Merry Christmas, Drake & Josh

DVD cover
Genre	Christmas comedy
Created by	Dan Schneider
Written by	Dan Schneider Steven Molaro
Directed by	Michael Grossman
Starring	Drake Bell Josh Peck Miranda Cosgrove Bailee Madison David Pressman Kimbo Slice Jacob Hopes Henry Winkler Jerry Trainor Yvette Nicole Brown Nancy Sullivan Jonathan Goldstein
Theme music composer	Backhouse Mike
Country of origin	United States
Original language(s)	English
Production
Producer(s)	Scott McAboy Amy Sydorick Drake Bell
Running time	94 minutes
Production company(s)	Schneider's Bakery Nickelodeon Productions
Distributor	Nickelodeon Original Movies
Release
Original network	Nickelodeon
Original release	December 5, 2008 (2008-12-05)
Chronology
Preceded by	Drake & Josh Drake & Josh Go Hollywood

Merry Christmas, Drake & Josh (also known as Drake & Josh: Best Christmas Ever) is a television movie based on the Nickelodeon sitcom Drake & Josh.^[1] Drake Bell, Josh Peck, Miranda Cosgrove, Nancy Sullivan, and Jonathan Goldstein reappear as their respective characters, with several recurring characters from the TV series also reappearing.

The film premiered on December 5, 2008,^[2] as a Nickelodeon Original Movie. It was the third most viewed TV movie on cable behind High School Musical 2 and Wizards of Waverly Place: The Movie, both owned by Disney Channel.

The film premiered 15 months after the end of the original Drake & Josh series.

Plot

The film starts off with Walter (Jonathan Goldstein) and Audrey (Nancy Sullivan) leaving for a tropical vacation. Drake (Drake Bell) and Megan (Miranda Cosgrove) come home and Josh (Josh Peck) shows them his snowman air balloon decoration. Megan cuts the string holding the air balloon down, making the snowman glide away, and Josh runs after it. The scene shifts to Drake and Josh going to the Premiere. Drake tells Josh that he will be throwing a Christmas party on the roof of the Premiere, which Josh does not approve of because he is not sure that Helen (Yvette Nicole Brown) would approve either. Drake tells him that he has already spoken with Helen about it and that it is fine as long as she is invited (and if there are churros).

Helen hands Drake a Santa costume to wear in the mall. Josh is upset because Helen told him that he could not be Santa (since he lost weight over the years). Meanwhile Audrey and Walter make it to their island, which turns out to be a disaster. Back at the mall, Drake makes out with a teenage girl. Josh is annoyed and tries to get their attention eventually yelling "Santa!!" at which point they break. One of the other people, which happens be to an overweight woman who likes Drake, waiting in line for Santa, climbs on Drake to kiss him, starts to chase him eventually leading him to steal an old ladies electronic wheelchair to flee from her. He hides and he meets a little girl named Mary Alice Johansson (Bailee Madison). She says she and her family want the best Christmas ever. He made a Christmas promise he will do so; but it is said in the film that "you can't break a Christmas promise", and Drake does not realize he will have to give her family the "best Christmas ever".

Next they're at Drake's Christmas party up on the roof of the Premiere. At the party, Mindy (Allison Scagliotti) has to leave to go and visit her grandparents, leaving Josh upset. Crazy Steve (Jerry Trainor) shows up in front of Drake and Josh, and shows them a wood chipper called "Sally" on his cell phone. Craig (Alec Medlock) and Eric (Scott Halberstadt) come and tell Drake that the last song was great and he should perform it in the Christmas parade, but Drake says that the parade is for dorks and losers and that he is going to Las Vegas for Christmas to hear a band play inviting Josh when he gets upset that they will not be able to spend Christmas together. Later on, a few party crashers come to the party. When Josh calls the cops, they inadvertently mistake him for one of the party crashers and arrest him. With his attention turned away from Drake, Josh falls off the roof and lands in the back of a pickup truck, which drives off with the police trailing close behind.

When the truck turns at an intersection, Josh tumbles out, causing the police to arrest him. After Josh is arrested and sent to jail, he meets his prison roommate, Bludge (Kimbo Slice). At first, Bludge tries to beat him up, until Josh entertains Bludge with magic tricks. This makes Bludge change his mind about Josh. However, he says he claims he has to beat him up, so he can protect his reputation in jail. Bludge and Josh bang on the walls with Josh pretending to shout in pain, to get others to believe Josh is getting beat up.

Mary Alice brings up a story of how she has a sick foster mom and a busy foster dad. Drake knowing he has to fulfill that promise, attempts to break Josh out to help him. But is caught immediately after, landing both of them in trouble. Drake and Josh are sent to court and Helen acts as their lawyer. She tells Judge Newman (Henry Winkler) that Drake has made a promise to Mary Alice that he'd give her the best Christmas ever. Then the judge says that he will not send them to jail as long as they fulfill that promise.

They meet the cruel and embittered Officer Perry Gilbert (David Pressman), who says that he will take a vote from Mary Alice's family on Christmas asking them if they had the best Christmas ever. If any of them says "no", they must go to jail. The duo soon meet Mary Alice's foster family, which include Lily and Violet (Camille and Cosette Goldstein), two frequently pounding-on-each-other twins, Zigfee (David Gore), a foreign guy who speaks an unknown language, Trey (Daven Wilson), a know-it-all, and Luke (Devon Graye), Mary Alice's rebellious older brother who refuses to participate with everyone else as he has grown bitter over the years. They find many possibilities in giving Mary Alice's family the best Christmas ever, but their attempts are foiled by Officer Gilbert. Drake and Josh confront Megan, asking her to sabotage Officer Gilbert's doings by bribing her with Trevor's rare Smith Royal oboe, saying it was given to him by his grandfather. However, after soon realizing that he didn't actually own one, Megan refuses her promise to Drake and Josh.

Josh goes to visit Officer Gilbert's mother and claim he must hate them somehow for making their lives miserable. His mother claims that Officer Gilbert does not hate them and that he actually hates Christmas because of an incident that happened in his childhood. Then, she tells them how Officer Gilbert always wanted a pet chimpanzee for Christmas. When he was eight on Christmas morning, he snuck downstairs and found one sitting by the tree in a cage. But when he opened the cage door, it attacked him, urinated on him, and eventually jump out the window, causing him to hate Christmas ever since. Drake and Josh realize that since Christmas was ruined for him, he now wants to ruin it for everyone else.

At the Christmas parade, Officer Gilbert tricks Steve (who arrives in a DeLorean) into reminding the two in front of Mary Alice that they would go to prison if they didn't give them a happy Christmas. Mary Alice and her family believe that they were only being nice to them to avoid punishment, leave and threaten to vote "no" when the court asks them to vote, thinking jail as an appropriate punishment for Drake and Josh for deceiving the family.

Despite the family's awareness, Drake and Josh both decide to keep their promise no matter what. So the duo sends Officer Gilbert a sweet baby chimpanzee named Cookie as a Christmas present, completely changing his personality to loving Christmas and monkeys once more. Then, they try to use Steve's wood chipper to make it snow in front of Mary Alice's house. The wood chipper shoots large chunks of ice through the neighborhood where Mary Alice lives and causes more trouble as it destroys everything. The chipper then knocks out Drake and Josh and the now-kind Officer Gilbert and some other officers take them home. The next morning, Officer Gilbert explained to Mary Alice and her family what really happened; that Drake and Josh were not really trying to use them to stay out of prison.

They have Officer Gilbert and the other officers "arrest" them and bring them to the living room, where Mary Alice's family and other people surprise them. They then have the vote on whether they all had the best Christmas ever or not, with everyone voting "yes"; Zigfee learning his first English word. As they start singing, Josh's former cell mate Bludge comes down the chimney, breaking it in the process to deliver gifts to Mary Alice's family and others, including a Smith Royal oboe for Megan. Mindy arrives too, wanting to learn everything that happened and Steve gets "Sally" to make snow by using 7,000 pounds of "hard cheese". Drake and Josh's parents then arrive home from their troubled vacation at their "bungalow", which was blown away earlier in a tropical storm. As everyone plays in the blanket of "cheese snow", the film then draws to a close, as everyone truly has the best Christmas ever.

Cast

From the TV show

The show's vast majority of recurring characters returned for the special, all played by their original actors. Crazy Steve takes a more major role in this film, having a larger role in the film than Audrey or Walter.

Movie only

These characters all have a larger role than most characters, second only to Drake, Josh, and Megan.

Music

The opening theme for the movie entitled "Christmas Promise" was composed and performed by Drake & Josh series composer Backhouse Mike. Miranda Cosgrove did a cover of "Christmas Wrapping", and the song became the single of the movie, but no soundtrack was released. The cast featuring Drake Bell, Josh Peck, and the kids do a cover of "12 Days of Christmas" in the movie. Drake Bell made a music video for his cover of "Jingle Bells" which promoted the movie and can be seen on the DVD.

Nielsen ratings

The premiere of Merry Christmas, Drake & Josh had 8.095 million viewers.^[3]

References

External links

• Merry Christmas, Drake & Josh
• IMDB's Merry Christmas, Drake & Josh
• TV.com's Merry Christmas, Drake & Josh
• TV Guide.com's Drake & Josh episode listings