FRED CLAUS

Reviewed by Sam Hatch

Every holiday season at least one Christmas oriented stinker comes out, and generally audiences gobble up these cinematic lumps of coal as if they don't deserve any better. I'm assuming there's some sort of film landfill up at the North Pole, populated by such Yuletide offal as Surviving Christmas, Christmas with the Kranks, Unaccompanied Minors, et cetera, et cetera. Last year, my eyes were nearly burned out of their sockets by the celluloid atrocity known as Deck The Halls, and thankfully Fred Claus is nowhere near as awful as that movie.

Fred Claus is the tale of Santa's little-known older brother, a good boy who turns sour in the wake of his sibling's excessive awesomeness. Little Nicholas is born a portly, wobbly boy, and he eventually becomes sainted due to his natural tendency to make the world a better place. Except in the case of Fred, whose only friend (a blue bird named Chirp-Chirp) is ousted from his home once Nick chops down a huge fir that serves as the world's first Christmas Tree.

This saccharine opening is clearly set in some sort of Lapland wilderness, but once Fred goes bad (by smacking his bro on the noggin' with an apple) the film flash forwards to present day Chicago. Here in Chi-town Fred (now played by Vince Vaughn) is a surly, anti-Noelite – a repo man by trade who delights in crushing kids' Christmas dreams, destroying plastic Santas and saving repossessed plasma TVs for his own enjoyment.

I was ready to tear the film a new one for not addressing the fact that these characters are seemingly immortal, until my girlfriend reminded me that I must have snoozed through the sloppy, convenient revelation that when someone is sainted, time essentially stops for their entire family. Like I said, convenient.

For all of Fred's gruff exterior, he's not a bad guy per se – he likes kids, sorta. One local urchin named Slam (Bobb'e Thompson) frequently pops through his window courtesy of the fire escape, and Fred delights in espousing his wealth of logic and street smarts to the impressionable youth. He also has a girlfriend of sorts, in the form of Rachel Weisz' infinitely patient meter maid Wanda. Unfortunately, this relationship is on thin ice due to his frequent forgetfulness when it comes to important events such as her birthday.

Fred's a traditional cinema cad, and he's also out to gather as much money as possible to secure a lucrative property deal in time for a December 22nd deadline. This desperation leads him to the dubious ploy of posing as a Salvation Army Santa, much to the chagrin of the real guys with actual city licenses. This blows up into a relatively humorous multi-Santa foot chase, culminating in a frantic beat down in a toy store.

Down on his luck and stuck in jail, Fred turns to his most despised enemy, the ever-benevolent Santa Claus (a woefully underused Paul Giamatti). Mrs. Claus (Miranda Richardson) has no love for Fred, and sternly urges Nick to resist paying Fred's bail money. When Fred makes the audacious request for tens and thousands of dollars on top of that bail money, good ol' Saint Nick acquiesces on the condition that his big bro comes to visit him and performs some rudimentary odd jobs during the busy Christmas season.

John Michael Higgins is enjoyable enough as Santa's head elf Willy, and he quickly arrives to escort Brother Fred back to the North Pole via the tried and true method of lightning-fast reindeer. The long shots of the sleigh tearing through the night sky look pretty good, but unfortunately the close ups are a pathetic green-screen failure that makes the illusion fall flaming to the ground.

The North Pole village is effectively rendered, but as expected it adds nothing new to its depiction in countless other films on either side of The Polar Express. Filmmaking techniques help advance some concepts (a snow globe / crystal ball that enables North Pole workers instant visual access to all of Earth's denizens), but there's nothing that really stands up and draws attention to itself.

Santa's elves waver between believable and scary looking, the latter being the case with Ludacris' DJ Donnie, who spins nothing but ‘Here Comes Santa Claus' all day long. Instead of going for forced perspective photography, the filmmakers opted to digitally paste his head over a real little person's figure, but the effect fails to convince and succeeds at being creepy.

Most of the appearances of Willy fare better, and his major story involves an unrequited crush on hottie accountant Charlene (Elizabeth Banks). Willy and Fred are forced to bunk together, leading to the tired gag of Fred being too big for the furniture. During the daytime Fred is drafted into sorting through the numerous toy requests from the children at large, and must decide whether or not they are naughty or nice. Being a devout 'naughty' boy himself, this task niggles at him, so he opts to teach the elves how to get down and get loose instead.

As tubby and cuddly as Santa is, he has his own load of problems, to his recurrent weight issues to the unwelcome presence of Kevin Spacey's Clyde Northcut. Apparently there is some sort of monolithic corporate entity that manages all of the holiday personalities, and alongside the Easter Bunny, Santa may see himself ushered out of the Holiday business if he fails to comply with strict regulations and product quotas. It's a cute comment on cutthroat capitalism, but I could swear this Big Business Vs. Big Red gimmick has already been done within the same genre – perhaps it was the demonic Dudley Moore 80s feature Santa Claus – The Movie.

Clyde harbors an innate hatred of Christmas (don't worry, you'll find out why - and interestingly the man who recently played Lex Luthor has a tie-in with Superman here), and spots Fred as a mark to enable his sabotage of the entire operation. Fred also grows surly when he realizes that his brother Nick has invited the parents (Kathy Bates, Trevor Peacock) along to visit, since he has apparently ceased communicating with them since he turned to the dark side. His subsequent bad behavior spurs on an intervention, which gives a reason to drag Wanda back into the fold.

What follows are plenty of hijinks, and lessons about what it means to be naughty, nice, and also good siblings. Some of the gags are amusing, but with someone like David Dobkin (Wedding Crashers) behind the lens and Vince Vaughn and Paul Giamatti in the cast, you keep expecting everyone to let loose. Sadly, it never happens.

Vaughn does his usual shtick of speaking at the speed of thought (a technique handed down from the likes of John Cusack and perhaps even Jeff Goldblum), but he's never allowed to push the envelope. Even worse, Giamatti is reined in so much that all he can do is sigh a lot and look kindly. Compare this to the recent Shoot ‘Em Up where he was free to chew up scenery like mad. The biggest laughs come from neither lead, but from a collection of z-grade celebrity brothers who bemoan their second-fiddle status during a support group meeting.

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