The Santa Clause

hoo ho hooo.

"You've Never Seen Santa Quite Like This Before."

I wish I STILL hadn't seen Santa like this, but alas, no such luck. Welcome to the Tagline everyone, and Merry Christmas. If you don't celebrate Christmas, well don't worry, by the time I'm finished with this review no one will be celebrating. Grinch that I am, I thought I'd spread my holiday cheer by reviewing this ridiculous Kirk Cameron movie about how we need to all buy into the holy godliness of like hot cocoa or something, but my dreams for the world's misery were dashed because the stupid movie is still in a theater somewhere, and therefore not available on DVD. Bitter as this disappointment was to me, Christmas wasn't quite ruined yet. No there was still hope, as I channel surfed and fell right into a movie from Christmas past. This is 1994's The Santa Clause, a movie concept based almost entirely around a pun about contract law. If that sounds offensive, well I haven't even gotten to the part where it stars Tim Allen yet. That's right, fresh off the set of Home Improvement, and ready to ham it up in a Santa suit.  Merry Christmas folks.

Tim Allen, moments after murdering Santa Claus.

So here is the awesome pitch for you all. Tim Allen is a cynical businessman named Scott Calvin. He is divorced and has a young son named Charlie. One Christmas Eve, they awaken to noises on the roof. Calvin goes out to investigate, and startles a man on the roof, who then falls off and dies. Oops. So basically Tim Allen unwittingly murders Santa Claus, and has to finish out his route for the night, to save Christmas. That seems great and everything but wait, it doesn't stop there. See Calvin finds out that the job isn't a temp deal. He killed Santa, so now as the next Christmas approaches, he gains a ton of weight and grows a big white beard. This horrifying transformation is unstoppable it seems, since Calvin didn't read the writing on the wall before donning the red suit. He is now contractually bound to be Santa, forever probably. He finds this out from the super-nerd guy from Numbers, only with braided hair (David Krumholtz you know, remember how he was in 10 Things I Hate About You?), and he's an elf named Bernard. This whole Santa situation is a bit troubling for poor Scott Calvin, but he's given just the 11 months leading into Christmas to get his shit together.

You can't stop the signal Santa.

Of course there are other unfortunate side effects to this. For starters, his son is going around telling everyone his dad is Santa Claus, This causes concern from his unbeliever mom and her boyfriend/therapist? Neal. They both think that the kid is going bonkers because of the broken home he comes from. That goes for Calvin too, who looks like a lunatic trying to make himself look as much like Santa as possible so that he can... I don't know win his son back over? Anyway, he loses visitation rights and starts flirting with incarceration, all in an attempt to keep his visitation rights and also save Christmas. How does that go? Well you can probably guess, but there is some stuff with little elves with jet packs (of course all the "elves" are actually just little kids).

This looks seriously inappropriate.

Despite the general silliness of the movie and the overwhelming volume of child acting in it, this movie absolutely killed in the box office. I mean big time. A 22 million dollar budget, and it made almost 190 million dollars worldwide. That is a lot of cheddar. It was sweet enough that it prompted two more movies to be made, as they beat this dead horse to dust. How many clauses can there be in this contract? A whole shitload apparently. This movie ended becoming a sort of modern "Christmas classic" and so that's why we're treated to it on tv pretty much every year, at least a couple times. I guess this is vintage Tim Allen if that's something you actually want, but damn... there's some real goofy kid shit on display here.

That's all I have for tonight. Merry Christmas, and I'll see you next week as we get ready to ring in the new year!