Candy Cane Lane (2023)

Eddie Murphy is front and center of Amazon's new Christmas film as Chris, a man who accidentally makes a deal with mischievous elf Pepper (a tremendously fun Jillian Bell) in the hopes of winning his street's annual contest to see which house can boast the finest Christmas decorations. Naturally, the stakes are upped this year when it's revealed that the prize will be a whopping $100,000, a tidy sum especially to a man who we see lose his job in one of the opening scenes. Chris's main competition will come from his neighbour across the street, who's a serial winner of this competition; and after finding a mysterious yet enormous and extravagant new Christmas store (that's empty apart from Pepper, apparently setting no alarm bells ringing for Chris or his daughter whatsoever) he stocks up on festive decorations, including a quite ludicrous '12 Days of Christmas' tree before signing the receipt, and ultimately his life away, unless certain rules are kept. The initial set-up of Candy Cane Lane has you sweating with fear over the similarities it shares with 2006's ghastly Deck the Halls, but fear not- the fact that Chris's goal isn't to put as many lights on his house as possible in order for it to be seen from space - means we're not in Films To Be Avoided territory. The problem is that it's also nowhere near good enough. There's clearly been money thrown at Candy Cane Lane and when it comes to the effects- especially those of the model figurines- it's money well spent, but throwing money at CGI doesn't guarantee you anything bar your film looking pretty good. Eddie Murphy deserves plaudits for still being a genuinely amusing screen presence , and when he and his family get together to save the day and their Dad/Husband it's sort of sweet, kind of, maybe. But there's enough sweetness in the title itself, and although this isn't the saccharine, romantic Christmas nonsense that we often get around this time of year, it's a shame that this doesn't end up being 2023's Jingle All the Way (1996) because that's the kind of thing that we miss these days. It's certainly on a level with Brian Levant's film in terms of insanity but fails to muster any under the radar satire or message that Jingle All the Way successfully did, and continues to nearly thirty years on, unbeknownst to many. In the end it's a film on paper that looked promising, but it's outstayed its welcome already by the time the ninety minute mark hits; and to then bang on for a further half hour is akin to wolfing down a third helping of Christmas dinner whilst greedily eyeing the Christmas pudding on the side- then throwing the lot up an hour later. 5.6/10