‘The Christmas Chronicles’ (2018) was one of the bigger surprises of last year’s Christmas reviews. But that being said, I was really struggling to remember much about it at all in the lead up to me watching ‘The Christmas Chronicles: Part Two’ (2020). Not a great sign and this worry was only exacerbated by the realisation that Mr vanilla himself, Chris Columbus, had been brought in to direct. But I still held on hope seeing as the original film had been such a pleasant surprise. Maybe this film would have the same effect. We pick back up the story with Kate (Darby Camp) who is bitter that her mum has found a new boyfriend such a short time after the death of her father, so much so that she runs away. However, she finds herself back in the North Pole and with Santa (Kurt Russell) when a bad elf, Belsnickel (Julian Dennison), drives her through a wormhole. He plans to ruin Christmas by destroying Santa’s village and it is up to Kate and Santa to stop him.
Well, Chris my boy you have done it again. You are truly the master of cookie-cutter, white bread, kid’s films. That is not to say that this film is bad, in fact, it is a pretty solid children’s film, and I would expect kids to like it just fine. But the best kids’ films are the ones that adults can enjoy as well, and this is too cliché and safe to really step into that territory. But like I say it is not a b film. It looks good. It is competently shot and edited, but the real visual treats of the film come in the creativity of the sets and costumes, with Santa’s village being a particular visual delight of the film. The narrative is pretty basic fair and a version of it has been seen in plenty of kids films before, but it is a solid enough narrative which is easy for kids to follow without being so basic that it is utterly dull. And Kurt Russell remains a lot of fun as Santa. He plays as being both cool and not as cool as he might think he is, and he is easily the best part of the film. He is also a Santa I would not want to get on the wrong side of because he could probably rip your head off.
The major issue with the film, and a reason that I am really struggling to say much about the film, is that it is aggressively fine. There isn’t really anything particularly bad about it, nor is there anything really great aside from Kurt Russell. If I really had to reach for some of the weaker parts of the film, the messages that it puts across are not handled all that well. They are decent messages in and of themselves but they kind of get lost within the narrative and the film ends up relying on these messages being delivered through the dialogue. This is not such a problem with the main message of the film which is ‘it doesn’t matter where you are it matters who you’re with’, but the film also has a secondary message of facing your fears and being brave in the face of adversity which is very poorly dealt with. Not in the message itself, which is fine, but it is delivered effectively only in dialogue and because of this it had very little effect on me and I actually forgot it was even a part of the film until it concluded itself. Am I reaching? Maybe a little bit, but when a film is this white bread, I do have to reach to bulk it out a little bit.
If there was a definition of bang average this film would be fighting to be put in the dictionary. It is very competent, and I do reckon it will be a popular one among kids but if you are older than ten, I don’t think you will get very much out of it all. So, although not a bad film, it isn’t one I can recommend unless you are a child or have a child who needs entertaining for two hours. That is the magic of Chris Columbus.
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