Skyward Christmas: Some Changes and Observations

— Suddenly Julie and Lisa have a younger brother who is 8 years old. It is never explained. He is not important to the script at all. We found it baffling. Why add him? He doesn’t even have lines. Weird.

— Billie Dupree is no longer played by Bette Davis. She is now played by the vaguely glamorous (in a TV kind of way) and maternal Audra Lindlay (you know – Mrs. Roeper). Keith said, “Mrs. Roeper is playing Billie?” She’s fine, but it’s hard to get the memory of Bette Davis out of your head. It is a completely different character now. Billie Dupree is now very emotional, and maternal towards Julie, and all warm and cuddly. You just can’t imagine Bette Davis getting hysterical in the way that Audra Lindlay does. Bette is much more of a cool character. After all, you’d have to be if you were a stunt pilot in the 30s and nearly got yourself killed in the flying sequences in 30 Seconds Over Tokyo.

— Coop (I still don’t care about Coop) is no longer played by Howard Hesseman. He is now played by the craggy-faced Geoffrey Lewis (father of Juliet Lewis – they look almost exactly alike). He does a fine job, I guess – I’m just rather annoyed by the character. He’s passive-aggressive, and here in Skyward Christmas, he’s almost like a stunted man-boy. Howard Hesseman at least played him as a capable grownup, even with his issues (that I don’t care about). But Geoffrey Lewis almost plays him like Forrest Gump. A blunt childish man-boy. The character is already annoying, so I found this interpretation even more so. And this script takes him into Freudian territory, with a long sob story involving a father and an exploded airplane … to explain why Coop “won’t fly”. Rather dumb. I just don’t care. Sorry, Coop! But at least THIS Coop doesn’t wear vests open, displaying his greasy chest.

— Mrs; Ward is no longer played by the blowsy harried (and effective) Marion Ross. She is now played by the glamorous platinum-blonde Bibi Besch (long long career that woman had – she was on every television show known to man). But it’s a problem here because she’s too actress-y-looking. Only actresses have hair like that. And – she kind of looks like Audra Lindlay. We would get confused at points. “Wait – is that her mother? Or Billie?” It didn’t help that Mrs. Roeper was playing Billie in a much more maternal way than Bette Davis did … so the two women seemed to have identical characters and energies … not a good choice. It turned Skyward Christmas into a concerned maternal shriek-fest, the action dominated by two overly emotional mother figures, screaming into the radio microphone, “JULIE! JULIE!”. Nobody was there (well, Ben Marley was) to play under the scene, to keep cool, to play against the overwhelming sentimentality of the thing.

— Lisa Whelchel is gone, sadly, and in her place is Kelly Ann Conn, who looks like a young Uma Thurman. She does an okay job, and at least she was trying to create the same character we had gotten to know in Skyward – unlike Mrs. Roeper, who made Billie Dupree a whole other kind of person. Kelly Ann Conn is supportive, kind, and always on the phone with her boyfriend. She’s also the one who sticks up for Julie when Julie either gets in trouble or her parents want to hold her back.

— Julie now has a best friend named Kendra. I don’t care about Kendra.

— Julie herself has blossomed. She and Scott are still a couple, but there’s an aspect to her character in Skyward Christmas that is really unattractive. Give Gilstrap an inch and she’ll take a mile. She behaves badly. She is WILLFUL, and so many of the bad things that happen you’re like, “Well, Gilstrap, what did you expect? Sorry you crashed your plane, but I don’t feel sorry for you – you had no business stealing that plane anyway.”

— Scott (aka Ben Marley) now works as a short-order cook out at Billie Dupree’s restaurant at the airport. He spends most of the movie in a white apron, and is just as adorable as ever – but he doesn’t have that much to do here. Naturally, for me, the whole thing comes alive when he’s onscreen. I mean, not REALLY, because the script is so terrible, with lines like, “He told me the angel sparkled like the star of Bethlehem” … and Christmas references thrown in, willy-nilly. But I still find him appealing, and one of the best things is that he wears the cowboy hat through the majority of the picture, so it starts to feel like I’m watching Hud or something.

— The good thing, though, is that Ben Marley is playing the same character as he did in Skyward. Yes, he’s now an established boyfriend – as opposed to a potential boyfriend … so that’s a change, but his energy is the same: chatty, kind of practical, a little bit egotistical, but in a jokey way – all the same guy. Same character. Thank GOD. Billie Dupree was so changed, with her glossy lipstick and heavy mascara, screaming hysterically into the phone for the police to go find Julie … that I was relieved to see that at least SOME things on this planet remain the same, and a hot teenage boy in a cowboy hat still behaves in the same manner, launching himself in and out of his truck, grinning with a sweet openness, and basically being a dreamboat.

— There is now a side plot about a grandfather, which is the linchpin of the entire thing – and it was so bad. The grandfather was mad that the family moved to Texas, he felt like they had moved just to get away from him. (Oh, get over yourself, grandpa.) The whole Ward family sits around missing grandpa and feeling bad that he won’t be there for Christmas … and the script is very bossy: Grandpa won’t get on a bus because he has a bad back. He also won’t buy a train ticket for some bullheaded reason. Julie is now a private pilot, and wants to go fly to pick him up and bring him home for Christmas … and through various tragedies, she doesn’t arrive at the meeting place. Grandpa wallows in self-pity, like: “Here I am … being blown off by my family … AGAIN.” Grandpa, seriously, stop being so passive-aggressive. Everyone is trying to make the situation work. You’re a grown man. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. At one point, he trudges back up the stairs of his rooming-house, all full of self-pity – and I said to Keith and Dan, “This is a VERY passive-aggressive family. They’re driving me crazy.”

MRS. ROEPER as BILLIE DUPREE

SUZY GILSTRAP as JULIE … basically stealing an airplane to go pick up her passive-aggressive Grandpa

JULIE’S NEW PARENTS

JACK ELAM as JULIE’S PASSIVE-AGGRESSIVE GRANDFATHER

KELLY ANN CONN as the new LISA WHELCHEL

GEOFFREY LEWIS as COOP, THE MAN-BOY WITH OEDIPAL ISSUES

BEN MARLEY as the hottest short-order cook in Texas

Notice the random Christmas wreath, a subliminal reminder of how high the stakes are for this passive-aggressive bunch of whiners! At least Ben Marley keeps his cool! Everyone else is just freaking out at all times, screaming into CB radios, with tears glimmering in their heavily-mascara-ed eyes. And Coop is now a whimpering man-boy. Marley is our testosterone representative, and believe me, Skyward Christmas needs it!