“Seeing isn’t believing, believing is seeing”
I absolutely love this movie for a few reasons. Anyone who enjoys Christmas should see this movie and anyone that does so and has children I highly recommend also.
I am not a big fan of Disney. However, this film is fantasic and in my mind one of their best (excluding other companies owned by Disney that I enjoy such as Pixar and Jim Henson Productions)
The movie’s title in itself is a not particularly clever but cute pun: The Santa Clause. Too quote the film: “The Santa Clause…not Santa Claus the person, Santa Claus the clause…Clause as in the last line of a contract”
The movie stars Tim Allen who is usually a hit or miss for people—they either love him or hate him. I personally like him, he may have done some really bad movies, but he is a great actor. In fact for those who do not like him, this may be the one film you may like him in as I feel it is one of his best.
The movie is about a man who works for a toy corporation and not the fun mom and pop type that we see in the film Toys starring Robin Williams (which is also technically a Christmas movie) or more recently Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium starring Dustin Hoffman and it is essentially a Toy store version of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. However, I am not talking about those movies right now, sorry for the tangent.
Anyway, Allen’s character is named Scott Calvin—as in the initials SC as in Santa Claus….seems like foreshadowing to me. I probably did not need to explain that to you since it is somewhat obvious, however the movie, rather than letting you think for yourself, points out its own joke at one point. I know the movie is for children but I still find this kind of patronizing as I feel most kids will get the coincidence on their own. Even if they do not I feel like a parent or guardian could explain it.
Anyway, Scott is divorced and I am going to assume it is because he put his job before his wife. The film never flat out explains it but it really does not matter to the plot.
Scott’s son Charlie is spending Christmas with him and is not sure if he believes in Santa or not because some kid at school told him, there was no Santa. Charlie’s step-dad, Neil, a Psychologist, tells him that Santa is more of a feeling. Scott then tries to encourage Charlie to believe in Santa and that is where it all starts.
This film does have one problem; it really demonizes the field of psychology psychologists themselves.
Christmas Eve Charlie wakes up to noises on the roof and low and behold it is Santa, Scott, thinking it is a burglar, runs out side and yells at him to get off the roof. This causes Santa to lose his balance and fall off the roof and die. I know it is a kid movie where Santa dies. However, they do it in a real spiritual way with the body vanishing into dancing specks of light—all that remains is the suit. In a pocket of the suit, Scott finds a card that says, “If anything should happen to me, put on the suite, the reindeer will know what to do. He of course does so.
To cut to the chase and to not give away the whole movie, putting on the suit makes one the new Santa, which the card says in the fine print.
He had 11 months to get ready to head to the North Pole on Thanksgiving and in that time, he will slowly adopt the physique and characteristics of Santa.
The problem is that Charlie went with him that Christmas Eve and so tells everyone what happen and obviously, no one believes him. They do think, however, that Scott is only enabling what they see as dangerous delusions of Charlie and Scott slowing looking like Santa makes matters worse.
On top of making therapists look bad the movie could also send the message that the police are stupid as well as they at one point arrest Santa.
In the end, there is a happy ending (it is a Disney movie after all).
The film has a few obvious problems but it is very easy to look past them. For the most part the movie is very creative and plays with many ideas and concepts. Tim Allen does a great job as Santa as a character and actor. Everyone loves this Santa because he is so great probably because he is used to working for a toy corporation and is a father.
There is also plenty of subtle humor for that only the adults will pick up on making this a great and entertaining family film.
The movie inspires the importance of that childlike innocence and the magic of the suspension of disbelief, it is heartfelt, whimsical, and Allen brings a lot to the table. In addition, all the child actors in this are good considering they are children. This brings me to another thing I love about the films creativeness: the elves are all played by children instead of the usually little people or adults that are shrunk with movie magic such as in Elf.
The messages are great, the acting is great, the creativity is great and so I give this film 5 out of 5 stars as a Christmas movie and 4.5 as a film in general.
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