With some free time on my hands early last evening due to the anticipated late arrival home of my younger brother, I opted to use our Android TV Box to find and watch a Christmas movie ─ specifically, 2010's The Santa Incident.
Unfortunately, the only sources I could locate were all at YouTube, and each of them was just a duplication of the other. The problems with that began with the quality of the video being extremely poor, with blurry or melted faces and other such detail loss.
All versions had Dutch or some similar subtitling, but that wasn't really a problem ─ or shouldn't be for anyone who isn't exceptionally picky.
But the movie began with two young kids ─ a little girl and her somewhat older brother ─ short-cutting through a dock or train yard and talking together. There was no display of opening credits or anything of that nature, and I immediately had the impression that the feature I was watching had skipped the early beginning of the full movie.
However, as said, when I tried to watch it at any of the other possible YouTube sources, it was no different. As well, all of them listed the length of the movie ─ as displayed by the video player's timer scroll bar ─ to be something like two hours and 50 minutes. Yet the movie was only supposed to be something under 1½ hours.
So why wasn't the full opening apparently present, and just what else was there supposed to be that was added to the movie?
With no choice but to resign myself to watching the feature from where it insisted on beginning, I then allowed myself to become as involved as I could. I even had two cans of strong (8% alcohol) beer to enhance that involvement.
The movie was clearly for children, but I was still enjoying its innocence. I particularly enjoyed the vast unlikelihood that a nurse who had two young children would bring home the strange somewhat elderly vagabond whose life her two kids had evidently saved when they pulled him from some railway tracks that he was laying across while unconscious from a head injury.
The mother not only brought home the stranger, but she often left him alone with her children while she went off for one reason or another. He had the run of the house, even though I believe that he was sleeping in the garage.
This actually made me feel quite good, rather than setting off alarm bells. After all, it was a wholesome Christmas movie ─ not a cautionary tale on how not to endanger one's children.
The two Homeland Security agents were a delight ─ one a trusting, guileless subordinate; and the other a know-it-all believer in sinister alien invaders, and who was played by very familiar actor Greg Germann. The pair were so ridiculously amateurish that it was actually endearing.
The two kids were sweethearts, and the trusting single mother was very likeable ─ the actress portraying her was Ione Skye, but I was not really at all familiar with her. She looked like I might have seen her before, but I would be very surprised that I should be able to still recognize her if indeed I did see one or more of her roles in the past.
Her name also seemed like I ought to be familiar with it to some degree, but I don't know why. The fact that her father is Donovan was a surprise, but there was no reason that being his daughter should make her in any way remotely familiar to me ─ by name or face. I don't really know anything about Donovan's personal life.
Incidentally, the little girl in the movie was played by actress Ali Lyons, whom I knew nothing about. However, apparently she had a small role in the T.V. series Game of Thrones, but I don't recall the part.
Alas, just as the movie seemed to have begun, this one ended similarly. That is, just as we are deep into our happy ending, single mom (actress Ione Skye) seems about to be proposed to by her police officer sort-of-boyfriend...and suddenly the movie jumps back to a far earlier section of the production and starts replaying from there.
That was where all of the extra duration to the video came from ─ a replay of most of the film. However, it does not replay as far as to where the first segment ended, so the proposal or whatever was to have happened is not available.
It was quite disappointing, and I have no idea why the jackass who uploaded the video to YouTube has done this ─ nor why any of the copycats who also have a copy of the video there would want to perform the same disservice to people who wanted to see the film.
It's a deep shame. Had the whole movie been made available, I might have watched it again this coming Christmastime if my brother brings his girlfriend Bev to spend a couple of days with us as he has done over recent Christmases.
There was one thing about the storyline that I wish had been explained ─ to wit, why did the father of the kids just skip out on the family some years before? The kids loved and missed him, and even their mother seemed not to have ever fathomed why he abandoned them.
And I see that somehow time has run away from me ─ it is already 7:30 p.m., and I must be free to get to bed if my brother is not home by his 8:30 p.m. deadline. Heck, I even have some exercising yet to do.
I must go!
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