Christmas in Vegas sounded like a bad Hollywood comedy starring Hugh Grant and whoever the latest WB Television Network ingenue might be. It turned out to be both exactly that and something otherwise. Sort of Broadway Boogie Woogie meets Bright Lights, Big City. (Piet Mondrian chumming with Jay McInerney?) The bombastic neon explosion along the Strip IS the cascading electric canyon of grandiose American sublime as advertised. Why else would someone no less than Dave Hickey champion its formalism?
But the expected kitsch never materialized as the anticipated irony. Somehow the excessive and overblown theatricality of the "big show" works as ordinary normalcy. No escapism or fantasy disguised as healthy simulacra to disorient, no agape awe of Disney World proportions, this is unexpurgated, unadulterated "real life" now.