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