My Review of "Candy Cane Lane"

Candy Cane Lane is a recent release on Amazon Prime. It felt like a bigger budget holiday movie to get us back into the Christmas holiday spirit. In a sense it does that. As an adult you have to remember that this is a family targeted movie so there will be some really wacky stuff. It's to be expected what these type of movies though.

The movie starts off with Chris our main protagonist going to work and getting laid off. His wife Carol, on the other hand, is on her way to a promotion at work. The two have three children, Nick, Joy and Holly. You probably already noticed all of the Christmas references to all of their names. There's a ton of tongue in cheek jokes like this throughout the movie.

Their daughter Joy is getting ready to go to college but she wants to go to a different college than what her parents want for her. This might be a big thing but I'm not too aware of it. Nick, their son, wants to become a musician. Their parents don't want him to go that direction because they don't think there's a prosperous career in it. Then there's their youngest Holly. She's just a charismatic child that finds love in everything.

During the lead up to Christmas, the family's neighborhood becomes Candy Cane Lane. It's a big house decoration competition for the whole neighborhood. The house across the street from Chris' has won this competition multiple times and Chris is very envious about it.

This year there is the added incentive of a $100000 reward for the best decorated house. Since Chris is out of work he thinks this is the best opportunity for him to win this competition. Also he really wants to stick it to the neighbor that's been winning year after year.

Chris and Holly venture off to find some decoration and they find this weird Christmas pop-up shop in the middle of nowhere. It's fantastic inside but a little bit creepy. The owner, Pepper, is this sneaky woman that seems to be up to no good. I love how they add the comedy of the fact that she's obviously evil yet Chris signs the contract anyways. There's so many signs telling him not to sign either.

Chris will regret this contract that he signs with Pepper because she will send him on a wild goose chase to rectify his purchase. That's really when the movie starts getting wild and crazy. It takes a little to get there but when it does it really gets entertaining.

The cast is really what holds this movie up. I thought they really did a good job bringing some life to the movie. The antics were really wild but the cast was able to ground these situations and keep us with the movie. Rather than rolling our eyes and having our attentions wander off.

I was also pretty impressed with some of the visual effects. Some of them were quite slick. They brought a little extra life to this movie. Yes there are some instances where it's a little over the top. At some moments it seemed like there were two different visual companies doing the visual effects because some of the effects would look so different from the rest of the movie.

Jokes were a hit and miss. Again it's for the whole family so you get a ton of clean wholesome jokes. Once in a while you'll get the weird sexual innuendo jokes that catch you off guard. It's fun and I think it's balanced enough for the whole family.

Overall, I thought this was a fine Christmas movie. I didn't think there was anything extra spectacular other than the outstanding cast. It's fun for the whole family and it does its job pretty well. I have to give this movie a 6.5 out of 10.