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Category:    Home > Reviews > Music > Holiday > Variety Show > Comedy > Cable Telefilms > A King Family Christmas: Classic Television Specials Collection, Volume Two (1965 - 2009/MVD Visual DVD)/Hallmark Holiday Collection: A Cookie Cutter Christmas/The Nine Lives Of Christmas/A Royal Chri

A King Family Christmas: Classic Television Specials Collection, Volume Two (1965 - 2009/MVD Visual DVD)/Hallmark Holiday Collection: A Cookie Cutter Christmas/The Nine Lives Of Christmas/A Royal Christmas/Signed, Sealed, Delivered For Christmas (all 2014/Cinedigm DVDs)


Picture: C Sound: C+ (King: C) Extras: D (King: C) Main Programs: C- (King: C+)



Here's more holiday DVD releases, but not the kind you might want to take on.



A King Family Christmas: Classic Television Specials Collection, Volume Two (1965 - 2009) continues the less-holiday-oriented first volume of the famous TV specials series we covered a while ago at this link:


http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/12765/The+Cars:+Heartbeat+City+(1984+Music+Videos


This double DVD set includes the 1967 Thanksgiving Special and Christmas Special on DVD 1, while DVD 2 adds the 1974 Home For Christmas special and 2009 Christmas With The King Family Reunion Special. Add extras (see below) and that is more than enough to make you feel like you'll be trying to get rid of that fruit cake ASAP. They are at least consistent, if nothing else.



The rest of our entries are from the Hallmark Holiday Collection DVD series, four TV movies that feel more claustrophobic than anything the King Clan could ever deliver.


Christie Will Wolf's A Cookie Cutter Christmas has Alan Thicke supporting some unknowns in this long 87-minutes exercise about at a bake off. Erin Karkow and David Haydn-Jones are the couple, though they have limited chemistry and I found all this very unconvincing, like store-bought, rollout cookie dough versus home made cookies from scratch. Makes you want to go to a good mom-and-pop bakery to forget you lost time on this one.


Mark Jean's The Nine Lives Of Christmas has firefighter Brandon Routh (Superman Returns) taking in a cat and maybe falling for a woman (Kimberly Sustad), but he already has a girlfriend who does not want to loose him. Gregory Harrison (Trapper John, MD, the TV version of Logan's Run) shows up to make this more convincing and cannot help a formulaic teleplay. Not the cat's meow of holiday telefilms, it may not belong in the littler box, but Halle Berry in Catwoman suddenly seems more watchable. Meow!


Alex Zamm's A Royal Christmas has a young man (Stephen Hagan) proposing to a seamstress in Philadelphia (Lacey Chabert) without her first knowing he is the prince of a royal family. This would-be Disney romantic comedy for adults also has Jane Seymour as that British woman to give it some kind of authenticity, but even with Simon Dutton showing up, it is really lame, derivative and flat. Too bad.


Finally we have Kevin Fair's Signed, Sealed, Delivered For Christmas with Eric Mabius and Kristin Booth as the couple that will likely get together under the mistletoe, but not with a good script. They work with two other friends at a post office in its Dead Letter Office (and not for Stevie Wonder) when magic might happen. Rob Estes and even Marion Ross (stealing her scenes with ease) also show up, but this was a waste of postage and I would mark it return to sender!



The 1.33 X 1 image on King should be the poorest performer here (even with some digititis and slight digital blocking on occasion), but the anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image each of the telefilms are so soft (even with holiday stylings) that these all tie for performance, substandard and otherwise. The lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 on the telefilms are weak and sometimes more than expected, but they somehow manage to be better than the lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono on the King shows just show the age of the audio no matter what.


There are no extras on any of these releases, save King, adding two 1965 Christmas Episodes to an already loaded DVD set.



- Nicholas Sheffo


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