Review Party Recommends: The Hoboken Chicken Emergency

We at Review Party Dot Com know what makes a good review. We know the power that recommendations can have. And we also know when someone is putting us on.

Today, friends, let’s not delude ourselves. The above movie is not great. It is not a holiday classic. In fact, this is likely the first time you’ve ever heard of it.

But you know what? It’s still a recommend.

HERE’S WHY

So in case you can’t make it out through the awful pixelation of the movie cover, this hour-long tv-movie special stars one Peter Billingsly, who you no doubt watch every December as Ralphie in A Christmas Story. It also stars a 266-pound chicken.

Hey- back up! We’re not there yet.

Okay, so yes. Raplhie. It’s your tradition, your friends’ tradition, the tradition on TBS to watch Raplhie shoot his eye out. SO, what better way to whet your palette than by seeing that little blondy gear up for Thanksgiving instead?

In Hoboken, Billingsly plays Arthur, a child in a similar hard-scrabble town, the son of a loving mother and a tough but tender father. And there is a narrator, to boot! This is proto-Ralphie, people! Except it was released the following year, and Ralphie has a bowl-cut now.

AND, except in this flick (heh!), our hero is sent out for a Thanksgiving turkey and instead winds up in possession of a 266-pound chicken. Which he buys for $20. I’ll let you decide which of those two circumstances is more unbelievable.

Naturally, Henrietta escapes Arthur’s watchful eye, and runs amok through Hoboken, leading neighbors and townsfolk to panic.

It’s an hour long movie, so there isn’t going to be a lot of drama, but let me try to win you over further with a few extra trimmings.

TRIMMINGS, YOU SAY?

Yes, indeedy. First up, it’s probably going to be difficult to find this movie, what with it being a tv-movie from the mid-80s. BUT, some fine soul has uploaded it to YouTube, directly from their VHS copy (don’t worry, I archived the page on WaybackMachine), and it has all the fuzz, and 80s-style intros to make you feel like you’re plopped back on the couch at grandma’s house.

AND, this sucker has Mickey Rooney. I know you’re young, you don’t know who that is, but you’ve probably seen Spaceballs. He’s in that! And lots of other stuff your parents and grandparents love.

Now, some of the sweet stuff. Content from the movie:

Arthur’s father says verbatim, “When your grandparents were young and still in Poland, and they told’em to eat turkey, they had to eat turkey. Now, here in America, we have a choice… And that choice is turkey.”
A newscaster says verbatim, “The giant chicken was observed leaving the Clam Brothers Seafood Restaurant at 4:30 in the morning, having left the- uh, kitchen in shambles and having, uh, eaten 46 pounds of frozen, french-fried potatoes. Later, it left a trail of overturned, uh, garbage cans and UH, beat up a number of neighborhood dogs.”

There are very few reviews on Amazon or IMDb, but our young friend Letterboxd has stepped up to the plate and has some tasty offerings (a whopping 112 have watched it).