Day 19. The Ref

It opens with a choral version of "The Holly and the Ivy" over an image of a festively lit suburb. The song is then overlaid with hip-hop beats. There's suddenly no mistaking it: this is Christmas with attitude!

The Ref has been the most requested title for this blog. I saw it once upon its VHS release (rented from Super Video in Rockingham Ridge, and I mention that here only so there's now an Internet record of the place existing), but couldn't remember any details beyond the cover art and that I enjoyed it. Looking at it now, two things are apparent. 1) Humour has changed significantly since 1994. 2) This is still a well-constructed Christmas comedy.

On its most obvious level, The Ref exists as a showcase for Denis Leary, whose No Cure For Cancer standup act was a popular hit, but who had been upstaged by the soundtrack to his own movie Judgment Night a few months earlier. Strolling into a vanilla Connecticut town with his era-appropriate outgrown Chris Cornell-goatee, Leary plays a jewelry thief named Gus, buying time awaiting his partner in a neighbourhood home. That home is inhabited by couple Lloyd and Caroline Chasseur (Kevin Spacey and Judy Davis), whose endless marital bickering gives Leary the chance to showcase his stylings by ranting at them.

The impedes for these Hollywood writers and executives to make cynical Christmas movies about how marriages implode and relatives are always at each others throats is easy to do from up on their mountain of prostitution, blow and almond milk. But what's special about The Ref is that it has it both ways, posing as the subversive movie before getting infected with some of that sentimental yuletide spirit, while making the transition feel legit. It helps that it's uniformly populated with good actors playing interesting characters. 

Much of the comedy is locked in its era. Take, for example, this exchange:

"Who would catch a criminal and then let him go free?"

"Republicans."

In 1994, that joke was a highlight, but comedy has since mutated, with more audiences preferring random absurdity or clockwork construction. Today, it's still okay, but registers mainly as an effort to be clever.

The Ref improves, getting looser and funnier, as its cast of characters expands. The Chasseurs' relatives join them for Christmas Eve, with Gus having to pose as the marriage counsellor. Director Ted Demme (Who's the Man?) does a nice job balancing a multitude of feuding personalities, becoming less dependent on the binary of Lloyd and Caroline arguing, followed by Gus shouting his material at them. It's a dialogue-heavy script, locating scathing and ultimately empathetic comedy in a group of adults who feel they should have found happiness by now, but have not.

The Ref and The Meaning of Christmas

In a lot of Christmas movies, people receive unwanted fruitcakes. Jack Lemmon complains about all those he's received in The Apartment. Denis Leary can't stand the taste of one in The Ref. It's clear to me that there will be no peace on Earth and goodwill toward humans, until we decide on a better desert for gift-giving. 

Also, stop complaining so much about your family and fruitcakes.