Digital Sextant

Just before he went out the door and was run over by a truckload of mixed nuts.

I did some searching and discovered that I haven’t written any posts about this most underrated of holiday movies.  If you haven’t seen it, and your heart isn’t three sizes too small, take a look at the under-appreciated 90s gem, Mixed Nuts.

The film tells the story of Philip, a hapless hopeful who runs a suicide hotline that’s about to be shut down and booted out of its building.  His coworkers and others who find their way into the story run a gauntlet of Christmas cheer and goofiness, reminding us, in the end, just what Christmas is all about.  Some thoughts:

• Duh, but if you haven’t seen it, here’s the cast: Steve Martin, Rita Wilson, Anthony La Paglia, Madeline Kahn, Juliette Lewis, Adam Sandler, Liev Schrieber, Gary Shandling, and Rob Reiner.  Plus, cameos from Jon Stewart and Parker Posey.
• There’s a genius scene in which Madeline Kahn is stuck in an elevator and noone knows that she’s there.  She starts hollering in the hallway, and the sound editing lets you hear her in the background as we cut to inside the hotline office, where her co-worders don’t hear her.
• This time around, I noticed lots of little things in the set design, like the hilarious art on the wall in the apartment.  The hangdog velvet painting just must have been picked by Catherine, while the pith helmet hanging on the wall in the bathroom could have been a souvenir from Philip’s days in the Peace Corps.  There’s also a poster for the condo development on the Wall behind Mrs. Munchnik in a later sequence.
• There’s a great bit about a “plan” at 6:00 or so in the clip below.
• The 1950s family that Liev Schriber storms out on makes me laugh every time.  When the family chants “Arnold, Arnold, Arnold” the guy playing the piano plays a low monotone beat to accompany them.  Hilarious.