A Carol Christmas (2003) Review

December 22, 2015 ragglefragglereviews1 Comment

Carol is a talk show host who is obsessed with herself and hates anyone who gets in her way, Carol’s bad attitude affects her family and co workers at Christmas time and it isn’t long before she gets a visit from the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future, two of these ghosts are played by the late Gary Coleman and everyone’s favorite Star Trek actor William Shatner.

In case you haven’t figured it out yet this is just another version of a Christmas Carol but with a modern day twist.

There really isn’t too much to say about this movie, you’ve seen it all before its just Scrooge which is a concept that I think has been put into film far too many times for it’s own good, don’t get me wrong some versions of a Christmas Carol are excellent (Mickeys Once Upon a Christmas, Scrooged).

This is not by any means a bad film, its just the same old thing we see every year, there are a few things I really like about this version of a Christmas Carol that I find really help it stand out among the others.

The biggest difference is that the antagonist is a woman and I like this its good to see that it’s not just males who are lacking the Christmas Spirit, I also enjoyed the celebrity cameo’s I thought they were well cast and added a good amount of charm to the film.

What I didn’t like was the jokes, a lot of the time they felt forced and not necessary I don’t know why they tried to make this a comedy in the first place, originally due to the title I thought this would have been a parody of a Christmas Carol and I think that would have been great, it would have been a new and fresh idea that could of been really funny if it had good writing.

A Carol Christmas is not the worst version of a Christmas Carol I have ever seen but it’s definitely not the best either.

with 11 out of 12 reviews finished I think it’s time to see what the last Christmas movie review of 2015 will be.

The Final Review is

you can contact me at ragglefragglereviews@gmail.com

Special Delivery (2000) Review

December 20, 2015December 20, 2015 ragglefragglereviewsLeave a comment

Lloyd Steadman is a clumsy delivery man for the Little Wings adoption agency, due to unforeseen circumstances Lloyd is the replacement delivery man for the Beck family and it is now his job to deliver the Becks their new son in time for Christmas.

This doesn’t exactly go to plan because Lloyd manages to accidentally switch the real baby with a toy doll, this causes all sorts of complications for the Beck family who with the exception of the husband are surprisingly ok with this and they even invite Lloyd to stay with them for Christmas.

I have to be honest if some idiot lost my Daughter they would most definitely not be staying at my house for Christmas.

I really liked the Husband in this movie I thought his lines and dialogue were perfect for this kind of film, his rage and anger at Lloyd were definitely the best parts of the flick, I hated everyone else though they kept treating the husband like he was the bad guy and this wasn’t just played up to attempt decent comedy, the film portrayed Mr Beck as if he was a horrible person for not wanting to be around Lloyd, his Wife treated the whole situation as if Lloyd simply smashed a mug and brushed the whole thing off.

I was left with so many questions while I was watching this film, why isn’t the entire family angry at Lloyd?, why did Lloyd not immediately get fired?, why didn’t the police get involved? THIS IDIOT LEFT AN INFANT BY ITSELF IN A BUSY AIRPORT last time I checked abandoning a child is against the law.

What also didn’t help this movie was Andy Dick (Lloyd), he was so annoying I just wanted to punch him in the face, his acting was atrocious and it honestly felt like he was just there for the pay cheque, the film is not funny at all, a lot of the comedy relies on the comedic affect of slap stick and its just awful, the jokes are really badly paced and a lot of the time they are either really over the top or extremely unrealistic.

Special Delivery is an ok movie, I wouldn’t recommend watching it but if you do you might like it as a lot of people seem to really enjoy the film, its just not for me.

Thanks for reading my Review of Special Delivery

The next Christmas movie I will review is

you can contact me at ragglefragglereviews@gmail.com

BRUU The Gourmet Tea Club 2015: December Box

December 19, 2015January 20, 2016 ragglefragglereviewsLeave a comment

I received my very first box of BRUU today and honestly I didn’t know what to expect as I have never joined a subscription service before.

For those wondering BRUU is a tea club that sends its members different types of home grown loose tea every month, I personally am a big tea lover but I have never had loose tea before so this was definitely a brand new experience for me.

What first shocked me was the contents, I only expected three bags of tea but I was also greeted with a Christmas Card, a letter, some Haribo sweets, A chocolate and a scented candle, I was shocked at just how well BRUU seemed to know me even though this was my first box, I love tea but I also love Haribo’s, chocolates and scented candles all the same so this was a very pleasant surprise.

Before discussing the different Tea’s I would first like to talk about all of the extras, first of all the chocolate was delicious it was a classic milk chocolate but you could definitely notice the difference in quality when compared to the branded stuff, this was much nicer it had a finer texture and it was very milky I personally thought it tasted like a posh hot chocolate which I found to be very interesting.

The scented candle reminded me of christmas trees which is very fitting, as you may know the Pine Tree (Christmas Tree) has a very distinct scent compared to other trees, the smell is very sweet and natural and is a very fitting scent to add to a Christmas Box.

I’m not going to review Haribo’s because I am absolutely certain that everyone who is reading this has eaten Haribo’s before and if not they are literally 10 pence a packet in most retail stores.

Lets now discuss this months Tea’s, the tea’s in my box were Rosey Rhubarb Green, The Earl of Winter and Cheeky Digestive.

The first tea I tried was Rosey Rhubarb Green, it’s a blend of Green Tea, Rhubarb and rose petals, it was surprisingly quite sweet, you could definitely taste the Green Tea and the flavors of the Rhubarb danced with your taste buds, the rose petals were an excellent addition to the brew as it gave of the sweet scent of roses at Christmas time.

Rosey Rhubarb Cream was a very tasty blend of Green Tea, it’s honestly the best Green Tea I have ever had.

Next I tried Cheeky Digestive, Cheeky Digestive is a blend of Pistachio, Apple Pieces, Orange Peel, Wild Strawberry Leaves, White Cornflower, Blossoms, Raspberry Leaves, Sweet Blackberry Leaves, Pink Peppercorns and Hazelnuts.

Now the Cheeky Digestive boasts that it tastes like a biscuit but with all the ingredients you would most likely find that very doubtful, well let me be the first to tell you that it does indeed taste almost exactly like a Digestive Biscuit, I don’t know why this is perhaps many of these ingredients are in Digestive Biscuits.

Cheeky Digestive is a very yummy blend of Tea but I recommend it as an occasional treat as some of the ingredients are quite large so you may find that this bag will empty much quicker than the others in this months box.

Finally I gave the Earl of Winter a go, a blend of Earl Grey, Aniseed, Liquorice Root, Star Anise, Strawberry Leaves, Cornflower Petals, Verbena, Rooibos, Blackberry Leaves, Lemon Grass and Cloves.

The Earl of Winter is an interesting combination, the idea is that its the popular classic Earl Grey but with a festive kick, I found the Liquorice Root to be very overpowering which made it difficult to recognize the other flavors in the brew, it did remind me of Christmas which was nice it helped make this more of an experience other than just a cup of Tea, I will be enjoying a mug of Earl of Winter on Christmas Night.

Earl of Winter was a very tasty blend of Tea, I only wish that some of the other flavors were as strong as the Liqourice Root.

My first box of BRUU was a fantastic experience that I wont likely forget anytime soon, BRUU have opened my eyes to the world of real Tea, this is better than Tea Bags and I recommend BRUU to anyone who loves Tea as much as I do.

Cant wait till next month.

Merry Christmas

If you would like to join Bruu, you can do so by clicking the link below

http://bruutea.co.uk/

You can contact me at ragglefragglereviews@gmail.com

ELF (2003) Review

December 18, 2015December 18, 2015 ragglefragglereviewsLeave a comment

“I’m a cotton headed ninny muggins”

Buddy played by funny man Will Ferrell is a human that was accidentally raised by elves after he climbed into Santa’s sack when he was a baby, Buddy stays with the elves until he is an adult which is when he starts to realize that he is a human.

After pondering the idea of leaving the North Pole, Buddy eventually decides to go on a search for his real Dad (James Caan) in a magical land called New York City, of course his father thinks that Buddy is an absolute nut case and refuses to accept that he really is his son but after a positive DNA match Walter Hobbs doesn’t have much choice and tries to accept the reality of his long lost son who has come to visit him.

ELF is brilliant and that’s not just because its funny and has a perfect cast but its more to do with that fact that it should have sucked, we have seen the cliche of someone/something not from our world trying to fit in with our world far too often and far too often it has failed miserably

ELF is hilarious it has brilliant writing, the jokes are extremely funny and very well paced, Will Ferrell makes this film and honestly if he wasn’t in it, it wouldn’t be the same.

Fun Fact did you know that this was the film that helped Will Ferrell start is acting career? it’s hard to believe that a Christmas movie could be so good that it could help make someone extremely famous.

ELF is a fantastic,funny and wonderful Christmas movie for all the family, all of the actors and actresses are absolutely perfect for the film, of course none of them can top Will Ferrell but James Caan comes pretty close with his role as the asshole dad.

Watch ELF its even better than spaghetti with syrup.

Thanks for reading my Review of ELF

The next Christmas movie I will review is

You can contact me at ragglefragglereviews@gmail.com

The Christmas Wish (1998) Review

December 17, 2015December 17, 2015 ragglefragglereviewsLeave a comment

Business man Will Martin (Neil Patrick Harries) is visiting his Grandmother for her first Christmas since her husband past away, while looking through some of his grandfather’s old journals Will discovers that his Grandfather had a secret woman in his life called Lillian, Will sets out to find this woman in order to help put his Grandmother’s mind at peace but this journey may be much more difficult than he anticipated.

I’m not quite sure how I feel about this movie, the plot was very interesting and through out the entire film I was trying to figure out who Lillian was and at times I wasn’t sure if we would even find out, the film was very slow which was its biggest problem because it had this really interesting plot that should have grabbed the attention of the viewer but half the time I was falling asleep due to how badly paced and boring the film was.

Only half of the cast gave an effort to show any enthusiasm at all, most of the actors I found to be either really boring or extremely annoying, the little boy who was obsessed with Dinosaurs did not help at all, I don’t know what it is but for some reason six year old’s are extremely headache inducing on camera, the little boy in this film was almost as annoying as the little boy in The Babadook (if you haven’t seen the Babadook trust me the little boy is the absolute worst).

On a lighter note given all of my complaints its at least a really nice movie which tries to spread what is apparently the meaning of Christmas, I’m actually really surprised that this isn’t aired on TV that often as it’s a really unique and different kind of Christmas movie and even though I complained that the some of the cast are really annoying they wont ruin the film for you this isn’t Jim Carrey stars in the Grinch so you don’t have too much to worry about.

An unknown Christmas film that is probably unknown for a reason, still worth giving this one a shot though.

Thanks for reading my Review of The Christmas Wish

The next Christmas movie I will review is

You can contact me at ragglefragglereviews@gmail.com

Building a Ginger Bread House: Featuring What Maff Said

December 16, 2015December 16, 2015 ragglefragglereviewsLeave a comment

Building a Ginger Bread House so amazing that even Hansel and Gretel would be jealous

Christmas is the most beloved and celebrated holiday in existence and of course almost every aspect of Christmas is iconic, one popular aspect to Christmas is the many sweets and chocolates that you can freely consume without much guilt simply because its Christmas, I personally have always loved having an excuse to eat loads of crap and so this year me and another blogger (What Maff Said) decided to team up and build a Ginger Bread House.

Now before I begin explaining the steps we took in order to build our marvelous house, I first need to explain the most important things that allowed the magic to happen.

The Ingredients

The most important ingredient was the Ginger Bread House itself, yes we did buy it instead of baking, we did this mostly to save time as it took a long time to put the house together and decorate it without having to bake the ingredients as well.

other ingredients include

Cheap Chocolate Peanuts

One tube of Smarties

One bar of Milka White Chocolate

Marshmallow Biscuit Snowmen

and finally Ginger Bread Stars and Penguins which we bought more for the extra ingredients more than the ginger bread itself.

The first thing we needed to do was too construct our house,we used some icing glue that was included with the Ginger Bread House kit,this is me using my pretty swag gluing skills.

This is Maff fitting the roof on our Ginger Bread Home, he is a perfect craftsman and hes looking pretty snazzy in his Christmas Jumper.

At this point the house was looking quite nice, it was a little bear and could most definitely benefit from some tasty decorations but before that we decided that we needed to scrape away any glue that was leaking through the roof and walls.

Next we melted up some of that delicious and creamy Milka chocolate and we then spread the white chocolate on to the roof to help create a snow effect.

Once the our chocolate snow roof had hardened we decorated the base of our house with some Peanut M and M’s, we originally intended to do the whole house like this but the M and M’s were much too heavy.

Maff had this brilliant idea of creating a path to our house using tiny marshmallows, in this image you can also see him starting to draw around the doors and windows with red icing to help them stand out more.

I decided to take the liberty of adding a smarty to the door knobs of each of the doors, and I also added a pattern of smarties to the top of both the front and back of the house.

And that’s it we finished our epic masterpiece, we finalized the house by adding a lot of icing sugar to the roof to give the snow some fluff, we also added two residents to our home.

Unfortunately we never had time to eat the ginger bread house but I’m sure it would have tasted delicious, if it helps we did each eat a snowman and they tasted vile.

Thanks for reading my first collaboration blog.

big thanks to What Maff Said for joining me you can check out Maffs Blog here

http://www.whatmaffsaid.co.uk/

go on give him some love

I know today was meant to be for the movie review, I have been very busy the past few days and I promise that the film review will be uploaded tomorrow so for the mean time I hope this will do.

Merry Christmas

By Padawan.

Remember the Night (1940) Review

December 14, 2015December 14, 2015 ragglefragglereviewsLeave a comment

Its Christmas time and Lee Leander (Barbara Stanwyck) a Local Crook has just been caught shoplifting, she is being prosecuted by a Lawyer called John Sargent (Fred MacMurray),the trial is postponed as it is difficult to get a conviction during the Christmas season.

John feels bad for Lee having to spend Christmas behind bars so he pays her bail and ends up taking her to his mothers for Christmas instead.

John and Lee spend a lot of time together during Christmas, they spend a lot of it with John’s loving family which was a real treat for Lee as her family are complete arse holes, the memories and time spent together over Christmas combined with the atmosphere of a loving family causes John and Lee to fall in love.

This may seem really sweet but there is a massive problem, John is meant to be putting Lee in jail so how are they going to fix this issue in the court room?

The conclusion may surprise you

Remember the Night is a fantastic Christmas movie, its an emotional experience that will leave you wanting more when it finishes, the cast are great I particularly enjoyed the character of Lee Leander she is a really lovely girl but you can definitely sense how sly she is whenever she’s on screen, I was honestly really surprised by how good this film was, its charming, its emotional and its definitely gonna tug at your heart strings.

you do not want to skip this one this year.

Thanks for reading my Review of Remember the Night

The next Christmas movie I will review is

you can contact me at ragglefragglereviews@gmail.com

Beauty and the Beast the Enchanted Christmas (1997) Review

December 12, 2015December 12, 2015 ragglefragglereviewsLeave a comment

“WHO DISTURBES MY CHRISTMAS !!!”

Do you remember that cute scene in Beauty and the Beast where Belle and the Beast played in the snow and started to fall in love with each other?

Do you wonder or even care about what else happened on that cold winter day?

Me neither but Disney wants more money so in 1997 they made up a load of nonsense and chucked it on a VHS tape for the whole family to enjoy.

The Story to the Enchanted Christmas is that a Pipe Organ called Forte (Voiced by Tim Curry) is mad at Belle because she is stealing his Master who only now appreciates Forte’s music after the enchantress cast the Beasts curse, Forte’s music helps to soothe the Beasts pain caused by this event

Yes that’s right we went from one of the greatest villains ever made (Gaston) to a magic Pipe Organ.

Belle tries to teach the Beast about the magic of Christmas but this saddens him because it was on Christmas eve that he was cursed and Christmas only reminds him of his old ways.

Forte hears of this and he tricks Belle into leaving the Castle to find a Christmas tree in the Black Forest, Forte tells the Beast and this makes him mad so he runs off to find and scald Belle

Will Belle ever be found by the Beast?

Will the Evil Forte be stopped?

Will the Beast ever love Christmas?

Do you care?

No of course you don’t because its ridiculous and that’s where all of the movies problems begin, the plot is dumb and doesn’t make any sense at all because all of the events in this film are never mentioned in the original movie so its like they never happened, Tim Curry is annoying and so is everyone else I couldn’t even stand Belle in this film and shes my favorite Disney Character of all time, the animation is no where near up to par with the quality of the animation in the first movie, the songs have terrible lyrics and again are very annoying, when the characters talk the animation is out of sync with the dialogue, all of the new characters are boring and pointless but I will admit that the axe was kind of cool and finally it is so obvious that this was only made as a quick cash grab for Disney.

Beauty and the Beast the Enchanted Christmas is a revolting mess of a film, its an insult to the original movie and in some way it has slightly ruined it for me because now every time I see the winter scene I just know that this piece of crap is apparently going to happen even if I cant see it.

Thanks for reading my Review of Beauty and the Beast the Enchanted Christmas

The next Christmas movie I will review is

you can contact me at ragglefragglereviews@gmail.com

It’s a Very Merry Muppet Christmas (2002) Review

December 10, 2015December 10, 2015 ragglefragglereviewsLeave a comment

It’s Christmas Eve and an evil business woman is going to legally own the Muppet Theater if Kermit and his friends cant raise enough money to pay off the Theater’s loan.

This movie is brilliant and not in the sense that its a perfect movie but more to do with the films premise, for those who are unaware this film is a Muppet’s version of It’s a Wonderful life.

Of course its not as dark and depressing but it does have a lot of charm and originality for what is essentially a remake of an already existing property, the Muppet’s are great as usual and they provide a lot of very funny jokes including some that are purely for the adults.

Whoopi Goldberg plays an amazing God, its so funny to see such a chilled out lord of the universe and who wouldn’t love a God who is a massive fan of Spongebob? (from the movie haha not sure if Whoopi really loves Spongebob)

There are so many references in this film from Steve Irwin to Star Wars, the only reference I didn’t like was the Grinch and that was because instead of choosing to reference the original they chose that terrible Jim Carrey Movie.

I don’t know how they do it,but somehow almost every Muppet movie has a sad song that makes me cry in this case its about Kermit wanting his life back, trust me guys this rivals the goodbye song from Muppet’s Take Manhatten.

It’s a Very Merry Muppet Christmas is a surprisingly very good film, its not perfect but its nice and that all you really need for a decent family flick, all of the actors, actresses and Muppet’s do a fantastic job and the film is genuinely quite charming.

Do yourself a favor and pick this one up this year.

Thanks for reading my Review of It’s a Very Merry Muppet Christmas

The next Christmas movie I will review is

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO !!!!!!

You can contact me at ragglefragglereviews@gmail.com

Ernest Saves Christmas (1988) Review

December 8, 2015 ragglefragglereviews3 Comments

“The Name is Santa Claus!!!”

Ernest played by the late Jim Varney (who many of you will recognize as the voice of the Slinky Dog in the Toy Story movies), is a hapless taxi driver working on Christmas eve, he drops a passenger off at the airport and it just so happens that the next person to hop in his cab is Santa Claus.

After almost 100 years of service Santa is ready to retire and pass the sack over to someone new, the person he has in mind is ex children’s show presenter called Joe Carruthers.

Santa tries to explain to Joe who he is but of course everyone thinks he’s crazy which results in him being arrested and ridiculed.

Without giving away all of the best the bits, that’s pretty much the entire movie, Santa needs to convince Joe that he isn’t crazy before 7pm on Christmas Eve because otherwise Christmas will have to be cancelled, and of course only cinemas biggest idiot is able to save the day.

Ernest Saves Christmas is the weirdest Christmas movie I have ever seen, the Jokes are really bizarre and half of the time I’m not even sure if they are jokes, even though this isn’t the best written movie of all time, its really bland and most of time it doesn’t make any sense but somehow it’s really entertaining and I blame that mostly on how genuinely badly written and weird the movie is, of course Jim Varney as usual does a fantastic job as the lovable idiot Ernest and the guy who plays Santa Claus is amazing, he has the perfect look,tone of voice and personality for a Santa Claus character and I don’t think anyone could do a better job.

It’s a terrible and perfect movie that everyone should watch at least once.

Thanks for reading my Review of Ernest Saves Christmas

The next Christmas movie I will review is

You can contact me at ragglefragglereviews@gmail.com