The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015. Remaining movies: 162 Days to go: 156
Movie #221: The Ref
Obviously I love Christmas movies; I own quite a few of them. The Ref is a Christmas movie unlike most, however, and I love it all the more for it. This is a movie about the frustrations of Christmas, the resentments of family, and ripping off insults as fast as you can think them up. Also, there’s a burglar on the loose.
In 1992, I watched Denis Leary’s No Cure For Cancer so many times I could recite it from memory. I probably still could, it was pounded into my brain so many times. I can definitely still sing his “Asshole” song. I bought the album, too, and listened to it incessantly. It was one of the funniest things ever. In The Ref, Denis Leary plays Gus, who is basically an entire character based on the comic ideology of No Cure for Cancer, and it’s fantastic.
Gus is a master thief who falls into a “roadrunner booby trap” and has to improvise on his getaway by taking Caroline and Lloyd Chasseur — “that’s 18th century French Huguenot” — (Judy Davis and Kevin Spacey) hostage on Christmas Eve. Lloyd and Caroline are a married couple who hate each other, hate their lives, and bicker incessantly. (“I don’t believe it. You want to have sex with him!” “What??” “‘Use the ouchless. We have bungee cords.'” “I’m frightened. Humans gets frightened because they have feelings. Didn’t your alien leaders teach you that BEFORE THEY SENT YOU HERE?!”) But Gus has a gun. “Married people, without guns — for instance, you — DO NOT GET TO YELL.”
Gus is hiding out until his partner can secure them a boat to escape on, but Lloyd and Caroline’s son, Jesse (Robert J. Steinmiller Jr.) — who “has the kind of imagination–” “that the mafia gives scholarships for” — is heading home from military school (where he’s blackmailing Lt. Siskel, played by J.K. Simmons), and Lloyd’s oppressive and meddling mother Rose (Glynis Johns) is en route with his brother Gary (Adam LeFevre), sister-in-law Connie (Christine Baranski) and their two children for Christmas dinner (after they stop to eat first, because “God knows what disaster your Aunt Caroline is making.”) It makes for one hell of a dinner party, and that’s without taking into account the wreath of lit candles everyone has to wear — “in honor of Saint Lucia” — for their “traditional Scandinavian Christmas feast.” (“My forehead is blistering.”)
There’s a bit of a knock-down drag-out eventually, with everyone getting involved. (“Just who do you think you are?” “Slipper socks. Medium.”) And it all works out in the end, in the spirit of Christmas. (That is not the spirit of Christmas. The spirit of Christmas is either you’re good or you’re punished and you burn in hell.”) “We should unwrap them in the morning. It’ll be more festive.”
Everyone — and I mean everyone — is fantastic in this. Dialogue flies back and forth, joke after joke, insult after insult. Davis and Spacey are unsurprisingly phenomenal, and Leary is very comfortable in this particular persona, so there are no fumbles on his part either. And while I enjoy all the supporting cast, extra attention should really be paid to Johns and Baranski, who go completely balls-out committed to each character’s own particular pathologies. (“Don’t make me nuts today. It’s Christmas!”) “And I still say getting laid by an eighteen-year-old linebacker is JUST WHAT SHE NEEDS.”
Add in a drunk Santa Claus, and it’s a Christmas movie for the ages. Ho ho ho!
Viable Option 