Eddie Murphy has always been an icon of Comedy movies, surrounded by so many fans that support and enjoy his work and lately, Eddie has been working on mostly streaming service movies such as Coming 2 America, You People, Dolemite Is My Name, the upcoming Beverly Hills Cop 4, and now, Candy Cane Lane, which believe it or not, is the second best Christmas movie I’ve seen this year so far.
A man is determined to win the neighborhood’s annual Christmas decorating contest. He makes a pact with an elf to help him win–and the elf casts a spell that brings the 12 days of Christmas to life, which brings unexpected chaos to town.
Look, making a Christmas movie nowadays is hard, because everything good that was considered “original” has been done already, most of your Christmas favorite movies were released like over 10-15 years ago or even longer. Candy Cane Lane does what none of the holiday movies I’ve seen this year did, they try to make a story that could be as original as possible, and I loved how it made me feel, it felt refreshing, different. Bringing the 12 days of Christmas to life was definitely something I did not see it coming and I was pleasantly surprised. I watched this movie without experiencing any trailers nor teasers, I went with no expectations but hoping to enjoy, and hey! I did!
Eddie Murphy’s charisma is out of this world and that’s what makes his movies so unique and funny, he’s a great actor and this has not been changed here. The movie is not perfect and also has its problems and concerns but, before that, I must talk about my favorite thing about this movie: the cast. Not o my the cast of this movie is great, but the sense of community, family, and togetherness that this film has, it’s a story about love and just like the director Reginald Hudlin told me in a recent interview: that’s all what people need when going through a tough time.
The humor of the movie is mostly well done, the cgi is surprisingly so good and way better than what I expected it to be. Out of all holiday movies I’ve seen so far, this one had definitely the best CGI. I loved the “toys” characters, Nick Offerman, Angela’s Johnson and D.C. Young Fly made an amazing job as their characters and would love to see more of them in a potential continuation to this movie.
And now trying to highlight the issues this movie had. I just can’t get along with Jillian Bell and I don’t think she does a very good job, specially as a villain. She’s uninteresting, boring, forced and totally unfunny. It just feels like she’s always trying so hard to say something funny that ends up not being funny at all and they you get embarrassed for her and things just stay like that. I totally respect the actress but I just don’t think she was very good for the role of the villain of this movie. Same thing for Good Burger 2, where she did an even worse job. And besides that also some pacing issues, specially with this movie being nearly 2 hours, it felt long sometimes and hard to digest.
Despite that and all its issues, Candy Cane Lane is a refreshing and entertaining holiday tale. Eddie Murphy and the whole cast’s charisma makes the movie even more magical. The sense of community and togetherness this film has is a delight to watch. A movie for all ages, make sure to check this one out during this holiday season.
★★★1/2
Candy Cane Lane releases on Amazon Prime Video on December 1
