It would make people feel weird about the producers of the Superman movies making a movie about Santa Claus. When you think about it, it does make sense though. Both Superman and Santa are legendary superheroes, able to soothe our pains by using magic. Both of them have the ability to fly. Both have a large supporting cast: Superman has Lois Lane, Perry White, and Jimmy Olson, and Santa has Mrs. Claus, the elves, and of course, his reindeers.
Ilya Salkind, the co-producer of the Superman movies, has completed the circle by making the 1985 “Santa Claus: The Movie” with similarities to a Superman epic. The main part of the lives of all superheroes is their origin story. As we all know, they are rarely born to normal humans. Superman came from Krypton, and Claus, as we learn from this movie, was a middle-aged man who was loved by all the children in his neighborhood because he would ride his sleigh through the snow with a sack full of toys. Near the beginning of the movie, Claus, played by The Big Lebowski himself, David Huddleston, goes out into a dangerous blizzard and freezes. When he wakes up, he finds himself in the North Pole with his wife, Anya Claus, played by Judy Cornwell. There he learns that he will be now named Santa Claus and his duties revolve around Christmas Eve.
The movie does a great job at showing Santa’s workshop, and introducing the workers there. The elves appear to have a sort of craft society. The late and loveable Burgess Meredith, wearing a really long beard, plays the Ancient Elf who tells Santa briefly what he has to do. Dudley Moore plays Patch, the chief elf, who is not as efficient as he should be. There are long shelves of new toys, all made in a strong, old-fashioned way out of wood and nails. There are no plastic or polyurethane anywhere.
Also, Patch gets ideas for speeding up the process and before you know it, the wheels are falling off of children’s wagons worldwide. Patch leaves the North Pole shamefully and soon bumps into a corrupted toy manufacturer, played by John Lithgow from the sitcom “3rd Rock from the Sun,” who makes hazardous toys. Roger Ebert says, “For me, the high point of the movie was a Senate hearing where a shocked Senate aide emptied out the stuffings of one of Lithgow's toy animals.” What does he stuff them with you ask? With none other than nails and razor blades and shards of glass!
Lithgow is supposed to play the traditional superhero villain, like Gene Hackman played Lex Luthor in “Superman” or all of the strange enemies Batman had to face off with. Lithgow gives a performance where you just hate the guy, but the villain isn’t fleshed out big enough, and he doesn’t really have much to do. The main weakness with this movie is the lack of real conflict. Ebert says that “The movie needs a super-Scrooge, and all it gets is the kind of bad guy Ralph Nader might have invented.” The saddest moment is when a couple of reindeer cry.
The good part of the movie is the special effects. The Salkinds and their team have now figured out how to make somebody look like they’re flying, and when Santa’s sleigh is passing the Brooklyn Bridge, it looks nice. Obviously small children will like it, and they will like most of the movie. The weakness is that older children and parents, represented to guide the small children, are likely to find a lot of the movie thin.
In the end, I give this movie a 5. If you want to check it out, by all means do so.
Check in tomorrow when I continue my 25 day countdown to Christmas reviews. Sorry about posting this late, I was very busy.
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