Fred Claus



Directed by
David Dobkin

Talk about wasted opportunities! This could have been such a brilliant film that it could have been a classic of the genre, but instead it just gave me a headache.

It's not the acting, that's done professionally, and it's not David Dobkin's direction, which is really good. It's Dan Fogelman's Screenplay, which, while having some really good bits here and there [our titular hero Fred Claus (Vince Vaughn) being chased by the entire Salvation Army dressed in Santa suits, Fred Stallone, Roger Clinton and Steven Baldwin appearing in a “Siblings Anonymous” meeting, stuff like that], but what might be some amazing fantasy situations are completely wasted with a mostly unoriginal riff on every animated Christmas special ever made.

The film starts out really promisingly, way back during the Roman Empire when Mother Claus(Kathy Bates) gives birth to her second son, Nicholas. Papa Claus(Trevor Peacock) and elder brother Fredrick(Liam James) are very fond of little Nickie(heo Stevenson), but he's so friggen' SAINTLY that Fred is annoyed to no end, eventually turning bad. Nick, as we all know, becomes a Saint, and that means, according to the narration that he gets to become immortal, and so do Mom, Dad and Fred: So far, so good.

Now it's okay for a fantasy to have one insane plot point as long as the rest of the movie is built logically around it. A “Peter Pan” who's eternally 27 is a profoundly interesting idea, but they don't run with it. That's the primary annoyance in this film. The fact that Fred is 1600 years old is unstated but infects everything.

When the film segues into the “present day” Fred is a bit of a con man living in Chicago and trying to raise funds to get an OTB franchise across from the Mercantile exchange, where he has the confrontation with the Salvation Army, and is constantly bugging out on his girlfriend Wanda (Rachel Weisz) the Meter Maid, who is fed up. Why is he doing this to her? Well, he's SIXTEEN HUNDRED YEARS OLD and she's only 30, and he's going to look 27 when she's 82 and full of wrinkles. But Fogelman tries to make it because he's a putz. This is a waste of plot. When SHE gets to the North Pole, she's not the least bit freaked out.

He winds up in jail and has to get bailed out by his brother Nick, who's now known as Santa(Paul Giamatti), who gets him to come up to the north pole to do some work, as they're short handed for Christmas. He's picked up Willie the head elf (John Michael Higgins), who drives the flying sleigh, and goes to the standard version of the American mythical factory town up there, which looks quite a bit like Krypton from the Christopher Reeve Superman films.

Apparently, Santa's married to a woman named a woman named Annette(Miranda Richardson), which is in keeping with the myth, and she's a bit bitchy, but we have to have a villain, and we get one in Clyde Northcutt (Kevin Spacey), the efficiency expert sent by the home office….after hundreds of years, why would GOD send an efficiency expert?...at the last minute?...to possibly ruin Christmas?

That's right, Fred is going to have to SAVE Christmas, just like every other TV Christmas special. However, this is NOT supposed to be a TV Christmas special but a major motion picture. Sure it's for kids, sort of, but the kids have already seen every single Christmas special at least once and have already seen the plot in half a dozen variations. The thing was cooked forever in the “Santa Clause II,” and unless the next one has an entirely new take on the subject, I suggest you stick with the Rankin/Bass stuff, which at least has some nostalgia value..


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