Rating:

Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve entered something of a Holiday dead zone in terms of entertainment. You see, I do my best to keep myself in the Christmas spirit for the entire month of December (and well before it, as much as I can). But there’s a week or so when I feel almost at a loss. There are several films and activities which certainly will entertain me in an especially festive way, but in my opinion they’re far too Christmasy to achieve their best effects this early in the month.

In other words, I just don’t want to watch certain movies before at least a week or two before Christmas. And it’s even harder when I’m trying to think of quality films worth talking about with you people.

So I was in despair this weekend until I saw my old VHS tape of Trapped In Paradise, an average comedy about Christmastime bank robbers and their small-town exploits. Here was the perfect film to review at such a lull in my personal Holiday timeline. More perfect still for today, since it’s one of those movies which seem to be made for lazy Sunday afternoon viewing.

The story concerns a law-abiding but highly irritable Bill Firpo, played, as all highly irritable characters are, by Nicholas Cage. Bill has two convict brothers with particularly Christmasy names–Dave (Jon Lovitz) and Alvin (Dana Carvey).

We open on Bill, who has just received custody of his recently paroled brothers: the cunning Dave, who thinks big but fails bigger, and the small-time kleptomaniac Alvin, who generally walks around taking things without asking, thinking, or even wanting them.

The banter between these three is pretty much the only redeeming part of the movie, and they do have several good moments, including Cage’s line “In the Firpo family, the man with half a brain is king.”

Anyway, his two crafty brothers come out of prison with a whole host of schemes up their sleeves, chief among them a “favor” for a fellow inmate of theirs in the joint.

So they trick Bill into coming along with them to the snowy hamlet of Paradise, Pennsylvania. It’s a small town with infinitely trusting and unsuspecting inhabitants, not the least of which is the bank manager, who the brothers have set out to rob.

Too late, Bill realizes exactly what’s going on, and before you know it they’ve got bags full of money and a massive blizzard blowing into town. And, as with all small towns, a blizzard simply means that you are trapped there. The roads are snowed in, the bridges are out, and everyone is nestled inside except the friendly police officers, who the brothers see all too many of in their evening in Paradise.

Another thing they run across is a boatload of good Samaritans and kind, gentle folk who will drop absolutely anything–including their Christmas Eve dinner–to help the three men out, perceiving them merely as stranded out of towners, certainly not three criminals who have the town’s entire nest egg in their possession.

Well, as you can expect from a Christmas film, all this faith, hope and charity start to get to the warmhearted evildoers–in particular Bill, who becomes smitten with one of the bank’s very tellers (who, in a wacky twist, is the daughter of Dave and Alvin’s fellow inmate).

Anyway, the whole situation comes to a head when the big bad inmate rolls into town, along with special investigators and increasingly suspicious small town cops. There are lessons learned, chase scenes aplenty, and enough heartwarming moments to make you want it to snow outside already (it hasn’t where I live).

Unfortunately, all those chase scenes and warm sentiments must have sucked all of the creativity out of the screenwriters, because this comedy is exceptionally short on jokes or even memorable moments. It’s mostly useful as a diversion, until you can make it to the more important films on your holiday list, like “The Ref,” “Christmas Vacation,” and “A Christmas Story.”

If You Hated This, You Will Also Totally Hate:

• A Chipmunk Christmas
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• A Wish for Wings That Work
• Tom and Jerry: A Nutcracker Tale
• How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000)