Growing up I knew that ‘The Santa Clause’ (1994) existed but had absolutely no idea what the hell it was about. When I found out I thought it was a joke. It sounded like the most bonkers of premises which seemingly was made because some noticed an opportunity for a pun title. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that it would turn out bad and I am willing to give it a fair shake. And it managed to get two sequels after this so there must b something good about it right? The film follows Scott Calvin (Tim Allen), a businessman who struggles to connect with his young son while also having a deteriorating relationship with his ex-wife and her new partner. On Christmas Eve night Scott inadvertently kills Santa by making him fall off the roof, which forces him to take his place and become Santa Clause.
This film isn’t as bad as I had heard or expected. I mean, it isn’t great, and I would struggle to say it is good, but it was fun enough and I didn’t have a bad time with it at all. I am going to spend the second half of this review talking exclusively about the narrative because I have a lot to say, and so for this paragraph, I will focus on whether the film is successful technically, performance-wise and in its attempts to be a comedy. The answer is no, not really, at least in terms of its attempts to be a comedy. There are a lot of very childish jokes, with two fart jokes, in particular, being in there for reasons of ‘fart funny lol’. There was one joke that I did laugh at, which was when Scott is on his first, reluctant night of being Santa and a young girl wakes up while he is delivering presents. She says, ‘you’re supposed to drink the milk’ to which he replies ‘I’m lactose intolerant’. Is it funny? No. But it caught me off guard and Allen’s delivery was funny as well. Overall, the performances in the film are all decent, including all the kids which is always a worry, but Allen is the only really memorable performance in the whole thing. He manages to play slimy and sarcastic really well but isn’t as strong when he needs to be a bit more heartfelt. He is never bad, but he is much more believable in one aspect of his performance than the other. Technically the film is sound. It is shot well and does what it needs to do. There are some CGI effects which look like pure ass, so much so that I can’t imagine they even looked good at the time, but other than that it is fine. But none of that is important when the narrative is as mad as this one is.
I am struggling to put my finger on what the message of this film is meant to be because it isn’t clear. Be more kind? Spend more time with your kids? Completely change who you are by accident and be locked into a cursed life with huge new responsibilities? All can be argued for, but I will argue that the film goes for the third one. Scott Calvin is a victim of a curse in this film. Yeah, he is a bit slimy, sarcastic, and a bit of an arsehole, but the film doesn’t go in so hard on this that you feel like he really needs to change all that much. He makes an effort with to cook a Christmas dinner for him and his son and just because he accidentally burns the turkey and takes his soon for food in the only open place for miles his kid resentment him for it. Fuck that. And then because Scott is feeling guilty about that when he does accidentally kill Santa his kid guilt trips him into putting the suit on and becoming Santa. His kid forces him into this curse, which everyone around Scott is like ‘you accepted the contract by putting the suit on, it said it on the card you read’. Except the writing on the card is so small that you have to get a microscope to read it. And then he is stuck in it and with it his whole personality and physique changes and it leads to him possibly losing custody of his child. It is truly fucked up. If Scott was a full-on dickhead then maybe I would be fine with this, but he isn’t. He is just a bit of a prat and I for one feel massively sorry for him.
So yeah, that is ‘The Santa Clause’ and all the insanity that comes along with it. And I think it is fair to say that this film isn’t good. There aren’t any aspects of it that I would say ap articular stand out apart from the completely outlandish narrative. But it also isn’t an awful film, and I had a decent amount of time with it. Would I recommend it? No, probably not. There are so many better Christmas films out there that this one just seems like you can keep it on the back burner for if you run out of others.
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