Humbuggery
posted on Wednesday, November 28, 2007 in Movie Reviews
There’s a brilliant movie somewhere in Fred Claus. Between some great ideas and the phenomenal cast, this should’ve been a pretty great Christmas movie, but it isn’t. Fred Claus squanders its merits with some lazy scriptwriting and generally uninspired directing. Fred is the older brother of Santa Claus. For hundreds of years, he’s lived in the shadow of his saintly brother, and has turned into a bitter, cynical con man. He ends up in jail one day and has no choice but to call up his brother for bail. Santa helps him out, but asks Fred to come work for him up in the North Pole. Meanwhile, it turns out that Santa’s having trouble himself keeping his operation together, and Fred will end up either saving or destroying Christmas.
There are some absolutely genius moments in this script. There’s this scene that involves a support group for siblings of famous people that might be one of the most brilliant things I’ve seen all year, but these moments are far and few in between. The film is mostly just incredibly contrived and inexplicably long. There are whole stretches in the middle of this movie where nothing interesting or funny is going on.
The film tries really hard to be smart, but it never gets there. Again, the script just throws around concepts without really explaining any of them, leaving the audience completely in the dark about anything of consequence. The script takes too many shortcuts on the way to the resolution, which the audience can see from a mile away. It just doesn’t earn any of its moments. When it gets all sappy and sentimental, it feels forced and unnatural, and one can start to resent the movie for it.
The filmmaking runs into some storytelling problems as well. It stays too long on scenes where the camera has nothing to say, and the film’s pacing really suffers for it. The special effects don’t add anything to the film, and sometimes even hinder it.
The cast is really good at what they do. Vince Vaughn’s rapid fire delivery is almost always funny, and Paul Giamatti brings a lot of depth to the mostly one-note Santa Claus. Kevin Spacey’s character isn’t really given much to work with, but his talent completely shines through. The rest of the cast isn’t really given all that much to do, and it seems like a bit of a waste. Kathy Bates, Rachel Weisz, Miranda Richardson and Elizabeth Banks are mostly just there, and their talent is sorely missed.
It’s difficult to give a movie with such dripping sentiment a bad review, since no one really wants to feel like a Scrooge, but there’re just too many good Christmas movies out there already. Audiences shouldn’t have to settle for lazy scriptwriting and lackluster filmmaking. There is merit to the performances in this film, but ultimately, it just isn’t enough to make you want this for Christmas.
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