Candy Cane Lane
- -A man, determined to win the neighborhood's annual Christmas decorating contest, makes a pact with an elf to help him win. However, the elf casts a spell bringing the twelve days of Christmas to life, bringing chaos to the small, unsuspecting town.
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Eddie Murphy Returns for Christmas With A Timeless Holiday Cautionary Tale
Candy Cane Lane isn’t very emotional, yet it works well enough as a Christmas movie because of how straightforward its message is.
What’s Good:
Eddie Murphy is always entertaining to watch, but the porcelain Christmas figurines really win out.
What’s Bad:
It is difficult to take the touching moments seriously because there is little chemistry between the family members.
Summary:
With the arrival of the Christmas season, streaming platforms are gearing up to bombard us with an enormous number of Christmas films. At this point, watching Christmas movies has become a tradition in and of itself. Sadly, though, lately, quantity hasn’t really equaled quality. In Candy Cane Lane, Eddie Murphy plays a new movie that tells a story about what matters most during the holidays while incorporating all the traditional Christmas elements, such as the structure of the traditional “A Christmas Tale.”
Plot:
Chris Carver, a corporate marketer, enters the neighborhood Christmas decoration competition with his own hand-carved decorations but has never won. He is jealous of his neighbor Bruce, who consistently wins with inflatables and other low-cost mass market decorations. He loses his job just before Christmas, which prompts him to compete fiercely for a $100,000 grand prize that Prism Cable would award to the winner.
Chris, along with his youngest daughter Holly, discovers a secret Christmas store named “Kringle’s” while shopping for groceries. Inside, they find exquisite figurines and decorations. He purchases a sizable “The Twelve Days of Christmas” zoetrope in the form of a tree. Shopkeeper Pepper urges Chris to sign the receipt without reading the fine print when it is provided to him. At the competition, the family makes an impression with the new decoration.
The following day, the family’s pool is filled with seven swans and the pictures from the tree have vanished. Chris accuses Bruce of pulling the prank and goes back to Kringle’s with Holly to look for substitutes. Three French chickens dressed as Frenchmen and six geese laying attack Carol, Chris’s wife, at work in the meantime. When they return to the shop, Pip, Cordelia, Gary, and a bunch of carol singers are among the living glass figurines in a Christmas town. They clarify that Pepper is a malicious Christmas elf who has duped Chris into signing a false contract, and that they have all been her victims in the past.
They inform Chris that if he does not locate the five golden rings that the missing images—who are now alive—hold by 8 p.m. on Christmas Eve, he too will become a figurine. Chris eventually saves the figurines and brings them home with him, along with the village clock tower, to show his family after he and Holly have taken the first two rings from the two turtledoves and the three French hens.
Pepper has the ten lords leaping assault the family while the eight maids are milking them during a track meet where Chris’s older daughter Joy is competing. They are able to recover the third and fourth rings in spite of the mayhem. But Joy gets outraged when her father makes fun of a college recruiter, and she and her brother Nick accuse Chris of living their own lives and only thinking about Christmas for his own selfish benefit. When Chris gets home and tells his family the real story, they decide to support him. They set up a trap for Pepper the night of the competition after realizing she has the fifth ring. Everyone finds out through Prism Cable’s news program that the $100,000 incentive was actually in taco coupons.
Pepper appears to be sent back to the North Pole by Santa Claus after he traps her and takes her ring. She mocks Chris for having five rings when he gives them to her, claiming he needs more. Recalling that “the twelve days of Christmas” mentions “five golden rings” eight times, the family realizes they actually need forty rings. The nine women dancing are hidden, so Pepper lets loose the rest of the decorations on the neighborhood. Santa helps the Carvers as they rush to grab the rings. Then, in an attempt to fool everyone, Pepper moves the clock tower ahead five minutes, turning Chris into a figurine before he should.
Santa notes that Chris and Carol’s wedding rings, which are made of gold, raise the total to 40 rings, making Chris normal again even though the family only manages to obtain 38. Holly then wishes for the other figurines to revert to their original state for Christmas. After saying farewell to the Carvers, Santa rides off with Pepper and every other former figurine—aside from Pip—into his sleigh.
Chris has made amends with Bruce, so on Christmas morning, the Carvers and his family have free tacos together. The family welcomes Pip when he arrives, hoping he won’t spend Christmas alone.
A year later, in the middle of the credits, Pepper is revealed to have been punished by Santa by being made into a glass figurine, and her good behavior will return her to her previous position of scooping reindeer excrement. It is discovered that Chris has taken over Pepper’s store, which has been rebranded as “Chris Kringle’s”.
Star Performance:
Candy Cane Lane’s performances are a little disappointing because there isn’t much chemistry between the main cast members. This is a fatal error in a film that attempts to create a sense of familial bonding amongst the actors. The idea that these people are a family and must pull together in the darkest of circumstances is the foundation of the entire narrative. The outcome is nearly numb when the plot eventually reaches the point where it needs to pay off.
Although Eddie Murphy is a pleasure to watch and has a strong command of the screen, the actor is not in it. Murphy operates automatically. The children in particular, for whom this may truly be a breakthrough in the industry, strive harder than the rest of the family to perform better, but they are unable to overcome the shoddy dialogue and screenplay. Trevante Jones is one of the most promising actors of his generation, thus it is also quite disappointing to see him doing this kind of work rather than something better.