Obscure Christmas Part 3: Rescue Me from the demonic mother-in-law.

(The "Obscure Christmas Series" is a continuation of some of the more lesser-known films inside the holiday canon and/or just movies that failed to ignite the box office and disappeared into a snowy oblivion.)

The Ref. 

Well, okay.....so this movie isn't THAT obscure, but I always felt it got lost in the DVD holiday shuffle when everybody else was watching Ralphie get pushed down the toy store slide for the 9,491,567th time or listening to Cousin Eddie explain to Clark why he was emptying his RV chemical toilet into the sewer.  

This movie HAS to be on this list just for the sole fact of Denis Leary.  He's the king of all that is fed-up. Sure, some people moan and groan that he stole his whole act from the late, great Bill Hicks, but it wouldn't surprise me if both Hicks and Leary conspired before Bill's death to have Denis carry on Hicks's material as one last Andy Kaufman-esque style joke.

But I'm getting off the point here.  The Ref  is one of those movies that has a certain charm to it, even if it is constantly profane throughout.  The film was released in March of 1994, with an awesome trailer of Leary doing his trademark rant at the camera while a tagline pops up at the end claiming, "The ultimate Christmas movie is coming this spring." (Sadly, this fantastic trailer has never resurfaced anywhere on DVD or otherwise. So because of no evidence, I could be perceived as a total nut-job and I just hallucinated the whole thing.  Thank you, Buena Vista!)

The story involves one bickering couple (played with great aplomb by then non-Oscar winner Kevin Spacey and the always on-target Judy Davis.)  Christmas is coming, and they've both left their marriage counselor with so much hate for each other that you'd think that they're both ready to burn each other's SAG card.

Enter Leary, a cat burglar on-the-run, who decides at the last minute to take the wrong married couple hostage as leverage to get himself out of the country.  We all know how great Leary can be, and not to make this review sound bias (Well, OK I guess I will...who cares anyway), but the movie would not work without Leary's mad-as-hell protagonist.  The upcoming events he faces with the Dysfunctional Family From Hades is nothing short of amazing. 

Spacey and Davis are exceptionally good here.  Their constant bickering would normally get old after 5 minutes in another movie, but it's the comic timing of each that make it work.   And while Leary always seems to one-up them at every turn, you can't help but feel a little sorry for what these people have to endure in the duration of 93 minutes.

I must make note of the great British actress Glynis Johns (most people remember her as sister-suffragette Mrs. Banks from Disney's Mary Poppins). Here, she's with Disney's Touchstone Pictures to create one of the most repulsive, smug, and egotistic mother-in-laws from hell you will ever meet.  I swear, this blogger wanted to reach inside the damn cathode-ray tube and beat the woman to death with a sledge hammer.  She's THAT discomforting.  

The movie has some weak points, such as a subplot with  inept police officers trying to track down Leary which involves a videotaped broadcast of It's A Wonderful Life, (yeah, we get it...they're really stupid), and a worn-out joke involving the scent of cat piss (How many times can you say, "What's that smell?"), but they're all minor in comparison to the film's awesomeness.

Watch this one on a night when you've had a bad day at work, you come home to bickering in-laws, and you just feel like you want to take a machete (not Danny Trejo) and start severing some heads.  Nothing puts you in the mood for the season than Tommy Gavin vs. a mother-in-law lusus naturae.  


The Ref, 1994
Grade: A -