Critical Mass Crit Mass Oddities Week 3: Cartoon Action Hour

So the holidays can get pretty busy y’all, and in the hustle and bustle, it’s easy to lose sight
of the reason for the festivities this time of year, and that’s kind of sad. The reason, of course,
is with the extra time off from work and school, we get more time to watch cartoons, and I
for one love cartoons. I may have mentioned in an earlier article that I enjoy watching the
original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles when I’m home sick. It just cheers me up, and helps
me laugh when I feel otherwise miserable. However, I tend to act like a child much of the
time and as such, I also enjoy watching other old cartoons from my childhood, as well as
newer cartoons that I find here and there because man-child. But seriously, cartoons help
me to take a step back into the innocence of youth and relish in those times when life was
simpler, and the toughest decision I had to make was whether I was going to eat Lucky
Charms or Count Chocula for breakfast. I think that’s why so many people have jumped on
the nostalgia train in recent years.

Keeping it all kind of tied to the holidays though, I find that revisiting innocent years gone by
helps, if only a little to curb some of the cynicism that I’ve developed over the years. Cartoons
have just always been a part of my life, and especially around the holidays, I had a chance as
a child to really indulge myself in the zany worlds that animated television had to offer, and
believe me, there were many. You had G.I. Joe, M.A.S.K., Thundercats, The Real
Ghostbusters, Inspector Gadget, and so many more. The 80s and 90s were a veritable
cornucopia of animated awesomeness jam packed into a three hour block that aired without
fail every morning of the week. It was glorious. Saturdays were the best because I could
watch a bunch of cartoons during breakfast, and then go out with my friends and reenact what
I had just watched via the power of imagination. It’s no small wonder then, that I took up playing
pencil and paper role playing games in adulthood. They’re a great outlet for stress and anxiety,
and they’re a great way to keep my imagination sharp. Also, they’re a lot of fun.

That really roundabout segue brings us to the focus of my review today, a little RPG system
called Cartoon Action Hour, or CAH for short. Keep in mind the feelings that you used to have
whilst watching those amazing Saturday morning cartoons as I review as it will really help
you to see the charm in this overlooked, but fantastic system, especially if you grew up in the
80s as that’s the main focus of this system. Cartoon Action Hour was developed and is
produced by Spectrum Games. As far as I’ve been able to find, they’re not a terribly large
company, but they do have a lot of drive behind them and this has allowed them to create
several RPG lines that all run along the same vein. They’re all based around a particular
genre of film, or television, and they’re all designed to run RPG games within those genres.
To that end, we’re finally going to look at Cartoon Action Hour.

CAH, as I said, is designed to play games in the wonderful sandbox of 80s Saturday morning
cartoons. I personally stumbled across it at a local used book store, and luckily, I jumped on
buying it because I love it! The game spends, some might say, an inordinate amount of time
helping the player to better understand what 80s cartoons were all about. That part is pretty
important because whether we were aware of it or not as kids, there were some rules that
governed what could and could not be done in a children's cartoon in the 80s, and those rules
served to shape the feel of the cartoons that we all enjoyed so understanding just how those
rules factored in to the TV that we used to watch really helps whoever is running the sessions
to in turn capture the feel of those cartoons during gameplay. The rules are pretty clear and
although there are probably more, a couple of sample rules are that no one actually ever dies
during combat. That person will simply be knocked out or something. Also, men never hit
women because it never happened in 80s cartoons.

The next area that the book focuses a lot on is the setting aspects of the game. Cartoons in
the 80s were as varied in setting as they were silly, and unless one grew up a connoisseur
of them, a person picking this game up for the first time may not actually be familiar with the
scope of settings available to play within. There are a few key genres that are discussed, and
cornerstone points are discussed to help a person get a handle on the tone and style behind
each genre type. Then the book goes a little more into detail about what sets each genre apart
from all of the others. Next a list of actual cartoons that fit into each genre is discussed, and
then towards the end, non-player characters and sample adventures are given so that the
person running the game can feel confident in their understanding of the game.

Now, I have run and played in some pretty freeform games in my days, but I have to say that
one area where players are going to find this system lacking is in concrete rules. The rules
set only gives just enough to actually play the game, no more. You’re not weighed down by
damage tables, or skill check tables, or even lists of skills. Instead, you’re given some broad
guidelines, and a few concrete directions to help you create characters, and then you’re let
loose to design a character that is appropriately silly to your desires. That’s not to say that
a group couldn’t do a more serious campaign with this system, but the good folks that I play
these games with, much like myself, have a very difficult time taking anything seriously and
so our CAH games tend to be particularly silly.

Just because there aren’t a ton of rules doesn’t mean that they don’t exist at all. There are a
few highlights that I think are worth pointing out. First, there’s the PSA rule. I really enjoy this
one as it’s a great way to keep everyone’s mind in the game even when people need a break.
The gist is that when folks decide that they need to take a short break, everyone can go and
do their thing, but the players who aren’t running the game can take that time to develop an
80s cartoon style PSA to present to game runner. They do their speil and the game runner
grades them according to how well they enjoyed it. The score then translates into letting the
players make a change within the game itself to their favor.

The PSA kind of plays into another really fun rule that I like, but that isn’t exclusive to this
system, and that is Oomph. Oomph is earned, lost and trade between players and the game
runner throughout sessions. It gives them certain well-laid out capabilities within the game
to keep things interesting and as an in game currency, Oomph provides incentive to really
engage in what’s happening in a game. I like it because as a person who usually runs games,
I think it’s a lot of fun knowing what’s going to be happening, but I also thoroughly enjoy not
knowing everything so I appreciate that Oomph and similar mechanics in other games provides
a way to really shake things up for the game runner as well as the players.

The last stand out rule I want to explain is the commercial break. This is similar to the PSA in
that the players get a chance to earn Oomph and turn the tide in their favor, but it’s more
tailored to groups like my own where we never actually take full blown breaks from playing.
Players just kind of come and go as they need during game play and I just make sure to not
do anything terribly world shattering while someone is absent. In the case of commercial breaks,
whenever the game runner  wishes to shake things up, a die is rolled. The result on the die
corresponds to a table that explains how the result will effect the game. The great thing about
commercial breaks is that it presents a chance for things to work against the players’
favor, and it’s completely random so there won’t be charges of cheating. Again, it’s a really
fun way to liven up the gameplay during a session, and it really adds to illusion that the game
as a whole is trying to create.

Cartoon Action Hour is a simple enough game that beginners could probably pick up running it pretty quickly, and yet it offers just enough options to make it an interesting game for everyone involved. It takes very little time to prepare to play which means a group can get together to discuss series parameters, and build characters in a relatively short period of time. I have found that it’s a really good system for running one week and then putting away for a while until I need to run it again. If you’re an 80s kid, this system is going to take you back to wonderful times! You’re going to get a chance to relive those carefree Saturday mornings spent playing with your friends, and portraying your cartoon heroes. If you’re not an 80s kid, you’re going to get hours of fun out of the open-ended, ridiculous nature of the game. Either way, it’s definitely worth giving a try! It’s in its third iteration at this point and unfortunately, third edition is exclusively PDF, but for those who are curious, you can find it here for a pretty reasonable price. There are also tons of adventure modules to use in order keep the fun going. It’s a little slice of the heaven of youth in adulthood and I couldn’t recommend trying it enough! Have a great time reliving those bygone days of yore and stick around to see what oddities I find to look at next week!

Critical Mass Crit Mass Oddities Week 2: TurboGrafx 16

Console reviews are no longer a new thing here on Critical Mass as I did my own review of the Nintendo Switch console earlier this year. Man, we’ve really expanded our horizons this year! At any rate, I would like to see the diversity of topics continue on this blog because my own personal interests are vast and diverse as the world in which we live. To that end, we’ve got a review of a lesser known, but no less influential console from the way back time for you to enjoy this week as we ramp up to the end of the year.

There aren’t many feelings more exciting than getting that one special thing that you had been hoping to receive all year for the holidays. Maybe welcoming a child into the world, paying all of your bills and having enough left to eat, or surviving a near death experience, but getting that one thing on Christmas morning was always a rush for me as a kid. This story actually has nothing to do with my childhood Christmases though. My first console was a Nintendo Entertainment System that I actually think my dad got because he really likes electronic toys. In fact, the TurboGrafx 16, or TG-16 as the cool kids call it, didn’t hit my radar until almost the end of its development cycle. So how did I come to form a relationship with this fairly obscure, and oft forgotten gem? My grandparents, that’s how! See, I’m not much younger than my youngest uncle, and as such, my family always just kind of included me in the affairs of my uncles. It was nice to be treated like a more adult kid, but it was even better to play with my uncles’ more mature toys. That came out entirely wrong, you sicko. You know what I meant. As we get older, our toys get more delicate, and intricate, and infinitely more fun to enjoy. The trade off is, we get less time to enjoy them.

This was the case the year that my uncles got the TG-16 for Christmas. They were all either in high school, or getting to point of starting high school soon, and as we all know, middle school and high school load us up with tons of work to distract us from trivial things like video games, at least if we’re doing things right they do. What that meant is when I went down to visit, I got to play with the video games while they were busy with school. It was awesome. It was in this way that I originally got introduced to such classics as Tetris, The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, and Ice Hockey. However, in the spring of 1997, the Nintendo had been replaced with a new player, the TG-16. It was a little weird to play at first, and the games seemed a bit lower brow than their NES counterparts that I had grown accustomed to playing, but the transition was definitely worth the effort!

Let’s get some history out of the way real quick. So in the 70s, two brothers named Yuji and Hiroshi Kudo formed a company named Hudson Soft. They started out selling civilian HAM radios or some such, but in the late 70s and early 80s they started to transition to developing video gaming software. In 1983, a superb year if I do say so myself, they started looking to market software and hardware to Nintendo. Nintendo liked the idea of software development, but not the idea of hardware development because they were micromanaging jerks. However, the influx of cash from game design for Nintendo would at least pay the bills and give them funds to do their own hardware thing. Eventually, they designed the HuCard:

The card is about the size of a credit card, and it could hold enough information to store some pretty sweet games. It was a truly innovative approach to video distribution as it was really cheap medium, but Nintendo didn’t like that there were no physical anti-piracy measures in place. Nintendo’s cartridge design meant that folks in the US couldn’t easily play games from Japan and vice versa, and in their minds, this meant that we filthy Americans weren’t abusing the market by importing Japanese Nintendo carts or some madness. This rejection didn’t really deter Hudson. They just partnered with NEC to finish developing a console for their game delivery method, and in 1987, the PC Engine was released in Japan. You may find this difficult to believe, but in 1987, the PC Engine actually outsold the Famicom in Japan, and the system enjoyed tremendous third party support. It only made sense after their initial success to also  market the console in the US, and that’s where my love affair comes in.

Some brilliant person suggested that if they sold the console as the PC Engine in the US, we here in the US of A might confuse it for a home computer as we were calling home computers PCs at that point. And so the decision was made to change the name to the TurboGrafx 16, and once that little hurdle was passed, NEC hit the ground running full speed… Sort of… They were really tentative about their release tactics, choosing to release the console in a limited run in bigger markets like New York City, and San Francisco in 1989, a mere two week after the Sega Genesis released, the TurboGrafx 16 officially hit the US streets.

As a result of the tentative marketing and release, it was really rare to see any advertising support outside of these markets. To this day, I’m not entirely sure how my uncles stumbled across the thing, but I do remember seeing that advertising material came packaged in the box with the console so that you could tell your friends all about it. Anyway, the TG-16 had a major problem here in the US. Oh it was well received, and it even sold decently well. The problem was that when Nintendo of Japan had crafted their third party software development contracts in Japan, they had included a non-competition clause in said contracts to illegally prohibit developers from coding games for competing consoles outside of Japan. This meant that while the PC Engine had great third party support in Japan, totaling in around 425 games there, the TG-16 saw no such benefits here in the states.

This again, illegal, arrangement that Nintendo had concocted put a stranglehold on NEC here in the US and as a result, American console owners got about 95 games total to the over 400 games that were eventually available in Japan. The shame in this situation only deepens when one takes a look at some of the innovations that NEC introduced to world with its console. Remember those credit card sized games that NEC was selling? Well, free from the pesky restraints of things like cartridges, the TG-16 HuCard games could quite easily be used with NEC’s portable variant console, the TurboExpress:

That’s right, you could play your games at home, or abroad and only have to buy the game once. That’s a model that Nintendo only adopted this year, and as far as I can remember, no other company has done in the intervening years. It was an idea that was lightyears ahead of its time. As you can see, the handheld even had a backlit display so that you could easily play your favorite games in the dark if you wanted. Nintendo didn’t finally adopt this feature until the release of the GameBoy Advance SP, which came out much later.

Another among the firsts that NEC claimed was the first release of a CD driven console… Sort of… In the 90s we were in a toxic love affair with peripheral addons for our video game consoles, and it was NEC who first broke into the CD gaming market with the release of the TurboGrafx CD:

I’m not sure that this addon was a drastic improvement on the original console, but at the very least, the CDs could hold way more information than the HuCards so games could, in theory, be more complex and longer just by default of storage space. Eventually, versions of the consoles would be released that integrated the CD drive with the HuCard slot, and I think that was a pairing made in Heaven.

Okay, so with the limited number of games that could be purchased for this revolutionary console, what could you look forward to playing. Well, my experience is somewhat limited, but I’ll give you a sampling based on my experience.

First, there was the pack in game, Keith Courage in the Alpha Zones. This was a pretty mediocre game if I’m being honest with myself. Don’t get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoyed it when I was younger. You play the eponymous Keith Courage, and in each stage, you start as a puny punk looking kid as you kill things for gold coins, and spend said coins on upgrades. It’s when you get to the Alpha Zone areas that things get pretty fun. Gameplay moves more quickly, the music becomes appropriately 80s, and you get to wear some freakin’ sweet armor and use a sweet sword:

It was pretty 80s craptastic. For a pack in that you got basically for free, it was decent. It didn’t really show off what the console could do terribly well, but it was worth a weekend of button mashing.

One of the most enduring titles released for the TG-16 was Splatterhouse. You played as a dude wielding whatever weapons you could find, and wearing a hockey mask. It was a pretty straightforward side scroller action game with great graphics and creepy ambience that survives even to this day. There were like, five made during the 16- and 32-bit era, and a title came out under the franchise name in 2010 for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. It’s the Friday the 13th game that we should have gotten from the start LJN:

The next title is, in my opinion, the crown jewel of the system, at least here in the states where title releases were much leaner. Blazing Lazers is a vertical scrolling shoot’em up in the hallowed tradition of such games as Space Invaders, 1943, and Xevious. Blazing Lazers featured great graphics, amazing 80s techno music, fast gameplay that was challenging without being impossible, and digitally synthesized spoken vocals that really set the game apart from it predecessors in a way that hadn’t been seen much previously. It was colorful, and addictive, and it was a blast to play!

My final entry may be somewhat controversial due to the overabundance of love for the Legend of Zelda franchise. I’m not sure that this is the first Zelda clone, but in my opinion, it was one of the best. Neutopia was released in 1990, and it couldn’t be a more enjoyable rip-off if it came with a chinchilla and a boat load of chocolate! Unlike the previous entries here, this game actually has a story and for you Zelda fans out there, it will feel pretty familiar. An evil wizard has kidnapped the princess, and a hero has been chosen to save her! In order to do so, the hero, Jazeta, has to track down and obtain 8 magic crystals in order to open a portal to the evil wizard realm. This is a much longer game than the previous games as well, and it has a lot to offer. You explore four different environments in four different stages. Each offers unique creatures to battle, and two dungeons to beat. You’ll find unique items to help you along the way in your quest. I may be starting to sound like a broken record here, but this game offers a vivid color palette that really pops off the screen, the environments, minus the dungeons, the characters and the creatures are well designed, and the music although not as well rendered as it could be, is still really good. It’s a super challenging game that I’m ashamed to say that I haven’t actually beaten yet. Someday though… It’s a really fun game that offers plenty of challenge, and I highly recommend it!

I can’t speak highly enough about the TG-16! It was a powerful console for its time, and although there weren’t many games, the games it had were actually really good. NEC really created a marvelous console in the PC Engine/TG-16, but unfortunately, it was  discontinued in 1994. However, I recently learned that there’s an interesting footnote ending to this saga. In December of 1994, NEC released a full blown follow-up to the PC Engine that was sold on the market until 1998 called the PC-FX. It was a 32-bit dedicated CD console. It didn’t do polygons, and that really set it behind its competitors, but perhaps it looks familiar to fans of a certain motion based console that was released about a decade ago…

Happy holidays everyone! Stick around to see what I’ve got left in my grab bag this holiday season!

Critical Mass Crit Mass Oddities Week 1: Christmas Vacation 2

We’re quickly approaching the end of 2017, and I gotta say, it’s been a good year for Critical Mass. Welcome to those newer people, and thank you to all of those consistent supporters who give me a read despite the dry humor, and terribly overbearing opinion flinging. You’re all awesome! Being as it’s time to be giving, I thought it would be an interesting exercise to do a sort of holiday grab bag of reviews. There probably won’t be much rhyme or reason to the upcoming reviews, but I think some of them might help you better understand this crotchety critic a bit better, and even better, you’ll learn about some things that might broaden your media horizons, for better or worse. You’ve been warned!

I promised holiday appropriate stuff, and I aim to deliver this week. That’s why this week, we’re looking at one of my favorite holiday film franchises, Christmas Vacation! Wait, what? You didn’t know this was a franchise? Where have you been?! Okay, so you didn’t know that there were more than the first one. Well take a seat, assuming you’re not already sitting and let’s rap! Hopefully, you’re aware of the holiday classic that is National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. It’s the heartwarming tale of the Griswold family and father, Clark’s, endeavor to host the perfect Christmas for himself and his extended family. It’s chock full of classic moments, quotable lines, and good hearty Christmas cheer. It’s gone down in history as a holiday staple for a lot of people. I promise. Okay, probably just for me a few others, but we’re cool, y’all!

The first Christmas Vacation was a critical and box office hit, making back nearly three times what it cost in theaters, and probably raking in way more than that in home video sales over the years. I’m not sure that it was ever intended to be a series though. I draw this conclusion because there have been other Vacation films made since. There was the Vegas Vacation, the European Vacation, and recently, a do-over of Vacation the first one. All of these focus on Clark Griswold and his family as they get into silly antics, and run amok in various locales. This was the formula that they started with, and despite being pretty cringe worthy at times, it’s served them pretty well. That’s why, when I saw National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation 2: Cousin Eddie’s Island Adventure, I was a little confused. Who looked at the original, saw Eddie, played by Randy Quaid, and thought, “The world needs more of that!”? I don’t know. I really don’t. What I do know is that the producers must not have had too much faith in it because it was released straight to TV.

Alrighty, enough harping for now. Let’s jump in. So the movie is not terribly concerned with how long it’s been since Eddie crashed the original Christmas Vacation. It just couldn’t even right now, guys! But it has been a little while as we find out that Eddie, well meaning though he may be, produced yet another child. He made more you guys! Isn’t that just wonderful! In a twist that could have been written by a third grader though, this child is smart! Like skipping grades in school smart. And he’s a wealth of common sense. Eddie is still married to Catherine, and they’ve traded up from the RV to an actual house. Also, Audrey is living with them after some huge break up for some reason. I guess to clear her head. They actually got the actress who played the character in the original Vacation film to reprise the role. Kudos to them I suppose. Don’t get too excited, because that’s the only character besides Eddie and Catherine that make an appearance, and I really don’t like the way they wrote her. But we’ll get to that.

We find Eddie is working for a nuclear facility. Do what now?! No, no, they test the side effects of prolonged radiation exposure on him because despite being dumber than a sack of hammers, Eddie apparently has a superpower. He heals real good, and so apparently the radiation doesn’t actually have any long term effects on him. Also, his ‘co-worker’ is a chimpanzee. The scientists do a lot of intelligence testing on these too and, unsurprisingly, the chimp is consistently smarter than Eddie. This leads to Eddie getting fired due to budget cuts. He’s broken, but goes in to beg for his job back. In the process, he insults the chimp, and the chimp bits the crap out of him. At this point, Eddie could have sued for just all the money, a fact of which the nuclear facility management is well aware, but instead, they talk Eddie into taking an all-expenses paid trip to the South Pacific instead. Because Eddie is anything if not consistent, he takes this sweet deal despite the protests of his unusually smart son.

And so as their house is literally flooding from broken pipes, they decide they’re going to have the best vacation ever. Oh, and cousin Audrey is going to come, and also Uncle Nick because they just happen to be living in the house at the time, for some reason. As they’re getting on the plane, Eric Idle of Monty Python fame makes a cameo appearance to pull some slapstick shenanigans with Randy Quaid because he probably had to do some community service due to a crack possession charge or something. But they make it to the South Pacific, and they’re greeted by the lovely Muka Luka Miki, played by Sung Hi Lee, whose name Eddie will mispronounce for the rest of the film because it’s just that kind of movie. Now I have to mention at this point everything wrong with Audrey, at least to me. She’s actually got a reason for living with Eddie and Catherine. She had been in a relationship in Chicago that had gone sour, and she had been heartbroken. I think the heartache was on account of knowing that she actually needed the money bad enough that she’d actually have to take this crummy job, but I guess Clark thought that movie to wherever it is that Eddie lives would give her a chance to get her head back on straight. That will be important later.

Anyway, Muka Luka Miki shows them around the island a little, an exercise which culminates in a luau. So maybe it’s Hawaii, but I don’t think that they’re ever specific about it. There’s some small talk, the dog humps things in the background, and we’re introduced to, I think, Melbourne Jack, a seaplane pilot who also happens to be a hotelier. That’s a word. Google it! Anyway, there’s some more small talk, then I zone out, and then when I finally reach consciousness again, Eddie, Catherine, Audrey, Muka Luka Miki, Uncle Nick, the dog, and Third, Eddie’s son, are all getting on a boat that has been leant to them. There’s no captain, but it’s cool because Uncle Nick has apparently been piloting boats since the dawn of time. Oh, wait, no he piloted boats a few times during the dawn of time. Oh well, no problem. Except that it is. They eventually run aground. Eddie, wanting to be the hero, decides that he’s going to swim into the shore of this island, and investigate… Except that the water is only waist deep so he and the whole family wade in instead. However, none of those dumb frackers bothers to anchor the boat, and so the boat drifts off without them and now they’re stranded. Oh no!

This leads to a whole bunch of shenanigans wherein the family have to figure out how to survive on a deserted island. Eddie decides that he’s going to build Catherine the best house they’ve ever lived in, and Third discovers women via peeping on Muka Luka Miki, who Uncle Nick was also peeping on. Hey, no accounting for taste, right? Audrey complains about how she’s never going to find a man, and here’s the other shoe. I’ve seen Vacation and Christmas Vacation, and never have I gotten the impression that Audrey is some impotent human being, let alone woman, whose self-esteem is directly tied to her relationship status. But in this film all she can talk about is how so-and-so was her one true love, and how she’ll never find love again. It gets pretty tired, and I’m not sure it really fits with how the character was originally established, but whatevs. So in the build-up to Christmas day, they all pitch in to make it a fabulous event. Eddie and Third build the house, Eddie catches a wild boar for the Christmas dinner, Muka Luka Miki keeps up morale, Catherine and Audrey do things, and Uncle Nick hits on Muka Luka Miki relentlessly. Just a good old fashioned Christmas right there.

Somehow, and against all odds, the family actually manage to pull together a pretty good Christmas set up… Mostly… The boar looks delicious, the house looks pretty good, and it’s decorated nicely, and everyone seems happy. Eddie gives a speech about… Something… And then he carries Catherine over the threshold of their new house. That part was pretty sweet. But then the house collapses. No surprise there. All seems lost, but at some point, the hotel guy finds them with his seaplane and the day is saved! He also kindly informs them that he’s been developing a hotel on the other end of the island that they probably could have walked to in a day. Oops… They reminisce about how the island has brought them all closer together, and then the hotel guys falls down a steep hill, and they have to fly him back to the main island. You’d think that with the family being rescued, that the director would just put us out of our misery, but there’s a ‘tense’ scene where Eddie has to land the seaplane in order to save the day.

Anyway, there’s some stuff to tie everything up, and then it’s over… Thankfully! I know it’s a pretty scant recap of the story, but you should see the one on Wikipedia. There just isn’t a lot of story there to recap. It’s pretty thinly assembled. However, it’s not all bad. There are definitely some gaping holes in the story, and the motivations behind the characters, and there are some pretty tired cliches being employed throughout. However, if the idea of the film was to get people in the happy spirit of Christmas, then I think for a select few, this film might actually hit its mark. There are some warm moments, and even a funny moment or two. There are some surprising cameo from some big stars. Eric Idle I mentioned earlier, but Stephen Furst of Babylon 5 fame also makes an appearance as well as Fred Willard. It’s over-the-top most of the time, but it does manage to tie everything together in an almost acceptable way by the end. Look, it’s never going to be a holiday classic, but it does manage to be more than the sum of its parts, barely, and I can commend that. I wouldn’t say go out of your mind trying to track this one down to watch, but if the opportunity should present itself, give it a try and see if movies that are so bad they’re almost good is your thing. Happy holidays, y’all! Stick around because the month promises to be a grab bag of weirdness!