On DVD: Thomas Kinkade's Christmas Cottage, Bringing Cookie-Tin Paintings To Your TV Screen

Do not underestimate the powers of Thomas Kinkade, the "Painter of Light." Sure, you may think that he's just a mediocre artist who sells overpriced motel-quality paintings at mall shops across the nation. But really, he's a sinister mastermind with powers of persuasion beyond mortal ken. Otherwise, how on earth could he have gotten world-class actors such as Peter O'Toole and Marcia Gay Harden to appear in his self-produced, marketing-savvy vanity project, Thomas Kinkade's Christmas Cottage?

The 2008 semi-autobiographical, straight-to-video movie was originally titled Thomas Kinkade's Home for Christmas, but perhaps someone pointed out the grammatical awkwardness of the title, which makes it sound like Kinkade has, in fact, arrived home for the holidays, thus challenging us to care about that fact. The new title, Christmas Cottage, ties the film to one of his paintings (in an interview included on the DVD, the artist claims that the painting was the inspiration for the film from the beginning, but it's sold as a "new work" through his galleries), while making it sound less like an informative statement.

The cottage in question is more of a house, really, but as Kinkade probably didn't have a painting called "Christmas House" in his catalog, it's imperative that everyone in the film refer to it repeatedly as a cottage. In the movie, it's the childhood home of Thomas (Supernatural's Jared Padalecki) and his brother, Pat (Smallville's Aaron Ashmore). And it is, indeed, a lovely little home. But honestly? It's not so much a cottage. It's a house.

Their divorced mother, Maryann (Harden) welcomes the boys home for Christmas vacation with the announcement that, while they've been away at college, she's mismanaged the family finances to such an extent that the bank is about to foreclose. The family needs $3,000 by New Year's Day, so both young men immediately head out to get jobs. Thomas, an art student, agrees to finish an enormous, outdoor mural of the town for $500, which only proves that the apple doesn't far from the tree in this family where money is concerned. Or maybe he just figures his brother will make up the difference.

Kinkade's real-life home town of Placerville, California is depicted as the sort of adorably quirky hamlet that are often the settings for movies like this, with recognizable character actors appearing as local denizens. Richard Moll is an electrician who hires Pat, although he only seems to spend time setting up a highly competitive front-yard Christmas display. Chris Elliott, wearing a brown version of his curly Cabin Boy wig, is the smarmy head of the local Chamber of Commerce. And TV veteran Richard Burgi is Thomas' alcoholic, ne'er-do-well father, who we're supposed to dislike upon sight because, after all, he divorced Kinkade's sainted mother. To ensure that we grasp his badness, the script has him arrive for Christmas with his several boxes of old girly magazines in the trunk of his battered car, intended as gifts for his sons. Oooh, distasteful! We also know he's bad because he has a mustache.

Then there's Peter O'Toole. The 76-year-old actor plays Glen Wessler, an accomplished artist in the early stages of Alzheimer's who mentors Kinkade. While it's nice to see O'Toole is still alive and working, this movie doesn't serve him well. The actor falls back on his tendency to chew scenery, admirably memorizing a few fairly long pieces of dialogue and then delivering them with the force of Claudius beating his breast over the murder of Hamlet's father. The longest comes after Thomas reluctantly admits to painting "this ridiculous Christmas mural of Placerville":

Ridiculous ... a mural of Placerville. It's your chance to illuminate where you live, to inspire your neighbors! Do you think because they aren't sophisticated, they don't deserve your best art? That mural can record the people you love for posterity, and change the way they see themselves! Art crosses all borders, surpasses all languages. It's a place where we are one family, and if you're willing, really to see with your eyes and your heart, one image can change lives! You can introduce men to their souls! You can bring that to this town. You have that power!

Immediately following this speech, Wessler starts babbling and reciting "Humpty Dumpty," with O'Toole widening his eyes in a terrifying, sepulchral stare to indicate that he's in the throes of dementia. This is supposed to be sad, but really puts his advice into perspective, like the moment when O'Toole all but screams, "Paint the light, Thomas! PAINT THE LIGHT!" in a manner more horror-film than Hallmark moment. If this film is to be believed, Kinkade's entire career was inspired by the rantings of a senile old man. This actually makes a sort of twisted sense, when you think about it.

Overall, the movie is inoffensive, but is simply lacking anything substantive. Moments that are supposed to be funny, like the inevitable church Christmas pageant that goes awry, are directed without a real understanding of comedy, so the whole thing falls flat. Scenes which are meant to be heartwarming simply feel manipulative, and ineffectively so. There's surprisingly little Christian material here, considering Kinkade's fan base, but characters do mention God in an off-hand manner now and then, as if these remarks were penciled into the script at the last minute as a sop to the church folk. But overall, it's not unwatchable. It's just not especially interesting.

Christmas Cottage is mostly fascinating as a piece of commerce from Kinkade's art factory, which has imprinted greeting cards, cookie tins, collector's plates, calendars, clocks, and music boxes, along with the odd, textured prints-that-kind-of-look-like-paintings-if-you-squint that sell for upwards of $1,000 a piece in franchised mall galleries. Here, Kinkade not only finds a new way to shill his products, he manages to cash in on the seasonal craze for those tiny ceramic Christmas villages by renaming his film to suit. Like everything else he does, it may not be good art, but it's savvy salesmanship.

As for his actual art, perhaps the best description of his work comes from Joan Didion, who wrote in her book Where I Was From, "A Kinkade painting was typically rendered in slightly surreal pastels. It typically featured a cottage or a house of such insistent coziness as to seem actually sinister, suggestive of a trap designed to attract Hansel and Gretel. Every window was lit, to lurid effect, as if the interior of the structure might be on fire."

This look was applied liberally to the film -- it is, after all, a "Thomas Kinkade movie" -- and Kinkade made sure that the filmmakers knew what that meant. The website Vanity Fair Daily, in a recent piece called "Thomas Kinkade's 16 Guidelines for Making Stuff Suck," printed the entirety of a memo sent to the production crew by Kinkade to ensure that the visuals would reflect his artistic vision. Short depth of focus, darkish edges, paths to nowhere in particular, and cutesy hidden details are among his strictures, plus he bizarrely references Stanley Kubrick twice as an influence.

In his memo, Kinkade also insisted that they stress the "[m]ost important concept of all -- THE CONCEPT OF LOVE. Perhaps we could make large posters that simply say 'Love this movie' and post them about." Somewhere between Chris Elliott's wig and Peter O'Toole's scary old-man faces, the concept of love may have gotten lost. But that house? They made it look almost like a cottage.

Lionsgate's Christmas Cottage DVD (official site) offers a solid 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer. The Dolby 5.1 surround audio is good, as well. Extras include a commentary track with Thomas Kinkade and director Michael Campus, some deleted scenes with optional commentary, a making-of featurette titles Building the Christmas Cottage, an interview with Kinkade, and interviews with the cast about their fondest Christmas memories.

Dawn Taylor is more of a Halloween person.

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