"Sure. You're a nut!"--David Huddleston and Christian Fitzpatrick
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Ah yes, Santa Claus! We all know and love this jolly fat man who invades people's homes and eats all their cookies, under the pretense of leaving cheap wooden toys behind. With all the whimsy and imagination that surrounds the legend, a big-scale fantasy epic seems appropriate to capture all the magic and wonder Father Christmas embodies.
What we have with 1985's Santa Claus: The Movie is a yarn split into two halves. The first act or so follows a 14th century toy-maker (David Huddleston) who's shanghaied by elves. They curse him with immortality and force him to deliver their crummy toys to brats all over the world.
Even before this portion of the film ends, I was let down. It wasn't the colorful elves (heck, I got a kick out of their synchronized toy-making). It wasn't the fantasy (if anything, I wanted more--the film has its nice moments with the starry night skies, all the light beams, the snow). Nope, the thing I objected to the most was the story, or lack thereof. This is THE Santa Claus movie, right? His movie, and his story. But what we're given is a limp noodle of a plot that conveniently shoehorns an average schmoe into the Santa Claus legend because a bunch of elves say so. Santa literally walks into the toy shop and finds everything already laid out for him: the toys, the sack, the reindeer and sleigh. He is told that he is the Claus and he will deliver these presents. Santa has no agency and he never chose this. And it bugs me because all potential in this story is wasted.
By comparison, 1970's Santa Claus is Comin' To Town achieves so much more. As a story, that film gives me everything I could want--a complete backstory where Santa actually influences the events, chooses his destiny, and brings together all those elements that constituted his legend. With Santa Claus' own personal movie, it's all thrown at him, and with a shrug he just does it. He becomes a slave to the caricature, and there's nothing heroic about it. Now, you could argue that greatness is thrust upon Santa, but even on that level the film fails because Santa never struggles.
After all this drama-less baloney passes, Santa is finally challenged when one of his elves (Dudley Moore, probably the most charming performance in this film) attempts to automate the toy-making shop, but fails. He winds up going to the big city, where his work is embraced by BZ, a rich dude in the toy biz (John Lithgow, in a performance so wild and buffoonish that he becomes a hilarious love-to-hate villain. Easily the highlight of the film). They make some toys and stuff that makes people fly--apparently, it's much safer than the inflammable dolls and junk-ridden teddies that BZ was probed for. Inevitably, BZ plans to double-down on all the elvish magic, resulting in potent candy canes with a possibility of combustion. It's up to Santa and a couple of kids to stop all the madness!
Once the film hits the modern age, it becomes a bipolar experience where intercity crime, homelessness, and poverty are treated as comedy. Once BZ blustered into the film, it struck me that I had seen all this before in another Salkind production. Santa Claus' own movie was squeezed into the template of Superman: The Movie. These are both lighthearted epics about legendary figures. They both start off with the characters positioning into their respective niches (although Superman's origins are much more developed and spectacular than Santa's). And in their last halves, both films bring these figures to the urban world to fight some ridiculously rich and hammy villain with a silly plot. Both movies even boast the same kind of special effects (awkward optical where characters and things zoom in front of a speeding background--in the same year of Back to the Future, this just looks dated and cheap).
Unlike Superman's movie, this one drags through stretches of uninteresting subplots before the plot flatlines. In two hours, Santa Claus brings this whole story to a close by performing a loop-de-loop with his sleigh to save the good characters we're supposed to adore. And that's it--BZ is brought to justice when he floats away on his own accord (and what is it with people in space--do the Salkinds think people can breathe up there?).
Ultimately, Super Claus: The Ripoff provides no satisfying setup and no satisfying payoff. What it does offer is shenanigans that can be amusing and funny, but often for the wrong reasons. The best that can be said is that it's harmless, making it an apt viewing choice for families. And I wouldn't fault any family for making this movie a regular Christmas tradition. But if it's whimsy and magic you want, Tim Allen does it a little better in his movies, and if it's a good story you crave, you still can't beat that puppet movie from the 70s.
2/5
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