In the late 1980s, a boy makes it a mission to get the most innovative video-game console, the Nintendo.
Funny, Christmassy, and a little didactic. While most of it takes place in the 80s, personally, I didn’t get the Goonies (1985) vibe. Maybe it’s the 21st-century camera angles, lack of chroma noise, mise-en-scene, editing, etc, or, simply, the character development that is kinda 80s, but for whoever lived through it actually isn’t. Even though it is considerably funny, in my humble opinion, it betrays the funny moments by emphasising them with the editor to cut right on them, leaving nothing naturally in the background or to the imagination. This way it gives the impression that it tries to be funny a little bit more than it does. BUT… that’s just me and in a film like this, it does not really matter, anyway. I guess I am overthinking it when the expectations of celebratory films should be raised to the levels of entertainment and not to the levels of innovation.
Written by Kevin Jakubowski and directed by Michael Dowse, 8-bit Christmas is a Christmas film for the whole family and it is about family values and friendship. More particularly, about family values and friendship over materialistic pleasures and selfish needs. What’s more, 80s or not, it is a well-narrated story, by a dad to his daughter, about how things once were. And that’s something diachronic, something that will never die out, something that will always have been and always will be passed down from generation to generation. Neil Patrick Harris, Steve Zahn, June Diane Raphael, and every single child actor will put a big smile on your face!
8-bit Christmas is an old-wine-new-bottle “journey vs. destination” with an excessive suspension of disbelief and a sentimental ending for the whole family. A great must-watch for this Christmas period to forget, even for just over an hour and a half, this season’s difficulties.
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