My next film, 1997’s On the Second Day of Christmas, features an eye-catching early performance from Avenger Mark Ruffalo alongside Mary Stuart Masterson in some romantic made-for-TV mush from director James Frawley. This one features all the standard improbable festive schmaltz and dubious cuteness you might expect but stands out from the crowd purely on the strength of performance, chemistry and star wattage of its two fantastic leads.
The plot is splendidly implausible. Masterson is Trish, a streetsmart New York pickpocket in a questionable criminal partnership with her orphaned six-year-old niece Patsy (Lauren Pratt). The girls only target the rich, only keep cash and always mail the stolen wallets back. All this is done in a cutesy ‘See? They’re not really bad’ kind of way, but it’s still asking a lot of the audience to root for thieves at Christmas, even if they are adorable.
Targeting the fancy Limber’s apartment store on Christmas Eve, they get caught out after unknowingly pickpocketing the store’s hardass Scrooge-like owner Mr Limber himself (Lawrence Dane). They’re apprehended by Ruffalo’s uptight but sweet store security guy Bert whose dick-ish boss pushes to prosecute and have social services separate them. By golly, they’ll need a Christmas miracle.
Well, they have to wait until December 26th to get this mess sorted, so Limber very unreasonably demands that Bert effectively keeps them prisoner in his apartment for Christmas or he’ll get the sack. It’s preposterous stuff and, of course, the usual Stockholm Syndrome romantic stuff develops, with everyone learning important lessons about love and life and Christmas and so on. As meet cutes go, this one is pretty novel, though it has obvious shades of Remember the Night and Susan Slept Here.
The film is total fluff but I need that today. I feel like my head is going to pop, with evil mortgage brokers trying to squeeze us for more cash before our house purchase can go through. It’s maddening, so I’m happy for my brain to check out for a bit with some festive gushiness which this film has in spades. Christmas decorating as an aphrodisiac? You got it. Christmas tree shopping as a romantic date? Sure thing, except here there’s a cute, felonious twist, with Trish and Patsy conning Bert into hopping a fence and pinching a tree.
This is definitely a film that plays loose with morality when it comes to having the perfect, romantic yuletide. There really is nothing realistic about this romance, with Bert and Trish bonding over a mutual love of rhubarb pie and Bert’s family falling for shyster Trish, despite all being career cops, yet the filmmakers somehow make this work.
Bert’s transformation from lonely grump into loving father figure after just one day is trite but Ruffalo has the chops to pull it off. A scene where Trish and Bert gaze lovingly at each other while whispering how it “feels like Christmas” manages to make me roll my eyes and smile sappily at the same time. You guys.
None of this should work, yet it totally does, so of course TV movies could not contain the raw acting talent of the Hulk. It’s sentimental garbage but watchably so.
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