introduced him to Google Maps. He wants to look at his house. He can't. Matthew Broderick's house is on the map. It seems to me the technology is insane that this one place wouldn't be. If they've got satellites everywhere, it's not like you know beneath trees at the end of a long driveway he's it doesn't make any logical sense because

why is matthew broderick's house visible but then the solve is i'm going to put light because obviously what that's suggesting is the satellite imagery is like old you know how they have to do a pass every whatever six months to update the photos. Why would chucking lights on your house speed that? Like he's mixed two ideas in this movie. And by he, I'm talking about the guy who wrote and directed it, whose name is unknown to me at this time. No, there were three writers,

Matt Corman, Chris Ord, and Don Reimer, which I remember even before the movie started, I remember when I was watching you know the opening scene and credits and it said written by and had three names and they maybe had already made one joke that I thought was bad I was like you think if there's three of you in the room one of you would push you to do a little better or I mean if they're smart um it's a 92 minute film everyone's got to write 30 pages each yeah and everyone gets a third

of a check I mean they yeah it it feels like maybe they took a big set like two set pieces each and then maybe brainstormed the connective tissue between them I think you could be right well um I'll tell you who I liked and that's Christian Chenoweth maybe brainstormed the connective tissue between them. I think you could be right.

I'll tell you who I liked, and that's Christian Chenoweth. And I've always got, I will always have a soft spot for Christian Chenoweth. Was she best known for performing in? I think Frozen. I think she's the, I've never, have you seen Frozen? Because you've actually got some face time with an age-appropriate audience member for that,

but I don't have any children in my life. I've not seen Frozen. I'm on her IMDb now, and she's not in Frozen. Is it Frozen? Oh, shit. Okay, so I'm thinking of Idina Menzel because Christian Chenoweth is the original Broadway cast

in Wicked of glenda the good that was kind of her big breakout role she was a famous actor and broadway star before that but that really launched her into the stratosphere and to in more current and animated uh terms she's the voice of vanessa gecko on bojack horseman oh yes yes yeah um she's fantastic she's such a ball of light and if you ever like need to cheer yourself up just look up some interviews of her uh on chat shows and stuff she i've got a weird memory that she's about 50 of the time she seems like half cut and she's just always really happy to be there very engaging and chatty and she just like this script is pretty dog shit and i think everyone bar matthew broderick does a fabulous

job of just just digging in they're like well we're here let's make it work and tell me what you thought about matthew broderick's performance um wooden it was as if you gave him control of a car and he like accidentally created some sort of horrific accident that vastly impacted other people's lives and it wasn't necessarily his fault but it was from some sort of careless act of not being good enough at acting or driving in this analogy it's funny that he caused it's funny you should draw that metaphor tim because on august 5 1987 we we will we will talk we'll talk about that later we won't talk about it now but it was weird seeing uh kristin davis in there like as charlotte but out of the city universe because i don't think i've ever seen anything that she's in that isn't Sex and the City. So analogous was her performance as Kelly Finch,

Matthew Broderick's wife, with who she is as Charlotte. You could almost entertain the idea that when Charlotte is not with Runkle and the gals, she might be leading a double life in Massachusetts. I like this. You know, like she, I don't know if she's from new york but she could come from a small town in massachusetts and she's leading a double life she wants to enjoy you know the the cynicism and the high-end bougie lifestyle of uh being an art gallerist in new york city you know a bachelorette amongst three great bachelorettes,

while also enjoying the homely comforts of a large suburban home and a button-down husband. How dare you call Matthew Broderick homely? He is a boyishly handsome man. He's homely. It almost makes you... His character's pretty unlikable on this, even though he's meant to be this straight man

who we all root for, and Danny DeVito's meant to be this sort of screw... I guess lovable screwball. They're both meant to be somewhat likable. Was that your read on it? He's just so unlikable. I know. I'm sorry, but Matthew Broderick is so uncharismatic on film.

It's insane. Yeah, it was crazy. And watching it, I was like, it's almost like you want to see him play a villain like yes you want to see him get cast in a role where it's like he can dine out on that you know that uh faux affability or whatever that faux everyman quality and then like i would love to see him play some sort of full-blown sociopath in a a high-end oscar bait style film because i think he's got an incredible performance as a genuine bad guy inside of him it was like when they did

paddington 2 and everyone is used to seeing hugh grant as this sort of object of um foppish affection and all these british rom-coms and then they fucking gave him this really cool amazingly well-written kids movie and they were like you're the baddie and he just fucking went to town on it and you ask anyone himself included that was hugh grant's greatest ever role in cinema yeah the bad guy in paddington 2 i reckon matthew broderick has one of those but someone needs to give him the role I think I think um because that that that that crook still had the charisma like Hugh Grant exudes charisma in a way that Broderick doesn't I would rather see him in like a Robin Williams one hour photo style role like oh genuinely uh somewhat on the more harrowing end of villains. What if they do Joker 2 and it's Matthew Broderick?

Yeah, but no, because the Joker's sort of, you know, this outsider, this kind of freak. Like, I want to see him terrifying from the inside out. Like, I want to see him living his fucking button-down optometrist life. And instead of everyone sort of believing or abiding the idea that he's a good guy while he goes through the motions of being quite a domineering patriarch in his family i want to see you know his behavior tear the family apart not have the family put back together like i just think that there's a performance in him here that we're not we're

not getting in this movie this is a different movie but we're not getting out of his you know the later stages of his career that i'd really like to see yeah i i uh yeah you're definitely right and i hope he finds it it's so insane to me and this is not the first time i've said this on on this podcast series but it is crazy to me that breath matthew broderick just knocked it out of the park so early in his career and was never able to recapture that lightning in a bottle that he achieved in ferris bueller because he is so charismatic in that movie and i think he made it when he was about like 17 or something he was the star of that um and he just has never gotten back there i did it's i mean i don't know if something changed in his life i don't know if there was sort of some weird event that brought a lot of darkness into his psyche or what but it was it's like

something has sort of changed it is crazy you say that because ferris bueller came out in 1986 and then on august 5 1987 oh i know what you're going to say and we will get to that later but can i read you the thing that i promised I was going to tell you before that's going to blow your socks off? Yeah. So let me go back to the cast list and figure out who this is. Okay, do you know who Goethe was? Gillian Vigman?

I think she was the wife of Fred Armisen, who, by the way, is in this movie. Yeah, yeah. Playing a very sort of... What's the... Cliché German... Yeah. Or, playing a very sort of, what's the cliche, German. Yeah. Good paycheck job for him. Turn up, maybe two days shooting, say a couple funny lines in a foreign accent.

But yeah, I assumed because I recognized him that they usually cast comedic actors in pairs, but I did not recognize Goethe, whoever the actor was who was playing Goethe. So this is Gillian Vigman, who I'll have to apologise for not knowing who she is, but here is some trivia according to the Deck the Halls 2006 IMDb page. According to Gillian Vigman, the main actors were unhappy on set. Kristen Chenoweth was still coping with her split from aaron sorkin danny devito flew in to film his scenes rather than interact with anyone and matthew broderick could be found on set shaking his head in disbelief repeatedly saying

i've hit rock bottom what no what i shit thee nay that is what it says there's one more line in this bit of trivia kristin davis told her that she should have her eggs frozen i don't know why that's in that bit of trivia but to just the mental picture that is created from this one nugget this one paragraph of imdb trivia is it's like a scene from apocalypse now where the camera is panning and i'm just like i'm seeing christian chen with poor thing sobbing in the corner just thinking about this this marriage that hasn't worked out for her danny devito meanwhile is flying in in a helicopter you know warzone style so he doesn't have to fucking make eye contact with any of these off-siders involved in this fucking disaster of the film which did not make its money

back by the way and meanwhile matthew broderick just absolutely shell-shocked like some sort of soldier who has seen the most immoral acts man can create shaking his head saying out loud i've hit rock bottom like yeah that dude was in rat race he's done some shit for him to say i've hit rock bottom he wasn't in rat race he rat race wasn't he no no no and rat race was all right do you know you if to guess what am i thinking of you might be thinking of brick and mayor nah i've not seen that i'm thinking of some movie where there's cars and they're like on a race and all the cars are shitty they're like little v-dub wacky races is there a live action wacky races because there should be not sure but there should be

do you reckon he could be good as um what's his name with the mustache dick dastardly no yeah no like you want that's again you'd want to get you want to dig up hugh grant for that like you're so right um so right but who's mutley uh i don't know the dog from beethoven i think he's dead bro well i just want to say didn't go human though uh that broderick i'm because I am sort of becoming obsessed, because I do totally agree with you saying that, you know, he did hit it out of the park so hard with Ferris Bueller, and then...

There were still a few highs, and this is just... War games. Ones that I know of, yeah, war games. He was also the voice of Simba, adult Simba in The Lion King. Of course, I forgot. He was in Election,

which is a really great movie. Yeah, that's a great film. As Jim. And then he was in... Inspector Gadget is famously one of the worst movies. But he was also... I actually enjoyed him in The Producers.

Oh, yeah. He's really good in that. Yeah. So he's still got the occasional good performance in him isn't it crazy that you know you're an actor like it's it's crazy when i mean you say yes to work and not everything's going to be a hit but it just doesn't seem like he has the control of whether or not he turns in a good performance or not oh he's got terrible management as well like you know you

have named a couple of good films in the mix there but he's done so many clunkers he's good in the producers because he's such a schlub he's just like totally playing into oh i feel mean saying this but there's just a real lack of charisma for that guy on screen and as long as we can put him in roles where that's the character it's all good but when we're supposed to be rooting for him as a family man hero it just doesn't work yeah i i you know he he underwent training from a real life speed skater for a few months before shooting the scene in which steve and buddy are in a speed skating race i'll get off the imdb now why no one would notice or care dude i know it's i guess like full body suit too which is classic move if you're gonna get a stunt double that illuminates that um anecdote that uh jillian vigman was saying where it's like you can imagine him

say either before or after shooting the ice skating scene witnessing the chaos around him of danny devito leaving set that day on his chopper and kristen davis constantly taking jillian away to tell her she should freeze her eggs you can imagine just being like i did three months of professional ice skating like i can't believe it because it's not just three months it's like this training. I can't believe it. It's not just three months. It's like this is a year of my life and career, and I invested in it this much that I went through ice skating training.

There is a sadness. There's a sadness about how bad this movie is and how poorly it performed as well. I haven't got it in front of me, but I did look up the budget, and it got about 95% of the way there to making it back at the box office yeah look yeah i yeah i mean could you did i was in a pretty guy sorry yeah you go i was i was just gonna say like what you know for all the shit we're hanging on it i did um i guess i was in a pretty prone state of mind and like you know i had to i had to watch something and it i guess you know the knowledge

that i was going to get to talk to you maybe soften my response to it because it's like well it's you know it's a passageway to conversation with tim but i didn't hate the experience like i know it's a bad movie but it's 90 minutes there's good people in it it's yeah there's good people in it and because i didn't know who was going to show up you know you're getting a few pleasant surprises like fucking uh cal pin yeah he's not even in the credits but he's like in the movie a bit he shows up out of nowhere you're just watching the movie and then it's like uh he works for google earth or whatever the a bit he shows up out of nowhere you're just watching the movie and then it's like uh he works for google earth or whatever the company is he shows up doing a british accent

twice on like a link and it's like oh you know stuff like that it's it does make it fun because these movies are cultural oddities yes and um it's kind of the beauty of how much money is involved with Hollywood that even these incredibly mediocre Christmas films, which are just cynical cash grabs to get people to, I don't know, get to the cinema with their shitty kids at the Cineplex to shut them up for two hours. You still, by virtue of having that much money involved, draw in comedic talent like Fred Armisen, just popping up, and you're like, oh, hey, buddy. Yeah. You're here. I know.

Cool. I wonder where, and also that guy from Lost. Yeah. What was his fucking name? There was an album named after him. Jorge Garcia? Is that his name?

Is that who it is? No, no, no. The album name is the character's name. This is going to piss off a lot of listeners because they're going to know exactly who this dude is. They're going to be screaming. I'm just looking at what Fred Armisen was doing in 2006. This?

I know, but before that, he was in Tenacious D's movie. He was in Juice Bigalow, European Gigolo. He was in tenacious d's movie he was in juice bigelow european gigolo he was in euro trip he was an anchor man he's sort of just cobbling together a career at this point so this makes a lot of sense cobbling together i'd say that's a that's a pretty good little era of um of of flex it's not bad. I actually, I actually, even saying that he was in Euro Trip, I immediately remembered his character in Euro Trip, who is this Italian guy who goes,

miscusee, or something. He gets really close, and then he says miscusee. Classic stuff. Yeah, catchphrase comedy. It really got me.

Hey, can I, can I ask you a question though? Yeah though yeah yeah off the top of your head can you try and name like the big set pieces in this film i'm trying to go through and catalog them myself uh well the the one that really jumped out at me and it might have been the first big set pieces when danny devito's character as he's of, he's not just putting lights on so the house will be recognized from space. He's also sort of trying to stir up the pot a bit with Matthew Broderick, his neighbor.

And he goes to a hardware store. He buys all of their lights. And then through the back room, he sees a sleigh. And the salesman shows him the sleigh. And it's like a very big sort of replica scale Santa sleigh that you could imagine being towed by eight or twelve reindeer or whatever and he takes it he puts it in front of his house

and then uh everyone in the neighborhood's like amazed by it and they're looking at it and he's he's gaffer taped some uh reindeer antlers onto some horses faces that was a good gag actually yeah that's pretty funny and also he's found the horses on the fringes of town which is also pretty funny and Matthew Broderick's annoyed because his family's going to look at it when he wants to take the family Christmas photo and then they all wander out there

and then Danny DeVito's it's either him or Kristen his wife, I can't remember her surname right now Kristen Chenoweth is like oh you should do the photo on the sleigh and they're like nah I'd rather not and then Matthew Broderick's son climbs up his wife, I can't remember her surname right now, Kristen Chenoweth, is like, oh, you should do the photo on the sleigh. And they're like, nah, I'd rather not. And then Matthew Broderick's son climbs up and Matthew Broderick starts,

and immediately you can see where it's going. He goes, hey, get down from there. And he sort of goes to help his son down and winds up in this out-of-control sleigh riding through the town centre, towed by two horses and some very, verygy cgi at the end sees him doing a series of spins on some thin ice on a lake yeah before he sinks out right but that

was the first big set piece i remember but i i think that one jumped out because he was out of control in uh like in a town i guess or like around a lot of people yeah and uh i was like whoa this seems like a bold piece of decision because i don't know if you know this tim but on august 5 1987 in a situation where there weren't horses towing a sleigh he was in a car um and matthew broderick was and he was driving it. Do you know about this? No. In Ireland.

What happened? Well, he was driving... Do you know what my favourite one was? And it's just like, it's such a testament to the fact that sometimes you can't get away from basic physical comedy. The town has this little christmas show they put on every year it's a little festival and um there's sort of carnival games that are going

on and one of them is the classic you know like grab a ball and knock over the the dolls to um or the clowns or whatever to get some prizes and usually that shit's rigged as hell because carnies don't want you to win anything because this is how they make a living god bless him but with this one it's like the rules seem very loose and uh so danny devito first gets up and he he knocks one of them over no troubles and because they're kind of engaged in this neighbor versus neighbor pissing match matthew broderick has to step up be the big macho man and knock one over too and he just rolls up a snowball which all right sweet with fresh snow from the ground and then fucking blazes it speedball uh puts a lot of stank on that wind up and throws it and ends up completely decimating this old woman um who's walking by because the power is good but the accuracy is not yeah she's a recurring character she's our

introduction to matthew broderick she's a woman with bad eyes so he helps it's really weird that matthew broderick accidentally fully takes out someone and i like honestly it looks like she could have died um by dint of his actions which is very weird another one is um the big firework scene so matthew broderick gets so annoyed at the light and noise pollution coming from danny devito's house that um he buys a bunch of illegal fireworks and just starts fucking firing them off his roof at the other guy's house which is just like all right sweet there's definitely going to be a fire like you know You see it from the moment he buys the fireworks. It's like, cool, I guess we're going to watch a house burn down

in this heartwarming Christmas movie. But the twist is, it's Matthew Broderick's house that catches fire, which is probably as it should be. And then an enjoyable twist on top of the twist is that the next morning Danny DeVito returns and he wasn't even in the house. Yes, that's right. Because his wife has left even in the house. Yes, that's right. Because his wife has left him with the kids and he was throwing rocks at the window of the motel they were sleeping in.

Both of these men, Broderick and DeVito, both of their wives leave them with the children. And that's sort of what winds up uniting them i guess they have to put their differences aside and work as a unit to try and win back their partners because they're while the the men don't get along typical bloody men you know these alpha males but the the woman immediately finds so much to bond over and it's uh it's really inspiring it's a real testament to the power of female friendship yep it certainly is. Another bit, I don't know if you'd describe this as a set piece,

but this bit, I mean, we can't get through this podcast and end it without talking about this scene. So the men have been instructed by their wives to try and bury the hatchet and get together and find some common ground for God's sake. And we're at the festival. We're at the carnival type thing. And there's a Christmas show that gets put on each year,

and that's cool. And, oh, my God, these guys, they just don't have anything in common, which is a line that Danny DeVito has to say out loud just to smash you over the head with a novelty-sized candy kind of plot. And so what is going to unite them some hotties of course so there are some scantily dressed young women who have dressed up like santa's little helpers um

to seductively dance for the men and what ensues is even by 2006 standards i'm gonna say fucking disgusting these two 45 year old married with kids men wolf whistling cat calling screaming at the top of his very uncharismatic lungs who's your daddy to these young women who are dancing on stage and then get this everyone because this is a funny punch line it turns out it is the two men's daughters. And when they turn around, they are disgusted and run into a church and splash their eyes with holy water to atone for their terrible Oedipal sins. Yeah, it is a real low point. And you can see the slow build.

And like Matthew Broderick's uh character presumably that we are supposed to like you can see him building up the nerve and you know it's meant to be a bit of fun he's letting loose and they're finding something to bond over which is being lecherous creeps but you can see him building up to who's your daddy and it's just like i mean it's a very um they sort of you know they telegraphed the gag You can see it coming a mile away. And it is a very uncomfortable and disgusting watch. Like, the idea of Matthew Broderick as a sexual being in any respect, I think, is that's what it forces you to confront, is that Matthew Broderick is a man of this earth

with desires for flesh and blood. You know, if you cut him, does he not bleed? Jesus Christ. Everyone, now I sound like an incel. Everyone deserves sex. Everyone is allowed to have sexual desire, Matthew Broderick included. Well, look.

His last thing after his daughter, played by Aaliyah Shawkat, that is probably it. Yeah. Yeah, I think that. Let's put a button on this thing what a um enjoyable experience talking to you guy and honestly what a fucking reasonably painless 92 minutes um no thanks to matthew broderick but all the thanks in the world to kristen chenoweth and dannyVito, a powerful pair. Yeah. Thanks to all the supporting cast. I'm just going to quickly see if John Whitesell did anything else.

He was the director. Yeah. He's also known for Big Mama's House 2. A classic. Big Mama's, Like Father, Like Son. Thunderstruck, which is a movie with Kevin Durant,

the basketball player, where he loses his powers and gives them to a kid. And also he arrived on the scene with... Did that one win an Oscar? Absolutely not. And he arrived on the scene with a movie called Calendar Girl. Anyway, I enjoyed talking to you, Tim, and I actually thought that movie was all right.

I guess we're going to explore the holiday season through the medium of borderline films. And I don't know that we're going to be seeing a lot more of Matthew Broderick. I don't know how many Christmas films he made, but nice to see the guy. And yeah, you don't want to get on his wrong side. Who's that?

Matthew Broderick? Yeah. I hope he's not been listening. I mean, you know, it's fun to talk shit about people, but you don't always want them to hear about it. And also, on the morning of August 5, 1987, while driving a Mercedes. Oh, hey, I've got to go.

But awesome to talk to you guys. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you for supporting us on Patreon. Patreon.com slash T-W-I-O-A-T. I think I got those right. $5 gets you in the club to hear the content. $10 gets you in the Deciders Club to navigate the ocean on which we rock. You guys are the

best. We love you. You are the wind beneath our wings that honestly allows us to keep going so thanks very much and we will catch you in the next what i call this patreon pal treehouse christmas special series second edition where are my clothes i had to get your body temperature up so i zipped this into the sleeping bag trust Trust me, it works.