Ben (1972)

Following on immediately from the end of Willard, this is a mediocre film that suffers greatly in comparison to the greatness that preceded it. Although you still get some dangerous rats, there's very little else here that we got in the first film, from the characters to the quality of acting to the overall tone of the whole thing.

Where Willard gave you a young man that you could root for, Ben gives you a boy who is very hard to like. His name is Danny Garrison, and he's played by Lee Montgomery. Danny is a bit lonely, so that makes him the next obvious choice to be friends with Ben and his large pack of ratty friends. While the police try to track down all of the rodents and kill them off, Danny amuses himself by making up songs about his new friend ("Ben" sounds pretty good when Michael Jackson is singing it, not so much when Montgomery is doing the vocals), playing with marionettes, and not dutifully handing over all rat information to the relevant authority figures.

Directed by Phil Karlson, Ben doesn't really know how it wants to play out. The script, by a returning Gilbert A. Ralston, doesn't help, moving from the finale of the first movie to an uninteresting tale of a boy finding a rat and holding on to him like some kind of fluffy action figure. There are moments of rat mayhem here and there, but they don't feel like anything other than filler in a film where they should be some of the main set-pieces. Hampered by the central idea, Karlson makes everything worse by keeping the whole movie tension-free and strangely chipper.

The cast also don't do anything to help. Well, the human cast anyway. Montgomery isn't very good. In fact, he's pretty awful for most of the movie. Rosemary Murphy and Meredith Baxter are better, playing Beth and Eve Garrison, respectively, and Joseph Campanella, Arthur O'Connell, and Kaz Garas are able to stand around, ponder the rat problem, and look determined about sorting things out.

It may be unfair to compare this so much to the first film, and I get that every film should be judged on its own merits, but the fact that it uses the opening scenes to show the end of the first movie and to then continue the storyline "seamlessly" doesn't do it any favours. Viewers are immediately reminded of just how great Willard was, to then be almost immediately disheartened by how lacklustre this is.

There are pluses. Not many, but they are there. First of all, some scenes do feature an impressive number of rats scrabbling around and over one another. Second, you get to hear Michael Jackson singing over the end credits. Third . . . actually, no, there is no third. There are two main positives to take away from my viewing of this film, and I'll give it a point for each, plus one whole point for the acceptable work of the actors who aren't named Lee Montgomery.

3/10

This is the best way to buy the film (because you get a better film with it).
Americans can get the movie here.

Becoming Santa (2015)

Not to be confused with the documentary from 2011, this is a fun TV movie that covers familiar ground (don't they all?) but does so with a lot of fun to offset the usual overdose of sweetness.

Laura Bell Bundy stars as Holly Claus, a lovely woman with a surname that hasn't made her boyfriend/fiance (Connor, played by Jesse Hutch) wonder more about her parents. In fact, he remains comically oblivious when they finally go to meet Mr & Mrs Claus (Michael Gross and Meredith Baxter, respectively), despite them both looking pretty much exactly as you'd expect THE Mr & Mrs Claus to look. It eventually becomes clear that the man who marries Holly is expected to take over the family business, which looks set to be disastrous as Connor attempts to pass a number of tests without realising their significance. He also has to contend with a pesky ex-boyfriend on the scene (Jack Frost, played by Tony Cavalero).

Written by Barbara Kymlicka (who has a number of these things under her belt) and directed by Christie Will Wolf (who also has decent back catalogue in this field, including at least one other working from a script by Kymlicka), Becoming Santa is a very good dollop of Christmas cheer. Yes, it's worth reminding readers once again that I judge Christmas TV movies a lot more generously than I judge many other films, but that shouldn't detract from the fact that a few good Christmas TV movies manage to be genuinely good. Like this one.

It has everything you want from a Christmas film - Santa, elves, romance, toys, reindeer, magic, cookies - and it also has very enjoyable performances from all of the leads. Bundy and Hutch make an appealing couple, Gross is effective enough as Santa, Baxter is very good, and Cavalero is just the right mix of amusing and dastardly in the role of Jack Frost.

Highlights include the trials to become Santa, the sneaky undermining from Jack Frost, the naivete of Connor, and the pleasant sprinkling of magic throughout that keeps this firmly in the realm of easygoing Christmas fantasy family fare (not to be confused with the Christmas fantasy non-family fare that can be found just by searching for the likes of "Santa's sexy little helper", for example - so I have heard *ahem*).

I would certainly rewatch this one, even without being forced into it, and I will look forward to anything else that stars Bundy and Hutch (who seems to relish this kind of role more than bing stuck in some dire Steven Seagal vehicle), who both make for some of the most appealing leads I have seen in the holiday TV movie season this year.

Here is a large selection of Christmas movies to enjoy.
And American elves can pick the same set up here.

7/10