Santa Claus: The Movie (1985)

(In French, On Cable TV, December 2021) There’s a subgenre of Christmas movies that I call the Santa Procedural — a film where a good chunk of the running time is spent discussing how Santa came to be, how he manages to deliver those presents, and/or try to fit him in the real world. The Santa Clause, Klaus and Arthur Christmas all have various elements of those, and I suppose that it’s my fault for somehow not seeing the 1985 Santa Claus: The Movie as a predecessor to all of those. Starting in historical times, this is a film showing us how the various elements of the Santa Claus mythology came together, then moves to the 1980s to show the Claus legacy threatened by a renegade elf and an amoral businessman intent on replacing Claus by the toy industry. (What young readers don’t know is that this is a documentary… wait, am I kidding?)  While Santa Claus: The Movie does have a few noteworthy names in the cast (notably Dudley Moore as an elf and John Lithgow as the businessman), the result remains more interesting than good. The use of dull fantasy elements and kids’ movie contrivances such as the “Super-Duper Looper” weakens the result, while the pacing is inconsistent. Santa Claus: The Movie, limited by a common-denominator script, inconsistent set design and the state of mid-1980s special effects technology, doesn’t quite convince and doesn’t quite create a nostalgic sentiment either. Still, it can be worth a look for the more engineering-minded viewers, especially when you measure it against later and better works in the same procedural subgenre.