Saturdays with Santa: Santa Claus – The Movie
You might be better off staring at a lump of coal.
Sundays from now through Christmas, I’ll be focusing on movies about Santa Claus; and if you’re wondering where my thoughts on Tim Allen’s The Santa Clause are (because I know I’ll get questions), I actually wrote about the entire series a few years back.
Oof.
When I decided to do a holiday series about films featuring Santa Claus, I knew I wanted to start with 1985’s Santa Claus: The Movie. I’d never watched Jeannot Szwarc’s film, which I’ve always considered odd. I grew up in a family that loved Christmas movies; I thought I’d seen all of them. And I remember the trailer intriguing me as a kid – an entire movie about the origins of Santa? Bring it on!
Having now seen it, I suspect that perhaps my loving parents protected me from this tacky, half-assed bit of storytelling. Rather than do what producers Alexander and Ilya Salkind intended – take what they did with Superman and give us the definitive myth of Santa Claus – it’s a lifeless, loud and cringe-inducing bit of Yuletide pap that can’t be saved by colorful set design.
Claus (David Huddleston) is a woodcarver in the Middle Ages who nearly succumbs to the cold when he and his wife are delivering toys to boys and girls one winter evening. But the two are drawn to a hidden community of elves, who have been waiting for a prophesied one to deliver all their handmade toys to all the children of the world. And so, Claus dons a red suit, develops a fondness for cookies, and spends the next several hundred years becoming the Santa we all know and love. That is, until a disheartened elf named Patch (Dudley Moore) defects and teams up with a ruthless toy company exec named B.Z. (John Lithgow) to supercharge Christmas – and profits.
Perhaps the most disappointing thing about Santa Claus: The Movie is its wasted potential. The Salkinds’ Superman holds up as one of the great comic book movies, a perfect fit for actor and director, and a great template for creating modern myths. And it’s not like there’s not a backstory for Santa or questions that are unexplored. There’s the story of the very real Saint Nicholas. There is a mythology to spin out of the world of the elves or how Santa’s powers work. There’s a story that could be told about the need for a figure of goodness to inspire the world and a contemplation about what makes a person worthy of that mantle.
David Huddleston is a perfectly fine Santa. He’s friendly and good-natured; he has a nice beard and a jolly laugh, and he looks the part in his red suit and hat. But there’s no character to him; he’s an extremely passive Santa. His response to being told he’s been chosen as an immortal gift giver to all the children of the world is basically “okay.” When someone suggests giving bad kids coal, he protests…until he doesn’t. The most frustrated he gets is some stress at being overworked. There’s never a sense that Huddleston is playing anything other than a mascot for Christmas; which, sure, is what Santa is. But when you consider the way Christopher Reeve brought humanity, heart and depth to Superman, it’s disappointing to see that the same producers couldn’t figure out a way to bring that same spark, charisma and joy to one of the world’s other most iconic men.
In the film’s first half, Szwarc ladles on the spectacle, but it never feels spectacular. There’s an impressive blizzard that threatens to engulf Claus and his wife, and it looks good in the film’s 4K restoration. The animatronic reindeer are fun to watch, and Santa’s workshop is a truly impressive bit of set design. But the script assumes that we already know enough about Santa that it shouldn’t have to explain anything or dig deeper; it’s missing any sense of wonder or magic. The sets are colorful and festive, but never feel like anything other than sets. The score uses a variety of Christmas classics – including a lot of Christmas hymns, which is weird since it’s a very secular story – but the film never captures the joy and wonder of those songs (and with its giant sets and colorful costumes, it often feels like a musical missing any singing).
Years back, my family used to see the Radio City Christmas Spectacular when it toured. And this film feels like that; a lot of Christmas dressing and the appearance of magic, but no real story or awe behind it. It’s a distraction. But at least, for the first hour, it’s a colorful distraction.
When the film hits the 1980s, it becomes shrill and plastic. Moore’s constant elf puns are annoying, as is the film’s constant product placement – which features an orphan kid staring through the windows of a McDonald’s before the local rich girl offers him a Christmas dinner, complete with a shiny can of Coke. The subplot about Patch helping the evil B.Z. is loud and garish; the sets at the toy factory look plastic and cheap, and the film’s “Christmas 2” nudge in the ribs about sequels rings a bit false coming from the producers who tried to force Richard Donner to make two Superman movies out of one and split The Three Musketeers into two movies while only being paid for one. Aside from a few fun effects of Santa flying through New York City and an enjoyable Lithgow hamming it up as the evil toy exec, nothing sticks, and the film grows actively annoying the longer it goes on.
I really don’t know who this one is for. It’s pitched right at kids, but it’s too childish to captivate anyone over 5 years old and too slow-paced for that target audience. If it had some soul or wonder and didn’t feel the need to spend half its run time with a goofy slapstick story and kidnapped kids, maybe it would be a fine family movie. But it’s extremely empty, dull and lifeless. This “definitive” Santa story belongs on the Naughty List.