#ToGrandmother'sHouseWeGo

[adamwatchesmovies]

To Grandmother’s House We Go (1992)

For reasons which escape me, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen were the biggest child stars of the '90s. I guess it was because they were cute little twins? It certainly wasn’t due to their acting abilities or choice of scripts. The Holiday “classic” To Grandmother’s House We Go is proof they weren't particularly choosey.

Single mom Rhonda (Cynthia Geary) tries her best to take care of her twin daughters Sarah (Mary-Kate Olsen) and Julie (Kate Olsen). Between her job at the convenience store and their burning desire to see their great-grandmother at Christmas time, they're a handful. After their latest exasperating antic, they decide to give mom a break and leave for Granny’s house. Their way there is by hitching a ride with Eddie (J. Eddie Peck), who drives a delivery truck and has been puttin’ the moves on mom. When he discovers the girls and tries to bring them back home, the vehicle is stolen by criminal duo Harvey and Shirley (Jerry Van Dyke and Rhea Perlman). If this weren't bad enough, the winning lottery ticket Eddie just bought… is still with the girls!

There’s contrived, and then there’s To Grandmother’s House We Go contrived. The two girls just happen to hide in the delivery truck the man who happens to know their mother is driving. On the way home, it happens to get stolen by a pair of bandits. Oh and the two girls just happen to pick the winning lottery tickets for Eddie, who happens to leave the ticket with them when they are kidnapped. This incredible string of coincidences shows just how much padding the film contains. This is little more than a bunch of barely sitcom-worthy plots strung together. Hopefully, these move fast enough to distract you. Otherwise, you'll realize how flat and uninteresting the main characters are. Like in all of the Olsen twins’ childhood films, the two don’t really play human beings, they play a collective idea of what cute twins might do when doing harmless shenanigans. It might've been enough to distract its intended audience back in the day. For everybody else, it’s like being forced to babysit the pair of kids who just destroyed your chances of getting that big promotion you were hoping to get.

Clearly, nobody cared. This was a paycheck for everyone - including the kids - so nobody brought their A-Game to the set. They just had a couple of cute kids and hastily threw a holiday special together. The jokes are lame. The writing shoddy. Within seconds, To Grandmother's House We Go becomes intolerable for any adult unfortunate enough to sit down with it.  (TV version, December 8, 2018)

[pleaseuseyourwords-blog]

To Grandmother's House We Go

I love starting work at 7:30 because things are usually quieter and less chaotic in the early morning.  Wednesday was a particularly quiet morning because I only had five kids in my class during my first hour of work.  However, they were all boys so the time we spent together was not exactly quiet and peaceful...

Two of them were involved in a catastrophic accident when their spaceship crashed while blasting off into space.  Luckily I was able to pull them out of the debris and they walked away unscathed.  An other boy had eaten a bug earlier and said he still felt it crawling around in his tummy...I told him that playing with blocks would help keep his mind off of it.  Afterall, the bug wouldn't last much longer in that hostile environment.

However, the majority of my amusement came from the time I spent with the remaining two boys, Squints and Fungi.  One of the boys has big brown eyes, and when he smiles his eyes disappear in a squinty grin.  Hence the name Squints.  The other boy has a haircut that makes his head look like a mushroom, so he gets the slightly less endearing nickname of Fungi.

Squints and Fungi were playing with our classroom's overstuffed dog, Puppy, when they suddenly discovered he was sick.  They rushed him over to me, the doctor, and upon inspection it was determined (mainly by Squints) that Puppy had two broken legs, two broken arms, a tummy ache, a headache, and a sore throat....when it rains it pours.  Unfortunately, Puppy did not have time to recover from his life threatening condition because Squints and Fungi were already late for a party at Grandma's house.

"Quick," Squints said to Fungi. "Get a present for Grandma, and we'll bring the doctor in our car in case Puppy gets sick again."

Fungi snatched the only thing in our classroom that made a suitable gift for Grandma, a basket full of hole punchers, and then he jumped into the car.  I was instructed to take the seat behind Squints, our driver.  Puppy was carelessly shoved onto the dashboard, and then Squints yelled, "Hang on!"

He thrust both arms straight out in front of him as he gripped the imaginary steering wheel.  Then with a loud "Vroom VRROOOOOOOM" his head snapped backwards as the g-forces plastered him against his seat.  Grandma obviously didn't live far away because two seconds after the car ride started, it was over.

"We're here," Squints said, unbuckling his seatbelt. "Wait!  Don't move!  SPIDERS!"

He pointed to the ground where he and Fungi apparently saw scads of eight-legged creatures blocking our advance to the party.  The two of them jumped out of the car and heroically fought off the beasts.  Once the danger had passed, we walked up to Grandma's front door, bearing our gift of hole punchers.  Squints knocked, but no one answered.

"Where's Grandma?" Squints asked.  And then as if the answer was clear, he said, "She must be in the potty."

So our adventure came to an end as the three of us waited patiently for Grandma to finish her business in the potty.  Because as we all know, when you gotta go, you gotta go.