A little too late for Christmas, but...

It's a tradition for some people to watch the yearly Tim-Allen-preparing-for-Christmas-as-bumbling-Dad movie but next year, don't. Just...don't. Even though there wasn't one of those this Christmas, we received a huge piece of coal from Hollywood in the form of Fred Claus. I remember a friend telling me, "I watched Fred Claus over the weekend. It was bad."

Really? Didn't expect that at all.




























There's no way this can be a shitty movie filmed with the "Hurr Christmas, must eat Christmas food watch Christmas film take a Christmas dump" audience in mind! Too bad Vince Vaughn's career though, not so money now huh?

What I watched for this Christmas though, was "Joyeux Noël", a film based on the series of Christmas truces that actually happened during World War I, which many called the "last humane war".



It's heartwarming, well-acted, has great atmosphere, features good actors, has a nude scene, has Diane Kruger looking pretty, has tits, Diane kruger shows tits heartwarming christmassyfeeling elves and other good points BUT NOBODY WANTS TO READ THINGS and it's always so much more satisfying and easier to be a funny asshole than a funny saint. (Which one is funnier? A chicken crossing a road or a retard thinking he's a chicken crossing a road?) The movie climaxes when the two sides climb out of their trenches, singing Christmas carols in their own languages and exchanging gifts in the form of French champagne, German chocolate and Scottish...erm...Scotch.

This would be pushing it quite far, in terms of cheesiness but no, the film doesn't stop there. The Scots started the whole truce by singing a traditional folk song accompanied by five bagpipes. FIVE bagpipes. FIVE. Makes you wonder if they wanted to kill Germans any more than wanting to annoy the shit out of the French with incessant wailing of their testicle-like musical instruments.



I only managed to capture three here because it's physically impossible to fit so much bagpipes-induced cheesiness in one picture.

Not to be outdone, the Germans happen to have a tenor fighting the war as a grunt soldier so he steps out onto no-mans-land and sings Christmas carols in a dubbed voice which got quite distracting because the movement of his mouth doesn't sync up well with the sound he's supposed to produce. Why does it feel like I'm QC-ing a badly-encoded gay porno clip? Quite the coincidence, isn't it? Conveniently having a tenor and five ballsbagpipes on a battlefield.

But you'd be surprised, it doesn't just end there. The Germans had more surprises up their sleeves, adding to the epic-ness of the whole scene. I have included the original subtitles in the following screenshots.





I'm just having fun, of course. I liked the film and shedded very manly tears while watching it the first time around. Go watch it even if it isn't Christmas now, you'll appreciate the side-themes of enemy dehumanisation, religion and bagpipes.

For the time being, put papaya there!