Plot: You may have heard some jive about how Santa Claus lives
in the North Pole with his legions of toy-building elves. Dirty, vile lies all
of it. According to “Santa Claus,” (and with a title like that it must know
what it’s talking about) Santa lives in a castle in OUTER SPACE and flies to
Earth each year on a sled powered by huge tinker-toy reindeer. Oh yeah, and his
helpers aren’t elves, but thousands of kidnapped children from all corners of
the globe. As if all that wasn’t weird and disturbing enough, eventually the
devil decides to ruin Christmas for everyone. So he sends his minion Pitch to
wreak havoc for Santa as he journeys around the world--- but really just one
town in Mexico.
Why it stinks: The movie is called “Santa Claus” for god
sakes. Not “Santa Claus does this” or “Santa Claus conquers that,” just “Santa
Claus.” At first I thought that was a pretty boring and nondescript title, and
then I saw the movie.
Fits
like a glove.
For
huge, seemingly unending stretches, “Santa Claus” just follows Santa as he
plods around his galactic crystal fortress of solitude thing with his band of abducted
children. Of course, the movie doesn’t come right out and say Santa kidnapped
these kids, it just completely glosses over how they got there. However,
the soul-less vacant looks in their little eyes say things words never could.
“Santa
Claus” is flat out weird. The people who made it clearly had big imaginations---
Santa lives in space for god sakes!--- but the movie exists on a painfully small
scale.
Example:
The demon’s big plan to ruin Christmas? He sic’s a dog after Kris Kringle and as
St. Nick hides in a tree, the demon calls the cops to have him arrested. That’s
it.
And
then there’s the usual nonsense about a poor little girl who only wants a dolly
to call her own. Guess if she gets it?!?! Go on, guess! Also, there’s a rich
kid who just wants his parents to spend time with him. Guess if they do by film’s
end?
You
know, for a kid’s movie, “Santa Claus” features a lot of people being drugged.
I mean Santa drugs EVERYBODY! He spikes the rich kid’s parents’ drinks to make
them love him, he drugs kids to make them go to sleep, he drugs the rich kid
into a “waking sleep” for some reason.
Couple
the near-constant druggings with the army of clearly kidnapped kids and “Santa
Claus” takes an entirely unintentional hard left turn towards the dark side.
Cheap
sets, flat acting and painfully dated special effects are also on the menu.
Best of all: “Santa Claus” is an import from Mexico, so we get lots of bad
dubbing and translation goofs. Something for everyone!
Worst
of the worst: Less than five minutes into the movie, we’re introduced to Santa’s
kids. Each country gets their own little ethnic song and dance number. There
are no words to describe the horror of this sequence. It’s so annoying it makes
“It’s A Small World After All” look tolerable by comparison.
Video
evidence
Bumblebee
tuna!
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