Thinking about a movie we’d all like to see
- Mike Dewey: Life Lines
- December 14, 2024
- 36
“Ages 3 and up!” rages Mr. Potato Head in “Toy Story,” the original Pixar blockbuster. “It’s on my box! Ages 3 and up! I’m not supposed to be babysitting Princess Drool!”
Voiced by the irascible Don Rickles, master of the quick and cutting insult, he’s one of many memorable characters in the 1995 film that paved the way for one of the most successful franchises in Disney’s history, earning upward of 3 billion — with a B — dollars.
Anyone who’s been paying attention to the Tinseltown headlines knows how far the studio has sunk in recent years, a trend that shows no sign of reversing itself with the doom and gloom associated with the release of a “Snow White” remake, scheduled for the spring. Critics, test audiences and others connected with the long-delayed project agree Rachel Zegler is box-office poison.
Normally, this wouldn’t matter to me because I haven’t walked into a movie theater since summer 2019 when my wife and I experienced Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood,” but the spewing geyser of unadulterated negativity aimed at the live-action revision has kept me entertained for weeks, and I’ve really enjoyed all that snarky and bilious online venom.
The obvious question is why would anyone even consider updating the 1937 animated classic that made Disney a household name?
And the obvious answer is money … lots and lots of easy money.
Perhaps the crash-and-burn mushroom cloud that envelops the new “Snow White” will serve as a cautionary tale about the folly of tampering with the sterling legacy of a great film, but I doubt it.
Why, even now at this very moment, there might be creative geniuses hard at work rewriting “Casablanca,” only in their version, Richard Blaine and Ilsa Lund will end up together forever.
I can just hear Mr. Potato Head yelling in an exasperated tone of utter disbelief, “Did you guys take stupid pills this morning?”
Then again, he might well have said something similar to me the other afternoon as he watched me trying to assemble the Polar Express electric train set, one that’s annually run around the base of our Christmas tree since my wife gifted it to me a few years ago.
Even though there’s no age limit printed on the box, it shouldn’t have taken a man of my vintage three full hours to put it together.
Here’s all I was dealing with:
A dozen sections of track, eight straight and four curved, plus an engine, a coal tender and three passenger cars.
I had set the mood just right, popping my favorite Christmas CD — a Windham Hills assortment — into the player and lighting the nativity scene with its heavenly glow, plugging in the Notre Dame tree, festooned with 20-plus collectible ornaments and making sure Snoopy’s flying doghouse was in perfect operating condition.
And the tree itself, an heirloom from my wife’s childhood dating to the 1970s, had never looked better, nearly a thousand multicolored lights on display and enough tinsel for the proper shimmer.
This being the first Christmas in our new home, we experimented with placement and appearance, working from room to room and box to box, mixing the old with the new, seeking advice from each other, firing off ideas and making real progress as it all coalesced.
“Teamwork makes the dream work,” she said at one point, which made me wonder if she’d created that nifty phrase on the spur of the moment or was echoing something from the Hallmark Channel.
So by the time I got ready to get the train set up and running for the first time in two years — no chance to do it in 2023 because we were busy packing for the move back home — I felt good about it all.
But then — wouldn’t you know it? — the vibe changed, and suddenly, for no discernible reason, I began exhibiting disturbing signs of some kind of serious learning disability, something that rendered me utterly incapable of inserting Tab A into Slot B, unable to connect two sections of track without taking some long timeouts.
“C’mon, man,” I told myself. “A child could do this. Smarten up!”
It reminded me of a recurring dream, one in which I’m back playing first base on a fine summer evening, but when a ball is hit to someone and the throw’s heading my way, I can’t lift my arms.
Hideous, awful nightmares ensue, and I always feel like a failure.
Eventually, though, I completed the oval layout and managed to get the five moving pieces of the train to stay on the track, but by then my lower back was sending out distress signals and I was moving like a hermit crab around the base of the tree, scuttling from one side of the layout to the other, hoping things aligned, looking and feeling a little bit like the Grinch atop Mount Crumpit.
Christmas has always been a time of miracles, a chance to redeem oneself from the mistakes of the past year, an opportunity to put others at the head of the line, a way to sparkle and share the light.
When I sit and relax and enjoy the sight of the Polar Express train chugging its way around and around the tree, the living room bathed in the soft glow of a thousand bulbs, snowmen and Santas illuminated, the house all quiet and at peace, better days on a nearby horizon, I like to think you are enjoying the same thing.
Mike Dewey can be reached at Carolinamiked@aol.com or 1317 Troy Road, Ashland, OH 44805. He invites you to find him on his Facebook page, where the eggnog isn’t always spiked, but it helps.