A Year Without a Santa Claus – review

By | December 11, 2006
1 Comment

I’m being forced off-topic in order to make this public service announcement – please don’t buy the 2006 live action version of “Year Without a Santa Claus.” It comes out today on DVD after premiering last night on television.

It is just awful. Everything about it screams that it was done cheap. The script is terrible, the film quality looks like it was shot with a cam-corder. The actors seemed to have realized – too late to get out of it – that they had made a mistake to take the job. You can actually see their embarrassment at the lines they have to deliver. John Goodman looked ill for most of the movie – probably because it was shot here in Louisiana last July. Who’s bright idea was it to put John Goodman in a full Santa outfit and run him around downtown Natchitoches, Louisiana in 100 + degree weather? Goodman was so sweaty and flushed that I got a little concerned about his health.

It saddens me that somebody, somewhere is going to spend hard-earned money on this tripe for a child. Please, if you want to buy a Christmas DVD for a kid in your life avoid this one like the plague. Go with one of the classics:

  • A Charlie Brown Christmas Special

  • Emmit Otter’s Jug Band Christmas
  • A Christmas Story (its the “you’ll shoot your eye out” story)
  • Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer (the Rankin/Bass version).
  • Santa Claus is Coming to Town (Rankin/Bass)
  • A Christmas Carol

Of course there are many versions of A Christmas Carol. It’s surprising that so many of these productions are good. Alastair Sim, George C. Scott, and Patrick Stewart have all done great work playing Ebenezer Scrooge – you can’t go wrong with any of those versions.

Some parts of Scrooge’s story are a bit intense for small kids. For them, get “The Muppet Christmas Carol.” It’s the same story, but the Muppets keep it light and funny. It wouldn’t work except that Michael Caine plays Scrooge absolutely straight. Not for one second does he let on that most of his co-stars are puppets. A truly great kid’s movie.

UPDATE: Just in case you read the title and then skipped to the last sentence… A Year Without A Santa Claus is NOT “a truly great kid’s movie.” It is absolute swill. It is perhaps the worst production I’ve seen on television this decade.

  • Phil Bowermaster

    We saw a thing called Santa Baby on ABC Family the other night. It was The Polar Express meets Sweet Home Alabama, the story of Santa’s super-successful daughter coming home for Christmas after the big guy (George Wendt, Norm from Cheers) has a heart attack. Utter bilge.

    I noted that on Saturday there were two movies on against each other (I can’t remember which channels) about Santa Junior. One of these I saw a couple of years ago. It starred Kelsey Grammer (who has also played Scrooge). More crapola.

    Forget the war on Christmas; there’s a war on Santa going on. Everybody is looking for a new angle. Everybody wants to give Santa an edgy feel. Have you seen all these ads with Santa being pissed off or acting like a buffoon? Or how about the one were Mrs. Claus says “I’ll just stay here with the elves,” and the elves look like a couple of male strippers?

    Ugh.

    There is one truly great movie about Santa Claus — Miracle on 34th Street. (The remake is pretty good, but whoever wrote the screenplay didn’t understand the brilliant legal maneuvering in the original.) For more up-to-date movies, I liked the first in “The Santa Clause” series, and thought Elf was actually pretty good.