Sometimes you just know that a film will be terrible before it even starts and you're holding out hope that it may just surprise you. I had no such luck when it came to 'Santa Claws' (2014). Why did I put myself through this? I don't know. Maybe I'm a masochist. What I do know is this, despite its absolute lack in quality, this film is still not the worst piece of shit I have seen this Christmas. The film follows Tommy (Ezra James Colbert), a youngboy who is banned from celebrating Christmas by his Mother, Julia (Nicola Lambo), as she tells him it is just a way for corporations to make money and that Santa isn't real. In order to prove that Santa is real, Tommy decides to leave his kittens for Santa to adopt. But Santa has a severe allergic reaction to the kittens, and so it becomes up to them to deliver the rest of the presents before sunrise.
Now, first things first, the kittens in the film are fucking adorable. Not a surprise I know but it had to be said, mainly because the cuteness is where the positives in the film begin and end. You know your film is bad when you take the only positive you have and turn it into a negative, and this film did that by taking the kittens and putting terrible CGI mouths on them when they talked. Well, in all honesty, they barely ever do it but when they do it looks terrifying. Maybe that why they only do it sparingly. The way they get around it shows the absolute lack of talent in the filmmakers as they just show the two kittens who aren't speaking and keep the one who is off screen. This is one of many terrible decisions the film makers took, with the big one being making the film in the first place. The writing is also terrible. Characters personalities and motivations change on a whim in order to fit the plot, the dialogue is shocking, the humour poor and the plot ridiculously weak. Genuinely shocking throughout. There is very little else to say.
As you can probably imagine the acting is also pretty shit. It isn't abhorrent. No one was offensively bad. But no one was good either. The worst offenders, as they usually are, were the kids in the film. Ezra James Colbert is mostly fine, at least in kid actors terms, but does have a couple moments where he is pretty poor. But he is excellent when compared to a young girl who is in the film in order to give the kittens more screen time. She is pretty terrible. I don't remember her characters name so I have no idea who she is, but I get the feeling she won't be winning any oscars soon. None of what she does seems natural and it is really distracting. As for the adults, they are amateurish performances. There is nothing in them that is specifically bad, but they match the quality of the rest of the film and that is definitely not a compliment.
This film has the same problem as 'Elves' (2018) in that it is so bad that it is hard to review. Now, it is not even close to being as bad as that film, but it is still pretty terrible. There is only so many times in a review that you can say something is bad, hence the short length of this particular one. Clearly I don't reccomend it. Its a complete waste of time. Avoid it. That's it. Short and sweet.