Feast of the Seven Fishes

A Christmas movie? In February? Why not? It's pretty good.

From IMDb at this link, fair use.

Feast of the Seven Fishes (2019). Grade: B

Wow, does that poster make ya wanna throw pointy rocks in the general vicinity of somebody’s face. (Go ahead and throw them at me, it’s the internet, I’m not the Google bus.) It’s so damn wholesome. Like the f***ing Hallmark Christmas movies a vengeful-but-witty God’s gonna make me watch forever in Hell.

I got this because I told a friend we’d watched a Christmas classic, and I hated that movie the way I hate bedbugs. I won’t name it, not today; the spirit of Christmas is upon me. Peace on Earth and goodwill to all humankind. But that movie — beloved by everyone — was so rotten it made me close to physically hurt. I’d rather take PCP than even think about that terrible, terrible, cherished Christmas classic, ever again. Can you take PCP with a needle? Injected into your scrotum? I would, quite very much, rather do that. (It’d hurt less than a needle in my eyelid; given that choice, I’d watch the bad movie again.)

So my friend recommended Feast of the Seven Fishes. Which has the despicably wholesome poster, above. Oh, did I dread watching this.

Surprise! I laughed a lot.

The plot is, it’s Christmas in West Virginia. In a small-ish town on the Monongahela River. Right away, we meet a young feller who’s just been accepted to a college of Art; it’s his dream to attend there, but he’s sure that dream won’t ever come true. (Something tells me this problem will be solved in the next 96 minutes.) Then we meet a pretty young gal who’s tired of her boyfriend and mother being petty, privileged, shallow doinks. (Something tells me this problem will be solved in the next 94 minutes.)

What can solve both these problems? Why, it’s a Christmas miracle, of course!

Actually, it’s not. It’s just cooking food for the family you can tolerate. And kind of ignoring the various ways that they make you nuts. Like I said — this is actually a decent movie.

It’s written and directed by Robert Tinnell, who based it on his own graphic novel. (Which screams “vanity project,” it’s better than that.) Most of Tinnell’s other graphic novels are inspired by classic horror movies. This one’s inspired by where he grew up, and he lives in West Virginia today. This film was shot in Fairmont, WV, and Rivesville, WV; here’s the image Google Maps gives you if you look up Rivesville.

Construction! Growth! I like the rock just fine.

What makes this so likeable is it’s a portrayal of an Italian-American family that’s loving and decent and kind. There’s no jerk who drunkenly slaps around his wife, and nobody vaguely connected to the Mafia. Joe Pantoliano’s in this, and he’s playing a really nice guy! He’s kind of a bookie, and he’s kinda cranky, because that’s what you always cast Joe Pantoliano for, and of course his IMDb cast listing is “Uncle Frankie.” We’re not expecting Robert Tinnell to reinvent the wheel, here. But Uncle Frankie’s nice! He just tells ya to bet against the Steelers, because you should bet with your head, not your heart. (Actually, in 1983, the Steelers were 10-6 and won their division, not too shabby.)

Fishes is also a portrayal of small-town life that feels like a real small town. Forget The Deer Hunter’s idolization of a rural bar. Here, a guy gets hit on by a gal who’s borderline blasted, and as she leans in for a kiss, she barfs all over him. Then somebody yells at the bartender, “don’t you know that’s so-and-so’s kid? She’s 15, for crying out loud!” And the bartender yells back that he doesn’t know everybody in town.

That guy (Josh Helman) is actually the neatest character in the movie, for me. The young hero and heroine (the art student and the rejecter of snobs) are high school seniors; the barfed-on guy’s a little older, maybe 25 or so. He’s quiet and thoughtful, and hangs around the bar maybe a little too much, and has giant glasses that I can attest from memory are a very accurate 1983. He’s sort of presented as the town oddball. I resemble that remark. I’m guessing Tinnell does, too.

I don’t, quite, believe in the hero/heroine. Our hero’s a painter, but his paintings that we see look like art on the wall of a dental clinic. (Mrs. twinsbrewer said “they’re like Thomas Kinkade.” Look that dude’s Wikipedia page up. He was… something of a strange person.) Our heroine seems transplanted from a 1980s movie with the WASP-y mom and rich ski-bunny boyfriend. (Wasn’t that the plot of Better Off Dead? I forget.) It’s to the immense credit of Skyler Gisondo and Madison Iseman that they make these characters seem like more than a writer’s reliving the fantasies he had at age 18.

And to Tinnell’s credit, too. IMDb guesses this had a budget of $20 million; I’d be shocked if it was remotely close to that. This isn’t a famous cast. You might recognize Paul Ben-Victor and/or Ray Abruzzo if you had HBO in the early 2000s. (You probably won’t recognize Jess Darrow as a big-haired friend, but you will sure hope she gets more parts; she’s dazzling.) This is a cast of workaday actors who rarely get the chance to play fleshed-out, warm-feeling humans. Tinnell has some gentle fun with the Italian-American accents and a few vocabulary words, but mostly these are just nice people. It’s a little bit of a minor mistake to have the heroine like this family because hers sucks; you’d like them even if your family was nice, too.

Incidentally, the title refers to a Christmas tradition that some Italian-Americans celebrate; it’s partially a Catholic thing. (For Catholics, sometimes you would eschew meat for fish instead.) It’s a feast where families cook seven (or so) different types of fish (or so). At one point our heroine asks what yummy thing she just ate, and gets told it’s eel; she prompty goes to yack in a sink. It’s the Christmas movie with the most upchucks!

And, c’mon, ma’am, how much grosser is eel than any other fish? If it’s not actively wiggling, it’s no different then trout, not really. You want to get nastied out by seafood, come visit Minnesota, where one traditional fish dish is actually half-rotted and preserved in lye. That’ll put hair on your chest, don’tchaknowforsureyah. Eel? Fuggitaboutit!