Episode 79 — Deck the Halls: LIVE!

[JulyDiaz 2797]

Finally, a movie where you don’t know who to root for. Recorded LIVE at Largo in Los Angeles, Andrea Savage joins Paul, June, & Jason to discuss Matthew Broderick & Danny DeVito in Deck the Halls! They’ll get into whether Danny DeVito plays a con man, the character journey of Kristin Davis & her cook book, the cross dressing sheriff, and the super sexual dance number during the town’s Christmas show. Plus, Andrea has some inside information from the set of the movie that explains so much. Happy New Year!

[brandenhaize 51]

For Corrections and Omissions: When DeVito's house is finally seen from space (at the end of the movie) he did nothing to make it brighter than it originally was during his big "live-DJ" show. So are we supposed to believe it was Christmas spirit that made the house visible? The lights weren't enough... we needed all the Whos in Whoville to come together and make magic happen.

[IMAHUGEHDTGMFAN 1837]

I Googled "Kristin Chenoweth"+"Deck The Halls" and found 3 .gif files... You are Welcome Jason!

 

P.S.: Happy New Year to the entire HDTGM family, to everybody who makes this Podcast possible and every single fan in this forum, facebook and twitter!!! I wish you all the best for 2014

 

 

 

[humanclay03 2]

The craziest thing about this movie for me is the fact that it wasn't made for TV on either Lifetime or The Hallmark Channel given who the actors are in it. I feel like this movie was originally written with Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn in mind who both wouldn't return anyone's phone calls so the producers just started cold calling anyone and everyone and Broderick and Devito were the only two to answer the phone.

[wo 265]

The craziest thing about this movie for me is the fact that it wasn't made for TV on either Lifetime or The Hallmark Channel given who the actors are in it. I feel like this movie was originally written with Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn in mind who both wouldn't return anyone's phone calls so the producers just started cold calling anyone and everyone and Broderick and Devito were the only two to answer the phone.

 

Thanks for playing "Want/Settle/Get"!

[mattman92ish 823]

What a great episode from the start i could tell it was going to be flawless i love the live eps! i know its sometimes in poor taste to joke about death but every time someone talks about a Matthew Broderick film i just casually blurt out "you know he killed someone" hahah usually followed by a long mutual silence

[Kickpuncher 5012]

It's a shame they just came out with a new t-shirt design, because I would love one with Matthew Broderick's face (or some other suitable graphic) and the words

 

THIS IS THE BOTTOM.*

*Allegedly

[seanotron 2307]

[SeveralCircles 426]

First C&F for a commercial read, possibly:

 

"Audible has over 150,000 audiobooks - thats like a book a day for a year."

 

What?

[insect_nation 1]

in that sleeping bag scene the broderick character's reaction is strangely homophobic. screaming at the thought of contact, non-sexual or otherwise, with another man is the punchline. weird. compounded with his inability to even stay in the same room as a cross-dresser leaves a real bad taste in my mouth.

[PlanBFromOuterSpace 3138]

Corrections/Omissions: I think the movie Paul was thinking about as being on DVD so quickly was "Surviving Christmas", which fell victim to the great Affleck backlash of '04 and actually ISN'T the worst movie ever made. I remember it coming out at my theater around Halloween, it was on DVD by Christmas, and then it was on HBO in July or so.

 

"Deck the Halls" was a Thanksgiving release and was gone two weeks later. Christmas movies are usually total bullshit cash-ins that mke way more money than they deserve, so if you produce a Christmas movie in that 4 or 5 week window and it's long gone before Christmas even hits, you have no business making movies, period.

[seanotron 2307]

in that sleeping bag scene the broderick character's reaction is strangely homophobic. screaming at the thought of contact, non-sexual or otherwise, with another man is the punchline. weird. compounded with his inability to even stay in the same room as a cross-dresser leaves a real bad taste in my mouth.

 

Yeah I'm pretty sure the punchline they were going for was 'Ewww gay', though to be fair if I woke up to find myself stripped naked and straddled by a naked stranger I think I'd freak the fuck out.

[nate d 32]

FUN FACT! Jason mentioned having a thing for the twins from "Double Trouble". One of them - Liz Sagal - was a member of The Cherry Bombs, the fictional band in Howard the Duck.

 

BORING FACT! The are also the younger sisters of Katey Sagal.

[cmac94 191]

Here's one thing that wasn't discussed: What was the point of Matthew Broderick's son having a mid life crisis? For about 10 minutes of the movie his punchline is that he's like 10 or 12 and going through a midlife crisis. This vanishes almost immediately.

[JacobCrites 4977]

Pretty awesome episode. The only thing is it felt like they steamrolled Andrea's behind the scenes stuff. It sounded like she had more tales of misery to relay.

[jeffdacock 64]

Paul recording the outro before the intro...WHAT IS HAPPENING?

[DeathToMikeyBay 130]

Oh god now I have to finish watching this movie in 5 minute chunks...

 

You know, there are some parts that would be halfway decent if it wasn't for Broderick's inexplicable blase performance. The line about "Who moves in at the middle of the night? A meth lab?" That joke could have worked delivered by Chevy Chase in Christmas Vacation.

 

Speaking of National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, I realized that Deck the Halls is the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead of that movie. It's from the perspective of the two yuppie neighbor characters, only the Griswald's are gone and there's just Uncle Eddy's family arriving in the broke down RV.

 

Danny Devito is actually trying in this movie, especially in comparison to Broderick's sleepwalking.

 

Broderick as an uptight perfectionist ready to snap because of an upbeat monster? Did somebody pitch this movie as a sequel to Election?

 

 

10 minutes: The whole scene where the wife and kids come over and meet Devito's wife and kids. They go for the joke that the wife and daughters are jaw dropping hot, but never acknowledge her giant rack and cleavage hanging out. Instead they go with the son gawking at a nude painting and the wife pushing her butt for a boost? How inept a writer and director do you have to be to go with that? The editing is also garbage. It's like they decided to throw in the joke about them being hot after they had already shot, so they went back and got a bunch of cutaway closeups of the son and wife gawking and clumsily edited them in (they're so out of place). It's like they were going for the opening scene of Clue where everyone is staring at the maid's cleavage but failed horribly.

 

That seems like a common theme with this movie. They thought what they could do for jokes after they already shot the scenes so they went back and shot a bunch of bad reaction shots to splice in.

 

10-120 minutes: fuck this movie

[DeathToMikeyBay 130]

I think 3 things can be added to the common bad movie tropes list:

 

- Crazy foreign couple minor characters

 

- "hip" remixes of classic songs (usually the whitest interpretation of hip hop)

 

- a pair of twins minor characters (Social Network is really the only exception)

[hesrightbehindu 1]

Andrea was a total drag in this epi. I thought it was rude of her to accuse Devito of "feeling her up" and even if he did it was neither the time nor the place to humblebrag about it. Stick to the movie! She flatters herself.

[DanielJohnson 94]

Andrea was a total drag in this epi. I thought it was rude of her to accuse Devito of "feeling her up" and even if he did it was neither the time nor the place to humblebrag about it. Stick to the movie! She flatters herself.

 

Allegedly

[JoshuaSorenson 7]

Listened to the minisode - just wanted to point out that there's already been a buddy movie starring Nerd-Cage and Crazy-Cage - it was called "Adaptation".

[wakefresh 689]

The stories that the guest told about the on-set demeanor of everyone is the best part of this episode. Depressed Broderick. Absent Devito. The Sex and the City lady shilling for frozen eggs. Its so wonderful. I often wonder if the actors themselves know that are going to be in a bad movie, and how do they act around each other with that knowledge.

[PlanBFromOuterSpace 3138]

The stories that the guest told about the on-set demeanor of everyone is the best part of this episode. Depressed Broderick. Absent Devito. The Sex and the City lady shilling for frozen eggs. Its so wonderful. I often wonder if the actors themselves know that are going to be in a bad movie, and how do they act around each other with that knowledge.

This reminds me of when I was working on the emergency room scene in "One For the Money", as Katherine Heigl and John Leguizamo would be talking about Laurence Fishburne's daughter's recently-released porno between takes. Much of the behind-the-scenes shenanigans are infinitely more interesting than what ends up on film, particularly when it comes to terrible, terrible movies.

[EarBear 460]

Andrea was a total drag in this epi. I thought it was rude of her to accuse Devito of "feeling her up" and even if he did it was neither the time nor the place to humblebrag about it. Stick to the movie! She flatters herself.

 

Welcome to the HDTGM board, Mr. DeVito.

[PlanBFromOuterSpace 3138]

 

Welcome to the HDTGM board, Mr. DeVito.

Now you've done it. It's like you're INVITING Danny DeVito to fingerblast you now.