Christmas Countdown: Film #8 - Blackadder's Christmas Carol & Film #9 - Home Alone

Luckily the week when we found ourselves with less time to actually watch the films in our Christmas Countdown, we ended up with all the shorter films to watch, several of which were the made-for-TV ones which we've acquired on DVD recently.

We watched Blackadder's Christmas Carol late on Friday night. I like the way that it subverts the traditional story of A Christmas Carol and the visit from the ghost turns Blackadder from the nicest man in England to the same sort of person as all his ancestors.

I like the little scenes from the previous versions of Blackadder, especially Blackadder the Third. And you can't help but think of Robbie Coltrane as the ghost is incredibly similar to Hagrid, I always expect his first line to be 'You're a wizard, Blackadder!'

The whole thing is classic Blackadder humour and it's great to see the future as well. It reminds me of the old episodes of Doctor Who with the black and white set with the funky special features. I think my favourite character is Prince Albert, played by Jim Broadbent, he's totally dippy and his accent is brilliant.

I think it's one of those things that I appreciate more now than I did when I was much younger. It's got the visual comedy that appealled to me when I was little but now I get the jokes as well, so you can carry on finding something new in it each time you watch it.

The second film that we watched was Home Alone. I did actually watch it at one point in December last year, but missed several large chunks of it. Mr Click has also watched it several times, but had never seen it all the way through before, apparently it makes a lot more sense once you understand how Kevin came to be left at home alone.

Mr Click picked up the boxset of all four Home Alone films just after we'd got our final film for the Christmas Countdown. We'd decided not to get any more, then he saw it on offer and decided to go for it, despite it not being one of his favourite films.

With this film, I always forget all of the rest of the story and just remember the bits with the burglars, when in reality that actually makes up a relatively small part of the film towards the end. It's another one which you see through different eyes when you watch it as an adult as compared to seeing it as a child.

I like the way that in the first half hour of the film there's a huge amount of set up for what's going to come later. You see the little things like the basement and the film that Kevin uses to scare away the pizza guy and the burglars, it's quite clever really. And I don't think that I've ever really paid much attention to Mr. Marley's story either, have to say, I love the little nod with the character's name there.

It was a perfect Saturday afternoon film as well. It's another one which will be good for watching with the family in the future, there's jokes for the kids and for the grown ups. We've still got Home Alone 2 to watch (which I've actually seen a fair bit of recently because for some inexplicable reason Film 4 decided to show it in August) as well as the other two in the boxset, one of which (number 4) I've never actually seen before.

After Home Alone we watched Father Christmas and (my personal Christmas favourite) Muppet Christmas Carol.