'Candy Cane Lane': Eddie Murphy movie based on real holiday decoration competition
The film's writer, Kelly Younger, was inspired by the controversy his father's holiday decorations caused in his California neighbourhood
The new Prime Video movie Candy Cane Lane, starring Eddie Murphy, Tracee Ellis Ross and Jillian Bell, starts off with a serious neighbourhood competition for the best holiday decorations, and as extreme as it may seem, writer Kelly Younger pulled from his real life experience.
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"My parents have lived in El Segundo, California for many, many years, they live at the top of the street that leads into Candy Cane Lane, where every year, since I think the 1940s, the neighbourhood has gone all out on their holiday decorations," Younger explained to Yahoo Canada. "My dad got bit by the holiday spirit bug and he over decorated his own house this one year, and he got his house featured in the local newspaper."
"[It] caused a little controversy, because was he officially on the lane? Or was he not officially on the lane? So that kind of revealed some of the politics, some of the neighbourhood rivalries, and that's kind of where I got the idea to set this holiday movie here."
Eddie Murphy brought his own Christmas traditions to 'Candy Cane Lane'
Murphy plays Chris Carver, a dad and husband who is taking his neighbourhood holiday decorating competition very seriously, especially because there is a $100,000 prize and he unfortunately just lost his job.
In an attempt to really solidify his win, Chris enlists the help of the sneaky elf, Pepper (Bill), but that's when things start to get complicated. This deal comes with a lot of strings that Chris wasn't anticipating.
"I love that the movie starts and you go, Oh this is a cool movie about a neighbourhood competition, and then [you go], no it's not that movie at all," director Reginald Hudlin said. "It's a whole other kind of movie and then it suddenly starts getting weirder and weirder, and the stakes get keep getting higher."
"I just love that because the audience just goes, 'Oh wait, I thought I was ahead of you, but I'm not at all, actually.'"
Hudlin's impressive previous directing work includes the 2017 film Marshall and 1990's House Party, as well as episodes of TV shows like New Girl, Modern Family, Psych and The Bernie Mac Show. He personally loves Christmas, which enticed him to take on this project.
"I love Christmas. I love Christmas movies. I thought this script was so original and fresh, and oh wait, Eddie Murphy wants to star in it? Well, that's a whole lot of yes to me," Hudlin said.
In terms of Murphy's leading role in Candy Cane Lane, Younger revealed that the actor brought a lot of his personal holiday traditions to the character.
"When I first met Eddie I asked him, ... 'What does Christmas mean to you?' And he looked at me and he said, 'It means everything,'" Younger said. "He shared with me how he does the holidays, how he goes way over the top at his own house with his family, but he also makes things, he makes ornaments, he makes gifts for people."
"I loved that Eddie really saw himself in this character and he brought a lot of his own traditions, his own sense of being a family man."
'I always try to swing for the fences'
Both Hudlin and Younger really collaborated for this movie, with Hudlin wanting the writer on set during the filming process. But the pair also got in a bit of trouble because they both really wanted to push the boundaries to the extreme for this movie.
"We got into a lot of trouble ... because I write big ideas, I always try to swing for the fences," Younger explained. "Early on I would come up to Reggie and say, 'OK well, I have an idea, it's pretty big,' and I would pitch it to him and he'd listen and go, 'OK there's only one problem, it's not big enough."
"So he would always take the ideas and make them even bigger, to the point that occasionally one of the producers would see us off in the corner chatting, and they'd walk up and be like, 'No, no, what are you talking about? We can't afford it. ... Whatever you're doing. Stop.'"
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That also extended to production designer Aaron Osborne's work, who highlight that collaboration and "Christmas miracles" were constantly happening throughout making this movie.
"Well picture this, I'll take a sequence from the movie, Eddie ... buys a 12 Days of Christmas tree, the amount of conversations and departments that go from just the giant tuna can that the tree comes in, and that rolling down his driveway to open up, all of a sudden you're talking to special effects, props, VFX," Osborne explained. "Then he opens it and a giant tree pops out, we have to practically build the tree, the tree is going to change, ... things happen to the tree in the story."
"What would happen is someone would go, 'Oh my god, how are we going to do this.' And the other department would step in and go, 'You know what? I think we can take it from here.' Christmas spirit and Christmas miracles happened constantly as we made this movie."
With holiday films being a very specific genre, with many people having strong expectations for what they want to see from these movies each year, Hudlin explained that he was particularly interested in trying to "play" with and "tweak" the rules of the holiday movie form.
"Everyone goes in knowing the rules, so then it's all about, OK let's play with those rules," Hudlin said. "Let's just play this out to ... absurd lengths, right? And how do you tweak it and play with it? So all those to me were premises that I thought could make for great storytelling."
