There is something wonderfully metaphorical in the image of a herd of 30 Santa Clauses chasing a contemporary Scrooge through the busy streets of snowy Chicago. The holiday season, whether we will or no, will force itself upon even those least willing to acknowledge it, much less celebrate it. The Scrooge in question has even less reason than most to view the approach of tinsel, holly, and ho ho ho with joy. Centuries of reasons, as it turns out. He’s Fred Claus (Vince Vaughn) and for all that time he has lived in the shadow of his famous, more popular brother, Santa (Paul Giamatti).
It all started the day Santa, or rather Nicholas, was born. Aside from being a jumbo newborn, he was also peculiar insofar as he didn’t cry, but rather smiled and chortled “Ho”. Fred wanted to love his brother, but he was just a regular kid while Nick, well, he was a saint. When the sainthood became official, the entire family, spouses included, stopped aging, even Fred, who escaped his mother (cheerfully debilitating Kathy Bates) constantly comparing him to his brother by nothing to do with his sibling or parents. The 21st century finds Fred spending the holiday season repossessing televisions, planning his own business venture into off-track betting, dispensing iffy advice to the sassy ragamuffin who lives upstairs, and trying to worm his way back into the good graces of his girlfriend, Wanda (Rachel Weisz), who has had it with his unreliability and fear of commitment. One thing, including a stint in the county jail, leads to another and Fred finds himself needing a monetary favor from brother Nick, who agrees, but only if Fred will finally visit the North Pole and help with business of getting presents ready for Christmas.
FRED CLAUS could have been a glib and obvious movie, and in many ways it is the latter, but instead of being mindless peppermint-coated drivel, it goes for the heartstrings without pouring on the sugar. Santa has a few issues of his own, including a tart wife (Miranda Richardson), whose sartorial taste runs retro and whose philosophical ones run towards the tough-love side of the spectrum, and Clyde Northcutt (Kevin Spacey), an efficiency expert out to shut the whole North Pole operation down and outsource it to Antarctica. All it will take is three marks in his little notebook, and Christmas as we all know it is history. With a month to go until Christmas, the first mark is struck within an hour of Northcutt’s arrival when Fred turns the elves onto rock-and-roll instead of the usual holiday carols, creating chaos in the factory.
The topic is Christmas, but the theme is family, and two brothers who are more alike than they are different. Giamatti is mild, with sad basset-hound eyes and a gentleness in manner that is echoed in the soft underbelly Vaughn gives Fred, who spouts a hard-line, but whose heart is still tender enough to be hurt by being outshone by Nicholas at every turn. The gags are sweet on wry rather than hilarious, though a Siblings Anonymous session Fred attends comes dangerously close to being a little to pointed for this fable. Not that this is a milquetoast story. Spacey’s slick evil is as deep and dark as a black hole, and the violence that ensues when the workshop DJ (Ludacris) refuses to play anything other than “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town” is just short of alarming. The same can be said for the low-cut costume worn by Charlene (Elizabeth Banks), Santa’s micro-mini-skirted adult-sized helper who is a whiz with numbers, but fails to notice Willie (John Michael Higgins), the elf who adores her with anything but a hidden passion. The hemline makes one wonder what the view is like for the elves in Santa’s Village.
Aside from that, the look of the film has the right Currier and Ives charm. The North Pole is all gingerbread with all the fixings and Christmas lights that glow cheerily, with a giant snow globe at the heart of the toy factory that lets Santa keep an eye on all the kids in the world, and Fred on Wanda while he is away. The cast is great, neither too saccharine nor too arch, with special effects shrinking Ludacris and Higgins seamlessly down to elfin stature, even as they are a little rough around the edges when it comes to making reindeer fly.
Of course there are the breakthroughs in everyone’s relationships. Of course Christmas is in danger of being cancelled and, of course, it’s up to Fred to save the holiday after hundreds of years of resenting it. FRED CLAUS is from the ‘of course’ school of formulaic filmmaking, but it makes a good job of a tough sell, leaving the audience anticipating the sugar cookies, tinsel, and carols that, after all, they can’t do anything to prevent from taking over their lives from September right through December 25.
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