Home Alone Pentalogy

Home Alone is the first film I ever saw in theatres. This is probably why I’ve always thought of it as a nostalgia movie, if not the nostalgia movie. Admittedly, it’s no masterpiece. If I saw Home Alone for the first time in my twenties or thirties, I probably wouldn't remember it so well. But I didn’t see it for the first time in my twenties or thirties, I saw it at five, and saw the sequel two or three years after (an eternity for a preteen), so both movies have imprinted themselves into my consciousness, the good leaving a firmer impression than the bad. When I got the whole box set for Christmas last year, I re-watched the first two with my family and I enjoyed the hell out of them. I laughed a lot harder at the Angels With Even Filthier Souls scene in Home Alone 2 than I had laughed for a long time. Then, with the back half of the series already in my possession, I eventually decided, what the heck, I'd watch them too, just to see if they were as bad as I had feared.

Home Alone

The first entry, and the most iconic, is also arguably the best. I remember that there was a pretty big backlash against Macaulay Culkin at the time (as there is against any child actor), but I honestly think that he does a good job at hitting that right mix of fear and courage.

And John Hughes (best known for his teen movies, but equally adept with children and grown-ups) does an excellent job at writing the tension between Kevin and his family. Yes, Kevin is a brat. But then so are all the other kids in the family--not to mention Uncle Frank--they're just better at hiding it. Hughes could have sided entirely with or wholly against Kevin, but instead he wrote him as a decent kid who needs to grow, and the adult McCallisters, loving though they are, as ignorant of their son's lot. 

Incidentally, although Hughes was already a successful director at the time, he didn't direct this movie; that honour goes to Christopher Columbus, who had previously written--but not directed--such classics as Gremlins and The Goonies, and would later go on to direct--but not write--the first two Harry Potter movies.

Of course, Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern are irreplaceable as the burglars and, eventually, would-be murderers, Harry and Marv. Re-watching the movie as an adult, I still think that their physical comedy is hilarious, but they can be horrifying when they need to. (Turns out that seeing an eight-year-old being threatened by two adults is more frightening when you are an adult yourself!)

These men are geniuses.

I was also pleasantly surprised to remember how deep Harry and Marv's characterization actually is. At first, they're surprisingly realistic burglars, more selfish than outright malicious. When they almost run over Kevin, they’re visibly shaken at the thought that they almost killed someone. But their hardships in the McCallister house break them, and before long they're talking about torturing and disfiguring an eight-year-old. We aren't going to get that much character development from many of the villains in the other Home Alone movies.

There's also the subplot of Old Man Marley, Kevin's creepy neighbour (played by Roberts Blossom) who reaches out to and befriends Kevin, and who in turn Kevin later inspires to reunite with his own estranged son. I've read online in a few places that this character was Columbus' idea, because he wanted to add more heart to the story. Whether this was necessary is a matter of opinion--I thought that Mrs. McCallister added enough pathos--but his story does fit very nicely into the larger narrative about family, and the scene at the end, when he saves Kevin from the Wet Bandits, helps emphasize that the movie's theme (the importance of friends and family) and Kevin's personal growth (which sees him becoming less reliant on others) are not mutually exclusive.

The movie's biggest problems are probably that it isn't realistic, and the protagonist isn't all that moral. Much has been said on how lethal most of Kevin's traps would actually be, and legion have argued that the amount of pain Kevin puts the Wet Bandits through would be a better fit for a horror movie. But then every work of art and entertainment has both its good points and its bad points, and every audience member is going to have their own taste insofar as which aspects of a movie to ignore and which ones to embrace. I like the comedy, and I don't mind the breaks from reality, so I like the movie. Nostalgia? Maybe. So what?

Home Alone 2: Lost in New York

Home Alone 2 (in relation to the first movie) reminds me of Twilight Princess (in relation to Ocarina of Time); both are improvements, but ride so blatantly on their parent's coattails that it’s hard to care. The call-backs are so numerous that I can't tell if they're homages or just symptoms of creative constipation.

There are many things to like here. All of New York is a more interesting setting than a single house, and some of the scenes at the Plaza Hotel are, in my opinion, the funniest in the series.

Kevin McCalister, home alone in a well-staffed hotel.

On the other hand, this movie hits mostly the same beats as the first: Kevin fights with his parents, gets separated, and later reunites with his mom. There's also another subplot about the kid befriending a frightening outcast, giving them sage life advice, and then being saved by them from the crooks. All of the movies have some variant on this plot point, though most of the sequels mix it up a bit more than this one does. The Pigeon Lady (unnamed; played by Brenda Fricker) is by far the most direct knockoff of the first movie's Old Man Marley--the only notable twist being that, this time around, Kevin makes the effort to start a conversation with her, instead of her initiating the conversation with Kevin. It's nice to see how much Kevin has grown since the first movie, and The Pigeon Lady is, in terms of both writing and acting, probably the best variant on this archetype. But there's no arguing the lack of originality.

There are a few other issues which, like those of the first movie, are fairly glaring, but don't bother me all that much: some of the coincidences (most notably Kevin winding up in New York at the same time as Harry and Marv) are ridiculous, Harry and Marv have degenerated into cartoon villains, and Kevin has somehow aged two years in only 365 days. But these things only really hurt the second in relation to the first; if this were a standalone picture, I think it would be as good as the original, if not better.

Home Alone 3

If 2 is more of the same, but better, then 3 is a watered-down version. The first two movies are about more than just the slapstick break-in at then end; they're about a young, somewhat bratty child, who fights with his family, then must fend without them. The second movie didn't live up to the name, but at least matched the spirit. The third movie does not--Alex Pruitt is home and alone, thanks to a case of the chickenpox, but only the latter while his parents are at work. (In fact, from here on out, the parents will leave their kids alone for only briefer periods of time and across much smaller geographic distances.) Alex doesn't get along with his siblings, but is much closer with his parents, so on the whole there is less internal conflict. The only real hostilities occurs when Alex is wrongfully accused of making false calls to the police, and even that doesn't add that much to the drama--it's mostly just there to explain why he doesn't phone the cops for the climax.

None of which would be a problem, if the older story was replaced by a more (or equally) interesting one. But it wasn't; instead, Home Alone 3 focuses all its energy on a story about a group of spies searching for a valuable chip hidden inside Alex's toy car. The bad guys have doubled in number and presumably grown in training and skill, though this does little to aid them in their fight against a child. And, considering one of these spies is actually dumb enough to try walking down a set of stairs, with a pair of toy trucks glued to his feet, I'd have to say that even Marv would have the advantage against them in a contest of the brains.

Now with computer chips.

As an interesting side-note, this movie starts the trend of giving each criminal group a female member. To the franchise`s credit, these ladies are always just as dumb as their male counterparts, and always carry their weight in the slapstick department, so they never feel tacked-on.

On the whole, the spies are not as memorable as Pesci or Stern, but the slapstick is of comparable quality, and the traps are as clever and as brutal as ever. One bad guy gets a running lawn mower dropped on his face and escapes with but a few scratches--a perfect example of what this series is all about.

Okay, I’ll admit that I enjoyed the third movie more than I was expecting, but nowhere near as much as the first two. Alex isn’t as interesting a character as Kevin, the quartet of spies lack Harry and Marv’s Wile E. Coyote-esque charm, and the emotional centre was replaced by a silly and unthrilling spy story.

Home Alone 4

The fourth entry is probably the worst in the series. Alex is gone, replaced by someone named Kevin McCallister (played by Mike Weinberg). Although this Kevin is now nine, has only two siblings, and is far less of a brat, he does have a couple of similarities to the original Kevin, including a history of being left alone to fend off burglars named Harry and Marv. But the call-backs and the inconsistencies seem to be playing tug-of-war, trying to force this movie into the realm of a sequel or a reboot without really letting it rest comfortably in either. Frankly, this movie probably would have made more sense as a direct sequel to Home Alone 3--the kid's personality, home life, and age would make more sense if this were Alex rather than Kevin. It even reuses the "parents don't believe the kid about the burglars so he had better find some heavy stuff to drop on people" plot point, in what I like to think of as a call-back the the second movie's shameless recycling of its predecessor.

Selfies, circa 2002.

Fortunately, this movie does add a touch of family drama: Kevin's parents are now separated, and his dad is once again engaged. This is mostly an excuse for Kevin to stay with his dad (played by Jason Beghe) and his new girlfriend (Natalie, played by Joanna Going) in their hi-tech mansion, but the movie does at least try to get whatever emotion it can out of this scenario. Of course, after portraying Natalie as a kind and charitable woman throughout most of its story, the movie has her turn into a wicked stepmom near the end, just so that we don't feel so bad when Kevin's dad inevitably dumps her and goes back to his first wife. (Though to be fair to Natalie, her allegedly bitchy attitude towards Kevin is actually kind of justified when you try to see things from her perspective. Granted, Kevin isn't really responsible for what happens, but she had every reason to assume he was engaged in the sort of behaviour that usually lands kids in military school, or at least on a trashy talk-show.)

Interestingly, only one of the two burglars reappears, albeit now played by French Stewart. He’s called Marv, but dresses like Harry and acts like a mixture between the two. (My headcanon is that Marv killed Harry for leadership of the gang, and is now trying to become Harry in penance.)

The other crook, BTW, is Marv's wife, Vera, played by Missi Pyle. In my opinion, she makes a better criminal (or at least a better Home Alone criminal) than Stewart does. Both portray their characters as dumb, but Vera comes across as crazy-dumb. I couldn't picture this version of Marv doing anything to Kevin, but Vera seems just drugged-out enough to actually bite off a nine-year-old`s fingers if given the chance.

Marv and Vera's plan is not to burglarize the house this time. The previous crooks wanted to steal a computer chip; these ones want to kidnap a young prince whose family will be staying with Natalie. Interestingly, although the prince doesn't appear until the end of the movie, Kevin is never mistaken for him, even though that would be the most obvious (and thus the worst) choice. (And, yes, I know that it would make no sense if Marv, who knows Kevin, had mistaken him for the prince. Trust me, if they had done that, it would not be the worst mistake in this movie.)

I don't want to give away too much of the "Old Man Marley" character in this instalment, except to say that the life-changing advice comes across as far too rushed, preachy, and tacked-on. The first two movies gave us touching, beautiful scenes to lead up to and justify such a pep-talk; this one is just kinda there because Home Alone.

As noted, the “trap” segment--the bread and butter of any Home Alone movie--is complete crap this time around. Since this film is set in a “smart house” (a gimmick used to better effect in the Home Alone video game on the Genesis, I might add) Kevin relies on manipulating the built-in gadgets and miscellaneous toys more than any actual traps. The end results, though still painful, lack the invention and imagination of the predecessors. (A kid flying a toy airplane into a dude`s crotch is okay for America`s Funniest Home Videos, but not Home Alone.)

Unsurprisingly, this is the first Home Alone movie that was not written by John Hughes, and the first made for the direct-to-video market.

Home Alone: The Holiday Heist

After 4, things could only go uphill. The Holiday Heist is still not on the same level as the Columbus/Hughes/Culkin entries, but, in some ways, I thought it was an improvement over the third and fourth ones. For one thing, the Kevin figure this time around, Finn Baxter (played by Christian Martyn) is actually a flawed character. Instead of the misunderstood nice kid from three and four, he’s portrayed as a video game-addicted loner who, throughout the movie, learns to leave his shell, make friends, and grow as a person. So, although he doesn't feel like a complete knockoff of Kevin, he does still come across as a decent kid who needs to grow.

This movie was able to attract some top-name actors. Malcolm McDowell plays the leader of the criminals. His obnoxious but charmingly British portrayal may actually equal Stern's manchild and Pesci’s hothead. He also has a more sympathetic motivation than any of the other criminals--there's a famous painting of his grandmother (supposedly painted by artist Edvard Munch, whose painting The Scream inspired the original movie's most iconic scene) that he wants to steal. But since he doesn't try asking for or buying the damn thing first--theft being the first and best choice for his sort--he doesn't come across as so sympathetic that you want him to win (unless you're the sort of person who always roots for the villains).

On the downside, it’s hard not to feel like this is a shell of what Home Alone once was. Not only is Finn much older than Kevin or Alex (Martyn was about 12 during filming), but he’s not even alone-- his teenage sister, Alexis (played by then 17-year-old Jodelle Ferland) is there too, albeit trapped in the basement. Once again, the parents didn’t accidentally leave the kids alone while making a trip out of the city--they just got snowed in at a Christmas party. And, though I might just be biased on this last point, I kinda think that a shy kid who plays too many video games--although a serious enough problem when it escalates to Finn's level--is far less interesting than a kid who is constantly fighting with everyone in his family, then gets left alone at home or in New York.

You have no idea how much the Wet Bandits envy this guy right now.

The traps here are not as simple as those in 4, but they're less excruciating than ever. When you see a Home Alone movie using a dumbbell, you expect it to fall on someone--not roll into their shins and trip them. Yes, Harry and Marv tripped, and a lot. But their slapstick mixed very painful gags with sorta painful ones; here, the cap is much lower, and merely uncomfortable inconveniences on the "covered in yucky stuff" variety much more common. I guess that a lot of people thought the other four movies made the violence more brutal than funny, but I really do think that downgrading the slapstick from The Three Stooges to something more closely resembling Family Matters hurt the movie's overall appeal. I know that sounds sadistic, but I like the early instalments' brutality partly because it is so over-the-top that it never feels real, and a series of minor inconveniences just doesn't feel like a satisfying line of defence. Holiday Heist is like watching a slasher movie about a guy that sneaks into people's houses at night, wakes them from their slumber with a cry of "boo!" then flees. I'm sure it would be very scary in real-life, but that's not what I came for.

I will not delude myself into thinking that Home Alone is a perfect movie. And, although I have a soft spot for the second, I won’t pretend that it was a masterpiece, either. But there are a few things about the first two films that stand out. The conflict between the smart-mouthed Kevin and his slightly insensitive family is one and, yes, the cruelty of the traps is another. But, above all else, there’s the sense that Kevin is truly alone. These aren’t movies about a kid being alone with burglars prowling through the bushes for twenty minutes, they’re movies about a kid being alone for days at a time, about the family's fear for his safety, and about how each react to the nightmare. It's an inherently terrifying and heartrending story, and the first two movies never skimmed over that. Harry and Marv are a nice bit of slapstick for the climax, but worked best as the dessert at the end of a complete meal. The later movies focus so much on the cake that they under-cook the chicken, and the end result is not as filling.

Le Cirque des Rêves

Erin Morgenstern's 2011 fantasy novel The Night Circus is one of those books that sat on my shelf for years before it made its way to the top of my reading pile. I had heard a lot about the book: comparisons to Harry Potter and Twilight were common, though I think that Night Circus stands in different crowds. Honestly, I'm not even sure if I'd consider it a YA novel (Morgenstern doesn't) even if it sort of feels like one at times. But there is one thing it has in common with Harry Potter: both books benefit from a memorable setting.

Le Cirque des Rêves ("The Circus of Dreams") only opens at night, it only allows its tents and performers to use the colours black and white, and it moves from city to city without announcement or warning. Some of these things may not make sense from a business standpoint, but they're odd enough to make the circus interesting without tripping into "wacky" territory. Yet it's Morgenstern's descriptions of the circus that make it almost tangible. Some prose just feels like it's a handful of iambs away from bursting into poetry, and The Night Circus is filled with exactly that sort of descriptive power.

A big part of Le Cirque des Rêves charm (both in- and out-of universe) is that it uses real magic disguised as fake magic. The plot (because plots are always fashionable in a novel, however excellent the setting and prose) revolves around a contest between two magicians, Celia and Marco, who keep adding tents and attractions to the circus, partially to outdo their rival but mostly to impress/seduce them. Although both are capable of impossible Potter-type spells, stuff involving illusions and telekinesis, they keep their circus attractions at a level that seems possible to the Muggles. Highlights include: a bonfire that changes colour as more flames are added to it, a garden made of ice that never melts, and mirrors whose reflections can add things that are not there or remove things that are. People turning into cats or travelling through time are obviously pure fantasy, but this stuff is just subtle enough to seem possible. I consider this approach the fantasy equivalent of hard science fiction. I don't know if I'd say it's better than more outright magical fantasy, but I certainly think it has its charm, because the awe isn't as diluted by skepticism.

The Harvey Girls

When you think of movie musicals, what studio could possibly come to mind before MGM? After all, they brought us such classics as Singin' in the Rain, The Wizard of Oz, and Meet Me in St. Louis. Only Disney, and possibly RKO's Astaire-Rogers movies, can compete with bliss on that scale.

But when I think of my favourite MGM musicals, George Sidney's under-appreciated 1946 film, The Harvey Girls, always stands near the top. The film is set in the old west, and stars Judy Garland as Susan Bradley, a waitress for the legendary Fred Harvey Company. Their restaurant is in competition with the local saloon, owned by Ned Trent (John Hodiak), and needless to say he and Susan wind up married by the end of the picture.

The Harvey Girls has everything you expect from an MGM musical: memorable song-and-dance numbers, gorgeous Technicolor cinematography, and a wonderful mix of humour, romance, and pathos. It's also a western, so cowboy costumes, fist-fights, and desert landscapes are part of the package. But there are really three main reasons that I love this movie so much. Three simple reasons:

1. The epic musical number "On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe," which is one of my favourite songs from the MGM library.

2. More importantly, the scene where Susan learns that Ned's saloon has stolen all the Harvey House's meat, and decides to take it back at gunpoint! Particularly funny because, being a scene in an MGM musical comedy that just happens to involve Judy Garland committing armed robbery, it is treated like a scene in an MGM musical comedy that just happens to involve Judy Garland committing armed robbery.

3. Most importantly, Ray Bolger's comic dance number. He excels in that particular brand of apparent  physical discoordination that, in fact, requires the control and finesse of a ballerina. Donald O'Connor's "Make 'Em Laugh" might be the average movie-lover's official selection in the "best comic dance ever caught on film" category, but for me, Ray Bolger has him beat here by about half a foot. (I also think that this number surpasses anything Bolger does in The Wizard of Oz.)

That's all I can say, really. Sometimes, it's the highs, and not the averages, that work a movie into your heart.

My Fears

I need to admit that I am not the sort to get all that terrified by horror fiction. It's not that I can't sympathize with a fictional victim (I can) or that I'm particularly brave (I'm not) but, for some reason, horror usually just doesn't keep me up at night.

But, of course, there is an exception. Ghosts, the most basic of horror beasts, scare the seven circles of hell right out of me. I don't even believe in ghosts, but there's just something about them that gets to me.

I believe that all fantastic horror creatures are tied to some real-life fear. Zombies are really plagues, werewolves are reflections of our own inner demons, even the giant ants in Them! or the titular creature in Godzilla symbolize mankind's fear of science. (The monsters were created by nuclear and atomic weapon testing, respectively.) Some people would suggest that ghosts channel a fear of death, but I believe that they channel our fear of the unknown.

The part of Poltergeist that always stuck with me is not the iconic "They're here" scene, but the part near the end, *SPOILER!* after the house was supposedly clean, when the clown doll comes to life anyway. Taninga (the medium that was supposed to fix the whole haunting thing) clearly knew what she was doing and how ghosts worked, at least as much as anyone in the movie did, and seemed convinced that that the house was safe. She was the expert... but she was wrong. *SPOILER OVER!*

Of course, the tropes associated with a haunting are well-known. Weird stuff happens, it gets weirder (whether this is out of necessity or choice on the ghost's part isn't always clear), and before long an exorcist is in your house telling you who died and how and what they're gonna do about it. (Not all ghost stories follow this formula, but enough do to make a formula in the first place.) But there's no silver bullet, no wooden stake. Sometimes a ghost is exorcised through a ritual only slightly less mysterious than the floating furniture. Ghosts can walk through walls, they can float, they are invisible, they can sometimes be near-omniscient--the biggest limitation seems to be that they can't leave the house, and something about that just seems more like a psychological limitation than a physical one.

I guess that maybe that's why ghosts scare me so much--they're so incomprehensible. Their abilities, their weaknesses, and their actions always seem to exist a little bit outside our own sphere of understanding. They seem like pure emotion--a creature with near-limitless power but little reason. Ghosts scare me not only because they can do anything, but because they don't. There's no physical logic to a ghost, and no psychological logic, either.

Review: Citizens of Earth (Wii U version)

Debaters gonna debate.

Eden Industry’s Citizens of Earth is a love-letter to the console RPGs of the 1990s, especially Shigesato Itoi’s legendary MOTHER trilogy (known as EarthBound in the west). Both are comic RPGs, set in a fantasy counterpart to modern-day America rather than the traditional Medieval-style fantasies of Dragon Quest and company. However, whereas EarthBound had (and lets be honest here) unremarkable, cookie-cutter gameplay, Citizens of Earth is more ambitious, and displays a solid understanding of what makes RPGs work as a game and not just a story. With a forty-character-strong roster, interesting dungeons, and a unique battle system, Citizens of Earth has the basic ingredients of a masterpiece. And yet the end result still falls short of EarthBound's greatness.

The game opens with a delightful Chrono Trigger homage that perfectly sets the tone: the protagonist is sleeping comfortably in his bed when his Mom comes in and wakes him. Except the protagonist is the adult Vice President of the Earth. Your first challenge--the metaphorical Rats in the Basement, if you will--is to take down a group of violent protesters roaming the Vice President’s hometown. And things just get more EarthBound-esque from there, as you follow the second-most-important man in the world on an epic quest, filled with mutated animals, robots, and (of course) hippies.

A modern Fellowship of the Ring.

But despite Citizens of Earth's best attempts at copying EarthBound’s surreal, almost Lewis Carroll-style humour, it doesn't have quite the same charm. The Vice President frequently says something arrogant or stupid, then gets a sarcastic comeback from one of the citizens. This is more vaudeville than EarthBound generally got, and even then it's flawed vaudeville. With forty citizens, writing a separate bit of banter for each would have been extremely time-consuming, so Eden Industries just wrote a single response for each stupid VP quote, then programmed the game to randomly assign it to one of the active citizens. I suppose that's understandable, given the development teams' size and budget, but it's also unquestionably bad writing. If the citizens were intentionally written as personalityless and interchangeable I could understand, but, outside these types of cutscenes--when you're talking to a citizen on the map, for example--they have clearly-defined (and usually exaggerated) personalities and, often, distinct speech patterns, so their lines should not be this interchangeable. Grouch cannot steal Chico's jokes, but in this game, the cheerful Cat Lady, the paranoid Conspiracy Theorist, the anti-social Programmer, and the intellectual Psychologist can all, potentially, share the exact same zinger. 

But to be fair, the writing, when not being tripped up by the game's scope, does have its moments. The Vice President, being always present and thus important enough to get his own custom-written dialogue, is consistently portrayed as bumbling, clueless, tacky, and egotistical, but deep down, he’s a good man who really does want to help out. It’s easy to make a comic character--and especially a comic politician--all-vice, but this touch of goodness makes the VP genuinely endearing. The game's also a lot sparser on pop-culture references than you might expect. I mean, yes, there are a few, but they don't overwhelm everything else, and generic jokes about Internet Memes are (as far as I remember, at least) non-existent. I should probably admit that this game also enjoys its puns--the “Anchory Bird” enemy being my guilty favourite--but fortunately, Eden Industries is wise enough to use these for atmosphere rather than punch-lines. It's certainly no EarthBound, but I generally found the humor enjoyable, and even at its worst, it was never annoying.

And then there's the most important part of any video game: the interactive element. When you pick up a new title, what’s the first thing you’ll want to know about the gameplay? Are the controls tight? Are the goals clear? Is the challenge just right? All good questions, but if there’s one thing that Citizens of Earth taught me, it’s that the first question should be: how far can I get before the game crashes? When this adventure first came out, the answer was: not far enough, bud. I wanted to play Citizens of Earth so badly, but the stupid thing froze so many times that I just couldn’t finish it. It was eventually patched, reducing the glitches and crashes to a more professional level (so, yes, I did eventually finish it), but even so, that initial level of quality-control is inexcusable. 

Post-patch, the crashing is no longer a problem. Unfortunately, the loading-time still is. Like many old-school RPGs, Citizens of Earth requires a lot of screen transitions--some rooms last only a few seconds. When you have to spend a second or two on a loading screen each time that you change areas, it can feel like you’re wading through a tub of molasses. This problem also improved significantly after the patch, but it’s still noticeable, it’s still too long, and it still makes transitioning from point B to point C a huge pain in the A.

There is some solid stuff in here, though. Citizens of Earth’s most important asset is the citizens themselves, and (ignoring the aforementioned screw-up regarding their inconsistent dialogue) Eden Industries did a good job there. Since you're the Vice President of Earth, you're too important to fight yourself! Instead, you must recruit up to 40 other people to fight for you. Mom and Brother join you automatically, but everyone else requires the completion of a sub-quest. Each citizen is truly unique, packing a different out-of-battle ability as well as their own in-battle specialties. For example, the Barista has a high speed-stat, specializes in recovering other citizens’ energy (sort of like MP--more on that later), uses fire-based (well, hot coffee-based) attacks in battle, and can sell energy-restoring (and less lethal) coffee out-of-battle. The Weightlifter is physically powerful, uses muscle-based attacks, and can move heavy objects out of your path on the map, but he can’t attack and build energy on the same turn, making him a slow and inefficient brawler if someone like the Barista isn’t there to back him up. The game is generally easy enough that you can design a team around the standard “attack/heal” combo and still win, but for those who like to tweak their party and find the most brutal overkill combos, there is a lot of potential here.

When they're not in your active party, these citizens also act as the game's NPCs. Some of them can even use their out-of-battle abilities before they join you, albeit only offering the lower-level wares and services. Fortunately, none of these citizens ever have vital information, or at least not after it becomes possible to recruit them, so you don’t have to worry about walking around getting stuck just because the guy with something important to say is following tight-lipped behind you.

Incidentally, almost all the non-recruitable NPCs are benevolent versions of enemies, recognizable by the speech bubble protruding from their sprites.  Some of them give quests, or discuss some element of the plot, or provide other useful services, but if you want to go Western RPG and kill them for the experience or just out of spite, you can do that too. In fact, there’s at least one type of enemy (a rotund fellow known as the Gourmand) who--as far as I could find--can only be battled if you pick the fight yourself!

Citizens of Earth doesn't have as many NPCs as other RPGs, so the world feels a lot emptier, but then the people you do meet make up for it by being a lot more well-developed and chatty. Both approaches have their own advantages--it's all a matter of personal taste.

The battles are extremely well-done. This game has a more interesting alternative to the standard MP- and charge- systems used in other RPGs. It uses an energy system; stronger techniques use up more energy, while weaker ones recover energy. Most citizens only have three energy balls, though some reach as high as five. I just can't emphasize how brilliant this system is; most games expect you to save your best abilities, but Citizens of Earth instead encourages regular spurts of power followed by periods of restraint. And many of the energy-restoring moves are still useful, so falling back on them never feels like a punishment; you can recover energy and make real progress in one turn!  I’d even say that these battles are some of the best I've ever seen in a JRPG.

Created using the VR Arena.

Unfortunately, as great as the battle system is, it doesn't completely alleviate that one great annoyance of old-school console RPGs: there are a lot of fights. They aren’t random battles--like EarthBound (and some other JRPGs) enemies can be seen and theoretically avoided--but when the areas become more crowded, and the enemies more numerous, the fights become annoying just the same. Even that wouldn’t be so bad if there was more variety in the enemies, but most areas have you fighting the same two or three baddies over and over again. And because many of these enemies have attack animations--some of them sorta long ones--and the VP repeatedly insists on exclaiming things like “Ouch!” or “Walk it off!” during the fight, things tend to drag on. The enemies themselves, although varied in both design and battle text, usually fall back on the same stock-tricks as any other RPG beast: damage-dealing moves and status-effects a plenty, with the occasional enemy who counters your attacks or calls for help thrown in for good measure. A handful of them have some very unique and interesting abilities--most notably a boss who has the ability to “remix the battle conditions,” which means that your attacks will recover the enemies’ HP rather than deplete them for one turn--but these types of enemies are not as common as I would have liked. This is not a deal-breaker by any sense of the word--Eden Industries clearly went to great lengths to make the battles as interesting as possible--but I won't deny that, after spending a lot of time in one area, I'd switch the difficulty level way down (more on that later) just so that I could get through the repeat battles as quickly as possible. (I'm not proud, but I'm honest.)

Though perhaps paradoxically, I enjoyed the VR Arena. This is a battle simulator that allows you to customize a team of monsters, then battle 'em. Most of the regular enemies and many of the bosses are available, so it’s possible to design more dangerous, or more interesting, teams than you’d ever encounter in the main game. And yes, you can keep any items, money, and experience you earn during the fight. Better yet, one of the citizens--the School Mascot--can freely change the game’s difficulty, making monsters stronger or weaker (and the rewards greater or lesser) as needed. I mostly used the VR Arena to grind my lower-level citizens, but how could I resist the occasional fight against a group of bosses? Personally, I’d love to see more games use something like this--it allows players to design the ultimate fight whenever you want!

Like Super Mario RPG or Final Fantasy VII (and, interestingly, in contrast to EarthBound) Citizens of Earth includes a number of minigames. A lot of these--including a game of Blackjacks and a car race--are presented using an altered battle engine, making the situation both familiar and new. Of course, not all minigames are created equal--there's always one or two that will make you pull your hair out. Here, it’s the Bartender recruitment quest, which is a drinking contest that takes the form of a button-mash-a-thon. It’s the sort of game that makes you think someone on the staff has a personal vendetta against thumbs. But other than that, most of the minigames are actually a pretty fun diversion.

And this game is open-ended. Boy, is it; once you finish off the bit of questing from your own neighbourhood, you can basically go (nearly) wherever you want, recruit (almost) whoever you want, and grab (not quite but close enough to) any item you want, without progressing the story one iota more, provided you recruit the right citizens. I recently finished playing EarthBound Beginnings, which is always noted for being more open-ended than EarthBound, but next to Citizens of Earth it feels like Uncharted. Of course, in a genre dedicated to growing in strength and fighting progressively stronger enemies, this magnitude of sandbox-style gameplay makes balancing difficult. It’s easier to wander into the wrong area and get stomped into the ground by a jogger or a ten-year-old camper, or to get too bulked-up on sub-quests and steamroll your way through all the killer robots and giant monsters in your path once you return to the main storyline. But try to remember that, using the School Mascot, you can weaken the enemies and strengthen them back up to compensate for this freedom, so playing the game your way is actually much more reasonable here than in most other open-ended RPGs.

Of course, like all RPGs, open-ended or not, Citizens of Earth has to end eventually. Spoiler alert: the ending sucks. (Feel free to skip this paragraph if you don’t want the ending spoiled.) Once again, it tries to draw inspiration from EarthBound, whose ending involved channeling the hopes and prayers of all your friends to defeat a seemingly invincible monster, switching from comedic to serious in the process. The problem is that EarthBound did it well; these uplifting scenes are brief, subtle, and interspersed throughout a real battle against a particularly memorable final boss. In Citizens of Earth, these scenes are much longer, with each citizen and a good chunk of the supporting cast treating you to some mawkish comment about what a great person the VP really is. I suppose that I can see what they’re going for: we’ve spent most of the game thinking of our protagonist as an egotistical, unlikable half-witted manchild who gets by on looks alone, but the very nature of the game requires that we play the VP as an empathetic hero who goes out of his way to help everyone he meets; seeing people acknowledge that there’s a very good reason this man became the Vice President is kind of sweet. But I don’t think we need 40+ people commenting on the same thing. Worse yet, all this mush is placed in the middle of an unlosable battle, which reduces the end-boss to little more than a cross between a cutscene and a stack of Hallmark cards. Considering how delightfully "video gamey" Citizens of Earth had been up until this point, I find this fumble outright stupefying. There is a real, losable boss battle right before that, and I am reluctant to say that it’s too easy since, as noted above, you can adjust the difficulty level, but I will say that if you play the game as I did, leaving the difficulty level at or near the default, completing most of the subquests, not grinding excessively, and using the same citizens for most of the game, the battle is too easy. I suppose that I can’t be too hard on Eden Industries for this one--they had a good idea--but as far as I'm concerned, the endgame is a bust.

Citizens of Earth combines everything that I love about my favourite RPGs: plenty of characters, tons of exploration, and a great sense of humour. On paper, it’s perfect. But when you take it off the paper and put it on a console, that’s when you encounter the annoying loading times, repetitive battles, balance issues, and other problems. This game is fun enough to justify at least one playthrough, but there are simply too many little annoyances for it to really reach its full potential.

Review: "Jeeves and the Wedding Bells" by Sebastian Faulks

Writing other people’s characters can be fun. I used to write fan fiction (of admittedly varying degrees of quality) so I know the appeal. For obvious reasons, it’s mostly a hobby for beginners and amateurs, but from time to time, professional writers decide to throw their hat into another author’s ring. Sebastian Faulks did it with James Bond in 2008’s Devil May Care, and again in his 2013 novel, Jeeves and the Wedding Bells. Having not read the former, I decided against reviewing it. Jeeves and the Wedding Bells it is.

The book is about British humorist P.G. Wodehouse’s most famous creations, upper-class twit Bertie Wooster and his valet, Jeeves. Wodehouse, by the way, is probably my favourite author of all time. To say that my expectations whenever I read a new Wodehouse book are sky-high would be to grossly overestimate the sky. But Sebastian Faulks, although doubtless a very fine man in many respects, is not P.G. Wodehouse. This can’t be helped; some people are, some people aren’t. I knew when I checked this book out of the library that Faulks’ take on the characters would likely fall short of the master’s. Fortunately, Faulks also knew this, and wisely wrote the book as an homage rather than a sequel.

The plot is vintage Wodehouse: a friend of Bertie’s (Peregrine “Woody” Beeching, said to be his closest of childhood chums) is having fiancée troubles, and so Bertie, valet in tow, sets off to save the nuptials and the day. This time, Jeeves gets stuck impersonating a wealthy lord known as Etringham, with Bertie playing the roll of the gentleman’s personal gentleman! Throw in an intimidating aunt and you have a simple recipe for the most quintessential Wodehouse novel ever written by a man not named Wodehouse.

If you’ve read the originals, you probably remember that Bertie is a man who gets into and out of engagements the way James Bond does elaborate executions. Sebastian Faulks, in one of his departures from the classics, decided to introduce nature’s bachelor to a girl named Georgiana Meadowes. She’s smart, beautiful, kind, works at a publishing company, and blatantly attracted to Bertie. Part of me was afraid this sort of thing would happen. Sure, Psmith can get a girlfriend. Freddie Threepwood, too. But something about Bertie having a real girlfriend just felt so wrong, like Romeo going back to Rosaline, or Don Quixote actually slaying a giant disguised as a windmill.

But just because Wodehouse would not does not mean Faulks may not, so I’ll try to judge the romance fairly. Granted, Georgiana is not a compelling character so much as a bunch of appealing traits glued together. There are a few references to her abysmal driving, but they're infrequent, have no impact on the story, and aren't even that funny, which makes me think that they were added just to make her seem more three-dimensional. I don’t want people to think that I’m against career-women who are smart, kind, and pretty. I believe that career-women who are smart, kind and pretty can and often are a great addition to literature as well as to the real world. But the most interesting characters have more going for them than being career-oriented, smart, kind, and pretty. A career-man who is smart, kind, and handsome would not be particularly interesting without something else to define him, either. Georgiana (like most of the original characters in this book, I may as well add) feels flat.

I will say one thing about this romance, though, and that is that Faulks really sold me on the idea that a girl like Georgiana could love a man like Bertie.  A more cynical author might suggest that she could lust after the wallet, but never love the man. Mentally negligible as he (Bertie--not Faulks) may be, he is still is a gentleman to his marrow. Open to any page in any of his book, and odds are good that you’ll see him putting himself through the ringer for a chum. Georgiana also believes that Bertie possesses hidden intellectual depths, and considering he's a maddeningly articulate Oxford graduate, she just might be right.

Of course, when one sits down to read a Jeeves and Wooster story, the question is always “Is it funny?” and never "But will it melt my heart?" The answer here to the former is yes. Maybe not as funny as Wodehouse himself, but complaining about that would be like scowling at the Who because they’re not the Beatles. After all, Wodehouse’s gift for language, characterization, and plot are almost unmatched in the history of English Literature, and certainly unparalleled in the realm of comic literature. Nevertheless, I laughed at this book, and often. What I love most about Wodehouse’s writing style is the way he seamlessly combines the high-brow, the formal, and the colloquial in one sentence, and Faulks is adept at that (for example: “Between them they were about as welcoming as Goneril and Regan on being told that old Pop Lear had just booked in for a month with full retinue”). The language is probably as close to Wodehouse as one can reasonably be expected to come without actually transforming into Wodehouse. The plotting, unfortunately, falls further below the mark. It's certainly competent, and has its share of twists and turns which feel like they came right out of a classic Jeeves story. But Wodehouse didn't just write in his share of twists and turns--he turned his stories into a labyrinth of deceptions and misunderstandings, and they were all the stronger for it. Faulks only writes in what I would call a standard dose, and even then, without giving anything away, I felt that some of them fall apart a little too soon. This is a good comic novel, but I'd be reluctant to call it a great one.

This is why the more serious elements are necessary. If it’s impossible for Faulks--or any other writer--to create a worthy continuation to the Jeeves cannon, then it’s better to create a supplement. This book takes Bertie and his audience out of the comfort zone. Issues like the emotional implications of Bertie's self-depreciating jokes or the fact that his idealized Britain was almost destroyed in World War II are touched upon, albeit only for a page or two. I can't really fault Faulks, who is simply writing about things that almost certainly existed in Wodehouse’s world, but were never mentioned. Some people actually preferred this book to the originals because of the more serious, pensive tone. Admittedly, I did not, but I don’t think I would have preferred a non-Wodehouse straightforward comedy to a Wodehouse one anyway. The question is whether Faulks’ hypothetical pure-comedy book would have been better than this one. I doubt it.

Someone who has never read Wodehouse before can theoretically read Jeeves and the Wedding Bells, but they would not enjoy it as much as the old hands. This book is about laughing with old friends. Maybe they’re a bit different, a bit less fun and a bit more mature, but they’re still your friends, with whom you have shared precious memories that will last a lifetime.

Modern Major Genwunner

It's funny how public opinion changes over the years. When Buster Keaton released The General, critics panned it; today, it's celebrated as his greatest work. Rolling Stone magazine named Weezer's Pinkerton the 3rd-worst album of 1996, then called it the 16th-greatest album of all time a mere six years later. Herman Melville's Moby Dick was torn apart by contemporary readers, and hailed as one of the greatest American novels within a century.

The first generation of Pokémon games (released in 1996 in Japan, 1998 in America) have had an interesting variation. The games have always been divisive among gamers, today as in the 90s. The only difference is that these critics and supporters have switched positions.

Modern fans of the first generation of Pokémon games (Pokémon Red, Pokémon Blue, and Pokémon Yellow), often known as Genwunners, are infamously snobby. For these people, no Pokémon game after the first gen is worth playing. There are only 151 (or 152) Pokémon. "New Pokémon are based off of ice cream cones instead of whack-a-mole machines. Q.E.D.," You'd have better luck convincing the Catholic Church to canonize The Life of Brian than getting a Genwunner to acknowledge that Lucario or Blaziken are legitimate.

For modern gamers, Genwunners are a popular stock-villain, like mustachioed men who tie women to railroad tracks, except more fun to hiss at. This is because, like many retro-gamers, Genwunners are often self-righteous fanatics.

Needless to say, being a self-righteous fanatic--or even being remotely unpleasant--doesn't seem to be an official part of the definition anymore. Hating all the Pokémon games is perfectly acceptable, as is liking all of them, or even only liking the newer ones. Anything else is frowned upon.

In other words, Genwunners have ruined it for the Gen 1ers.

When you see a Genwunner coming at you in a dark alley, frothing at the mouth and brandishing a picture of a Charizard, the best way to freeze 'em in their tracks is to turn the tables and insult the first generation. I understand that, for most Pokémon fans, this is hard--it's the sort of thing the Jigsaw Killer always made people do. Earliest instalments of any franchise generally get some reverence, however better the later ones may be. But with time it gets easier. A lot easier, in fact; for some people, Pokémon Red and Blue have become almost as loathed as the Genwunners themselves. Fans of the newer games have been known to denounce the earliest instalments with ferocity to match even the angriest Genwunner. As far as these people are concerned, there's no reason for anyone to play the first generation at all since it was remade with the third gen's engine in 2004.

Fighting monsters and gazing into voids and all that, I guess.

I'm not going to say that Pokémon Red and Blue were beyond criticism. There were lots of very noticeable problems with design in general and balance in particular, as well as a fairly impressive troupe of glitches. The legendary Missingno. is the least embarrassing of them. The best way to sum up everything wrong with the first generation is to simply look at how psychic-types were handled. In theory, psychic-type Pokémon had two weaknesses: bug- and ghost-types. In practice, they didn't have any; all the bug-type attacks were too weak to actually help, and a glitch in the game's programming made psychic-types immune to ghost-type attacks. And a lot of newer Pokémon fans love to point these problems out. As much fun as I had playing these games, I don't think that it compares to the fun the more militant Ruby/Sapphire fans have tearing them apart and watching the Genwunners' smiles melt.

All long-running video game franchises have their nostalgic cynics. Many Legend of Zelda fans insist that A Link to the Past is the best game in the series, and that the newer Zelda games are unfailingly unremarkable. Final Fantasy VI sits on a similar pedestal compared to VII onward. Yet Genwunners are widely considered the worst of the lot. This sort of elitism may be perfectly acceptable for fans of literature, film, or music, but gamers are not willing to tolerate it and Pokémon fans less willing than most. Red and Blue, being popular and influential games with more problems than Jay-Z, reflect everything modern gamers hate about retro-gaming. (What future gamers will think of today's "modern" games is an interesting question, but off-topic.)

I think the Genwunners' biggest mistake is that they picked the wrong Rapidash to back. Retro-gaming elitism typically starts at the second or third entry in a series, because the first usually has the most rough edges. If Donkey Kong fans went around trashing every new Mario game since Super Mario Brothers, declaring that the Mushroom Kingdom is not canon, and complaining that all the new characters are just turtles or mushrooms, we'd all be be complaining about "Deekayers" now.

Fortunately, and despite the Genwunners' best efforts, Pokémon (even Red and Blue) is now recognized as a classic gaming franchise, alongside Doom, King's Quest, and Sonic. This is why it can be so hard to remember that, in the 90s, Pokémon was basically the Justin Bieber of nerd culture.

The problem then was essentially the same as it is now: old versus new. Pokémon became extremely popular extremely quickly, especially with younger people, so fans of older video game franchises dismissed it as a fad that would die out in a few years. Sure, people had all sorts of complaints against the franchise--some legitimate and some stupid--but the word "fad" was always on the lips. The stuff that mature gamers of 13 and 14 grew up with--like Super Mario or Metroid--would always be classics, but Pokémon, it was predicted, would be gone soon. Fans of Pokémon Red and Blue were mocked for being silly fad-chasers, and assured that if they even remembered those games ten years later, it would be with embarrassment.

In other words, the people who were attacked back then for playing a faddish new game instead of the classics are now being attacked for playing that now-classic game instead of newer titles.