Mrs. Claus (Mira Sorvino) has left the North Pole and is living it up in Las Vegas!
Now, don’t panic. The plot of 2012’s Finding Mrs. Claus does not involve the Kringles going to divorce court. Can you imagine how traumatic that would be? It would ruin Christmas for everyone and I have a feeling that Santa probably wouldn’t put much effort into his job afterwards. Or, even worse, the court might award the Workshop to Mrs. Claus and she might let her new boyfriend, Tony the Gigolo, take over the business. If that ever happens, I hope everyone’s okay with their chimneys smelling like Axe body spray on Christmas morning.
Fortunately, Mrs. Claus and Kris (Will Sasso) are still very much in love. It’s just that Mrs. Claus gets upset when she sees how exhausted Kris is at the end of the day. When she comes across a letter from a little girl in Las Vegas who wants her mom to find a new husband for Christmas, Mrs. Claus decides to give her husband a break and take care of it herself. With the help of Calvin the Elf (Geoff Gustafson), she loses his white wig and her old German clothes and she is transformed into …. well, Mira Sorvino. Mrs. Claus heads to Las Vegas, intent on spreading Christmas cheer.
Kris, when he wakes up, is not happy to discover that his wife is missing. Grabbing Calvin, he heads down to Vegas to find her. (He loses the beard on the way to America.) If Kris can’t find Mrs. Claus before Christmas, there’s going to be a lot of disappointed children in the world. While Mrs. Claus tried to find a husband for Noelle (Laura Vandervoort), Kris tries to find his wife.
And yes, as you probably already guessed as soon as I mentioned that this movie takes place in Las Vegas, there is an Elvis impersonator sight gag. It happens quickly but seriously, it’s a Lifetime Christmas film that’s set in Vegas. There has to be an Elvis impersonator somewhere!
What’s that? Do I hear you being cynical out there? Well, stop it! It’s a cute movie! It’s a holiday movie that features Mira Sorvino being glamorous as Mrs. Claus and Will Sasso being cheerfully clueless as Santa. Both Sorvino and Sasso really throw themselves into their roles and the fact that both of them are so well-intentioned but yet so naive about life outside of the North Pole actually make their story a rather sweet one. While Mrs. Claus understood the importance of blending in with Las Vegas, Santa never seemed to get why anyone would doubt him when he explained what he did for a living.
In the end, this is the type of silly, sentimental, and earnest film that works nicely during the holidays. The holiday season is a good time to be reminded that not everything has to be dark and depressing. Towards the end of the film, a character spots a shooting star and makes a wish and it’s hard not to feel that it’s a moment that the film has earned.
Bill Dancer (James Belushi), a homeless drifter and small-time con artist, and his 9 year old companion Curly Sue (Alisan Porter), survive by running somewhat harmless scams against rich people. While traveling through Chicago they target Grey Ellison (Kelly Lynch), a rich, career-focused divorce attorney, tricking her into thinking that she ran over Bill with her Mercedes. Normally the pair are just after a free meal and maybe a little cash, but Bill doesn’t have the heart to take too much from Grey since she’s so darn pretty. Through a variety of circumstances, she actually does run over Bill the next day. This time she brings him and Curly Sue up to her fancy apartment so he can recover, despite the objections from her snobby boyfriend Walker (John Getz). As the three get to know each other, Grey forms an especially close connection with Curly Sue, and learns that Bill isn’t her actual dad, even though he’s raised her since she was a baby. Knowing that Grey can give Curly Sue a better life than he can, Bill thinks about leaving. But can he ever leave the girl he sees as a daughter? And can Grey discover a compassion for others and the maternal instinct that she’s been missing?
As is often the case with movies I choose to write about, I had a sense of nostalgic warmth while watching CURLY SUE this morning for the first time in three decades. I saw CURLY SUE at the movie theater with my high school girlfriend in the fall of 1991. I remember enjoying the film and even buying it on VHS as a gift for my mom because I knew she would like it. In the years before she could record her Hallmark movies on her DVR, Mom watched that VHS tape many times.
Quite different from his classic teen comedies, CURLY SUE, which is the final film directed by John Hughes, can only be described as unapologetically sentimental. Sure the movie is formulaic and pure syrup, but I still enjoy it anyway. This heartwarming fairy tale will make you believe that an unconventional, loving family can emerge from the most unexpected of circumstances. It will suggest that there are some things more important than any amount of money can buy. It will make you laugh out loud at times, and yes, it will even bring a tear to your eye as some of the more emotional scenes play out. CURLY SUE wants to manipulate its audience’s emotions, and it will happen if you just go with it. On the down side, if you catch this film in the wrong kind of mood, or if you’re feeling especially cynical, that magic will disappear and you probably won’t enjoy the movie at all.
As for the performances, as a fan of James Belushi, I like him as the gruff but likable Bill. I also enjoy Kelly Lynch as the she evolves from a person married to her work to someone who starts to care deeply about the people around her. Probably the most important performance in the film comes from Alisan Porter as Curly Sue. If you don’t find her cute and adorable, then you’ll probably have a hard time watching the movie. I personally found her to be quite precious so that was not a problem for me. Once again, the movie version of early 90’s Chicago as our setting is something I enjoy as well.
Overall, CURLY SUE is not in the same league as Hughes’ best work like PLANES, TRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES, and there will be many who downright dislike the schmaltzy nature of the film. However, if you’re in a nostalgic mood for an earnest, early ‘90s heart-tugger, this movie might just hit the spot.
Porky’s is one of those movies that plays very differently depending on when you first see it. On the surface, it is a loud, lewd early‑’80s teen sex comedy about a bunch of high‑school boys in 1950s Florida trying to get laid and get even, but underneath the pranks and bare flesh there are streaks of surprisingly serious material about prejudice, masculinity, and power. That mix of dopey laughs and darker undercurrents is exactly what makes the film interesting to talk about, and also what makes it so divisive today.
Set in the 1950s and released in 1981, Porky’s follows a tight‑knit group of teenage boys whose main goals in life are sex, sports, and practical jokes. Their adventures eventually take them to Porky’s, a sleazy backwater strip club run by the hulking, corrupt Porky, who humiliates them and sets up the revenge plot that drives the back half of the film. Around that spine, the story wanders through locker‑room banter, elaborate pranks, and various attempts to sneak into the girls’ showers or otherwise spy on naked bodies. It is very much a “horny boys on the prowl” narrative, and the film never pretends to be anything else.
What keeps it from being just another disposable sex comedy is the way some of those side stories hit harder than expected. One of the kids is brutally abused by his father, and the film doesn’t treat it like a throwaway detail; those scenes have a rawness and anger that clash with the goofy tone elsewhere. There is also a thread about anti‑Semitism and racism in their community, with one character confronting his own bigoted upbringing as he befriends a Jewish classmate and pushes back against the prejudice around him. That material is handled in a pretty straightforward, earnest way, which is jarring given how crude the surrounding humor can be, but it does show that writer‑director Bob Clark had more on his mind than dirty jokes.
The humor, for better or worse, is what most people remember. Porky’s leans heavily on slapstick and sex‑obsessed gag setups: peeping through holes in shower walls, mistaken identities during sex, ridiculous anatomical bragging, prank phone calls, and elaborate schemes that escalate into full‑on chaos. Some of the set pieces are staged with real comic timing, and if you’re on its wavelength, these sequences can still land as big, cathartic laughs. Others feel juvenile in the worst way, stretching one joke way past its breaking point, or punching down at easy targets rather than punching up at the hypocritical adults the boys are constantly butting up against.
Viewed from today’s lens, a big chunk of that humor is undeniably uncomfortable. The movie is saturated with sexist, homophobic, and racist language, and a few of the “pranks” involving the girls are essentially sexual harassment played for laughs. At the time, it was sold as a gleefully politically incorrect romp; now, those same scenes read as mean‑spirited or creepy in a way that undercuts the supposed lighthearted tone. The film occasionally tries to complicate this by giving some of the female characters sharper edges or letting them turn the tables, but it never fully escapes the fact that the camera is mostly aligned with the boys and their fantasies.
That said, Porky’s is not entirely dismissive of its women. There are moments where adult women, in particular, are allowed to call out the boys’ behavior or assert their own sexuality in ways that undercut the usual “conquest” narrative. The movie also makes a point of ridiculing hypocritical authority figures—teachers, coaches, cops, and parents—whose prudish public morals don’t match their private behavior. When Porky’s is skewering bigotry, religious hypocrisy, and small‑town moral panics, it feels sharper and more progressive than its reputation as a dumb “tits‑and‑ass” comedy suggests. Those flashes of insight are part of why some viewers argue that, beneath the sleaze, the film is quietly critical of the very attitudes it seems to indulge.
Performance‑wise, the cast is made up largely of unknowns who sell the illusion that this is a real, scrappy group of friends rather than polished Hollywood teens. The camaraderie feels genuine; their constant ribbing, in‑jokes, and shifting alliances are believable enough that you can see why the movie became a touchstone for a certain generation of viewers. Bob Clark’s direction is surprisingly controlled for such an anarchic script. He keeps the story moving, balances multiple subplots, and stages the bigger comic payoffs in a way that feels almost like a live‑action cartoon. The downside is that this slickness can make the nastier gags pop more, for better and worse.
On a technical level, Porky’s is very much a product of its time, but not a cheap one. The period detail—cars, music, clothing, diners, and dingy roadside bars—helps sell the 1950s setting, giving the film a nostalgic sheen that softens some of its rougher edges. The soundtrack leans on era‑appropriate rock and roll, which adds energy to the locker‑room and party scenes. The film also doesn’t shy away from male nudity, which was less common in comedies of the time and adds to its reputation as equal‑opportunity when it comes to what it exposes, even if the gaze is still clearly tilted toward ogling women.
Where Porky’s can stumble is in tone. The shifts between broad farce and serious drama can be abrupt. One minute you are watching a drawn‑out gag about a teacher trying to identify a student by his anatomy; the next, you are plunged into a grim confrontation with an abusive parent. That whiplash can pull you out of the movie, because the emotional weight of the dramatic scenes doesn’t always get enough breathing room before the script lurches back to naughty antics. As a result, some viewers feel the darker elements trivialize real issues, while others think those same scenes give the film more substance than its imitators.
Even if someone has never seen Porky’s, they have probably felt its influence. The film was a massive box‑office hit relative to its budget and paved the way for a wave of raunchy teen comedies through the ’80s and ’90s, eventually echoing into movies like American Pie and beyond. Its success made it clear that there was a huge audience for R‑rated, adolescent sex comedies that mixed crude jokes with a veneer of coming‑of‑age sentiment. You can see its blueprint in later films: packs of horny friends, elaborate revenge schemes, school authority figures as comic foils, and a big, raucous set piece as the payoff.
Whether Porky’s “holds up” is going to depend a lot on your tolerance for outdated attitudes and offensive language. If you go in expecting a cozy nostalgia trip, you may be surprised by how sour some jokes taste now, and how casually the film treats behavior that would be framed very differently in a modern story. If you approach it as both a time capsule and the prototype of a genre, it becomes easier to see its strengths—the lively ensemble, the willingness to poke at racism and hypocrisy, the low‑budget ingenuity in its set pieces—alongside its very real flaws.
Porky’s is neither the hidden gem some defenders make it out to be nor the irredeemable trash its harshest critics describe. It is a messy, uneven, often funny, often cringeworthy movie that captures a particular moment in pop culture, both in what it laughs at and what it takes for granted. If you are curious about the roots of modern raunchy teen comedies and prepared for the rough, politically incorrect ride, it is still worth a look as a piece of film history and as an example of how comedy ages—for better and for worse.
On Christmas Eve, a miserly businessman is visited by a series of ghosts who help him understand the true meaning of Christmas, along with showing him a frightening vision of a possible future.
And that businessman was named …. Benedict Slade!
Yeah, the name’s have been changed and the action has been updated to Depression-era New England but this is basically the story of Scrooge. Henry Winkler stars as the Scrooge character in the 1979 made-for-TV movie. His old age make-up was done by none other than Rick Baker!
You might recognize today’s song of the day from the opening credits of Boardwalk Empire, the Martin Scorsese-produced show that starred Steve Buscemi, who is celebrating a birthday today.
In today’s scene of the day, from 1992’s Reservoir Dogs, Mr. Pink explains why he doesn’t tip. Only Steve Buscemi could make a non-tipper named Mr. Pink into the film’s most likable character.
4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!
Today, the Shattered Lens wishes a happy birthday to the one and only Steve Buscemi. It’s time for….
4 Shots From 4 Steve Buscemi Films
Reservoir Dogs (1992, dir by Quentin Tarantino, DP: Andrzej Sekuła)
Fargo (1996, dir by the Coen Brothers, DP: Roger Deakins)
Trees Lounge (1996, dir by Steve Buscemi, DP: Lisa Rinzler)
The Death of Stalin (2017, dir by Armando Iannucci, DP: Zac Nicholson)
As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly live tweets on twitter. I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of #MondayActionMovie! Every week, we get together. We watch a movie. We tweet our way through it.
Tonight, for #ScarySocial, I will be hosting 2025’s Shiver Me Timbers!
If you want to join us on Saturday night, just hop onto twitter, start the film at 9 pm et, and use the #ScarySocial hashtag! The film is available on Prime and Tubi! I’ll be there co-hosting and I imagine some other members of the TSL Crew will be there as well. It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy!
Apparently, this song was inspired by a music industry cocktail party that the band attended. It was also apparently inspired by Bob Dylan’s feelings towards the industry, though Dylan was not involved in recording or performing the song.
As for the video, what’s interesting is how literally it interprets the song. Seriously, the poor guy really is stuck in the middle and he really does have clowns and jokers to either side of him!
Through the Shattered Lens 