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Matinee: 'Be a Kid This Christmas'
14 December 2019
Saturday matinees long ago let us escape from the ordinary world to the island of the Swiss Family Robinson or the mutinous decks of the Bounty. Why not, we thought, escape the usual fare here with Saturday matinees of our favorite photography films?
So we're pleased to present the 322nd in our series of Saturday matinees today: Be a Kid This Christmas.
This two-minute jewel of a Christmas commercial for Haford Hardware in the Welsh town of Rhayader has been featured by Time, Fox, CNN, The Guardian, House Beautiful, Mashable, the Daily Mail, the BBC and a few other big outlets. But we were afraid you'd miss it.
The irony of our age is that with easy access to everything, nobody sees the same stuff any more. There's just more of everything than there ever has been -- except the time to consume it.
We were a bit tense expecting something awful to happen, as it sometimes does around unsupervised two-year-olds.
So we're indulging our god-given right to be silly now and then to present it here.
We'll just tell you that two-year-old Arthur, the son of Thomas Lewis Jones and Pauline Lewis who own the hardware store, is the star of this clip but he is playing his father.
If we'd known that to begin with, we might have enjoyed it more. We were a bit tense expecting something awful to happen, as it sometimes does around unsupervised two-year-olds.
Not that Arthur performs death defying feats. He gets out of bed, brushes his teeth and has breakfast with his smartphone (that was our clue) before going to the shop and taking care of business.
Still, he's just two. What's with that?
The final scene explains the mystery very clearly in a quite perfect way after a brilliant transition.
Much has been made of the small cost Haford Hardware spent on the production. They only had to cough up £100 to rent a studio to record the soundtrack, which is Andrea von Kampen's cover of Alpahville's Forever Young.
The movie was filmed and edited by Tom's film-maker friend Josh Holdaway. The pair also directed and produced it.
But you won't be thinking of how much money they saved making this movie as you watch young Arthur go through his day, closing up the shop at the end.
That would be an adult perspective. And the whole point of this is to make you feel like a kid again.