The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause (2006)

All of the characters from the first two films reprise their roles in the third film from the series except for David Krumholtz who played Gerard, including the characters called the Legendary Figures.

Santa/Scott Calvin(Tim Allen) and his wife Carol/Mrs. Claus (Elizabeth Mitchell) are expecting their first child and are hoping that she doesn't deliver when Santa needs to make HIS deliveries. To make things easier for Carol, Scott brings in her parents, Silvia(Ann-Margret) and Bud(Alan Arkin), although they don't know that he is Santa so the whole North Pole is told to act like it is a Canadian toy factory complete with everyone saying "eh" all the time. Scott's ex-wife Laura and her husband Neil and their daughter Lucy come to the North Pole as well. His son Charlie is there, but has a very small part.

At a meeting of the Legendary Figures, Jack Frost(Martin Short) is unhappy that he doesn't have a higher profile and decides that he wants the power that Santa has. Scott begins to feel the pressures of the impending Christmas Eve, birth and in-laws and begins to stress out. In the meantime, Jack realizes that if Santa says "I wish that I had never become Santa at all" while holding a certain snow globe from the "Hall of Snow Globes" he will de-santify. Jack finds the globe after being led there by an unknowing Lucy and threatens her by freezing her parents into a couple of Popsicles. Jack takes the globe to Santa and has Santa talk about his frustrations and gets him to say the magic sentence which activates "The Escape Clause". Jack and Scott go back in time to when Scott first put on Santa's coat and became Santa. Jack beats him to it and when Santa wakes up, he is Scott the CEO of the toy company again. Years have apparently passed and Laura and Neil have split up and no one likes him. He resolves to reverse everything. He goes back to the North Pole where he finds that Jack has turned the North Pole into a moneymaking amusement resort where parents can pay to have their children put on the "nice" list and the Elves are forced to perform for the tourists.

Scott convinces a skeptical Lucy to sneak into the Hall of Snow Globes to retrieve the magical snow globe. Scott gets Jack to hold it and plays back a recording of Jack saying "I wish I had never become Santa at all". Scott rushes to put the Santa suit back on and things immediately go back to the way they were before except that Lucy's parents are still frozen. Jack can't turn them back until Lucy hugs Jack and melts his heart which makes her parents defrost. Scott also tells his in-laws that he is Santa Claus. Carol announces that she is in labor and gives birth to Buddy Claus.

I found this movie to be rather boring and fractured. Martin Short was pretty good as Jack Frost.

92 Minutes. Rated G. I give this movie TWO STARS.

Christmas in Connecticut (1945)

Barbara Stanwyck plays Elizabeth Lane, a writer for a woman's magazine in which she writes a column that outlines her happy life on a farm as a wife, mother and excellent cook. The only problem is that she is single, lives in a small apartment in Manhattan and orders in from a restaurant and gets her recipes for her articles from her "Uncle Felix" who owns a restaurant.

The film opens with a couple of sailors floating in a life raft. They are rescued and Jefferson Jones (Dennis Morgan) is hailed as a hero for giving the last of his food to his fellow sailor Seymour Sinkiewicz (Frank Jenks) before they are rescued. While floating on the raft, they have dreams about food. While they are recovering in the hospital he tells his nurse Mary Lee (Joyce Compton) that he doesn't know what a real home is like. Mary writes to Mr. Yardley (Sydney Greenstreet), the publisher of Elizabeth Lane's magazine, and asks if Jefferson can spend Christmas at Mrs. Lanes Farm. Mr. Yardley thinks that this will be great publicity for the magazine.

Elizabeth's editor calls her and tells her the situation. She knows that Mr. Yardley is a stickler for accuracy in his magazines and knows that she and her editor will be fired if the truth comes out. She goes to Mr Yardley to tell him the truth and ends up agreeing to have not only the sailor come to her farm, but Mr. Yardley as well. Fortunately she has a friend, John Sloan(Reginald Gardner) who owns a farm in Connecticut. He is a rather pompous architect who wants to marry Elizabeth and she agrees to marry him after turning him down so many times to save her job. Felix will come along to cook the meals.

They get to the house and meet Nora the housekeeper and see that she babysits a baby that they can use as their baby to try and fool Mr. Yardley. Just as Elizabeth is about to marry John, Jefferson Jones the war hero shows up and it is love at first sight for Elizabeth and Jefferson. Most of the rest of the movie is Elizabeth and Jefferson trying to resist each other as he thinks that she is married and he is engaged to Nurse Mary. Elizabeth also must cover up the fact that she knows nothing about cooking, babies or domestic duties.

In the end, Nurse Mary shows up to reveal that she has married Sinkiewicz. It soon comes out that Elizabeth is not married either and all ends happily. A light, entertaining movie! I own it.

There was a remake that was directed by Arnold Schwarzenegger that was widely panned. Duh!!! A second remake is apparently in the planning stages with Jennifer Garner attached to it for a 2012 release.

103 Minutes. Not Rated. I give this movie FOUR STARS!

Bad Santa (2003)

Billy Bob Thornton plays Willie Stokes, an alcoholic disgrace of a department store Santa Claus. Tony Cox plays his partner Marcus, a "little person" who is the elf to Willie's Santa. They are partners in a Christmas Eve scam which they pull off every year in a different state.

The movie begins on Christmas Eve in which Willie and Marcus pull off their yearly Christmas Eve robbery and part ways until the next holiday season. The next year they end up in Arizona where Willie meets a kid at the mall who lives with his Grandma (Cloris Leachman) and thinks that he is really Santa Claus. When Willie must leave his trashy apartment, he moves into this kids house (Grandma doesn't seem to notice), takes up residence, and uses the family car. Willie also acquires a bartender girlfriend played by Lauren Graham who seems to like the idea of having sex with Willie when he wears his Santa gear. Most of the film is devoted to Willie being a jerk and being disgusting. Once the robbery is committed, Marcus turns on Willie but they are caught by the police before Marcus can shoot him. In the end, Willie seems to have developed a small bit of conscience and becomes friends with the kid.

This movie is loaded with bad language, sexual situations and some violence. I have a pretty dry sense of humor and I often think that movies are funny that my friends can't stand to watch (I'm kind of juvenile that way), but I still think that this movie was crap. Critics overall gave this movie excellent reviews. I don't know if it is because I am getting older, or if it is because I am more of a traditional Christmas kind of person, but I just didn't like it. Sure it had a few places that were pretty funny, but I would not recommend this to anyone that is interested in seeing a traditional Christmas type movie. Teenage boys, frat boys and twenty somethings (even thirty or forty somethings) who think that peeing in a Santa suit, swearing at children and drunken, drooling Santa's are a good time will LOVE this movie. Not a movie for children.

90 Minutes. Rated R. I give this movie TWO STARS.

Santa Claus is Comin' to Town (1970)

Fred Astaire is the narrator of this stop motion animated film made for television. Burgermeister Meisterburger is the mean, grouchy, mayor/type dictator of the town of Sombertown. A baby arrives on his doorstep with a tag that says "Claus". The Burgermeister tells his assistant to take the baby to the orphanage. Along the way there is a huge gust of wind that blows the baby away and he lands in the snow where some animals hide him so that the Winter Warlock won't see him. They take him to a family of elves named "Kringle" ruled by Tante Kringle and they name him "Kris". As he gets older he tells his family that he will one day restore them to their rightful place as the "Toymakers to the King".

When Kris grows up he decides that he will deliver toys to the kids of Sombertown where toys are not allowed and the Burgermeister says that anyone found with toys will be arrested and thrown into the dungeon. On his way Kris meets up with the Winter Warlock who warns him to stay away from his land. When Kris gets to Sombertown he meets Miss Jessica, the schoolteacher, and gets a crush on her. When the Burgermeister sees the toys, he wants to arrest the children but Kris gives him a yoyo. He loves the yoyo, but his assistant reminds him of his own rules and he chases Kris out of town. Kris meets up with the Warlock again and things get ugly until he gives the Warlock a toy train which melts the frozen heart of the Warlock. Kris continues to get toys to the children and when the Burgermeister finds the toys, he conducts a house to house search until he finds and burns all of the toys. Kris and party are arrested, but escape when the Warlock gives Jessica "magic feed corn" to give the reindeer so that they can fly everyone to safety.

Kris goes back into the hills as an outlaw and grows a beard to disguise himself and changes him name to "Claus", the name that the was born with. Jessica and Kris get married and move to the North Pole where they build their workshop. The Burgermeisters eventually die off and Santa decides that he can only deliver toys once a year due to demand. History is made!

One of my favorites! Who can hear Burgermeister Meisterburger and not go back to when they were 7?

48 Minutes. Not Rated. I give this movie THREE AND A HALF STARS.

The Santa Clause 2 (2002)

Tim Allen reprises his role as Scott Calvin/Santa in the second of the "Santa Clause" films. All is happy and good at the North Pole until it is discovered that Scott's son Charlie (Eric Lloyd) is on the "Naughty List". He also must grapple with another problem, he must find a wife by Christmas Eve or stop being Santa!!. Curtis the elf (Spencer Breslin), the Keeper of the Handbook of Christmas, has discovered that Santa must find a wife or he will de-Santify. Almost immediately Santa begins to notice changes such as his beard getting shorter and his body getting slimmer. Before Santa leaves to find a wife and tend to Charlie, he has a meeting with the other Legendary Figures such as Mother Nature, Father Time, Cupid, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy.

Scott begins to try to find a wife and finds one unexpectedly in the outwardly cold principal Newman (Elizabeth Mitchell) of his sons middle school. In the meantime, Curtis the elf has developed a fake Santa so that the workers at the North Pole don't suspect that something is up with Santa. The fake Santa takes the "Naughty List" seriously and decides that everyone needs coal, not gifts and becomes dictatorial and takes over the North Pole with his toy soldiers (kind of creepy). In the end, Santa marries and all is well at the Pole.

All of the characters from the original movie appear in this installment. There is a part where Santa stops the fake Santa from taking off in the sleigh and calls him "a sad little man" which is what he said as his character in "A Toy Story" as Buzz Lightyear. It has been said that it is a tradition in Disney films to have things from other Disney movies in them.

104 Minutes. Rated G. I give this movie TWO AND THREE QUARTER STARS.

The Santa Clause (1994)

Scott Calvin (Tim Allen) is a divorced, workaholic, toy company executive who must rush home to spend Christmas Eve with his son Charlie (Eric Lloyd). He tries to cook dinner, but burns it and they end up eating Christmas Eve dinner at the local Denny's which seem to be where the other divorced Dad's with kids end up. When they get home, they read the "Night Before Christmas" and hear a loud noise on the roof. Santa has fallen and disappeared. Scott puts on Santa's Jacket after finding a card in the pocket that tells him to put it on With some encouragement from Charlie he makes Santa's deliveries for the rest of the children. When they are done, they find themselves at the North Pole (the reindeer must have autopilot). The head Elf Bernard (David Krumholtz) tells him that he has eleven months to get his affairs in order as he is now "the big guy" since he put on the suit and found the card that binds him to become Santa in the pocket of the jacket. Since he did this, he has agreed to "The Santa Clause" and is now Santa. The next part of the movie shows some domestic type conflict between Scott and his ex-wife Laura's (Wendy Crewson) psychiatrist husband Neil (Judge Reinhold).

When Scott begins to physically change into Santa problems begin to occur. Children begin to want to sit on his lap and Charlie tells everyone that he is Santa. This bothers his ex-wife and her husband and they try to stop his visitation with Charlie. Charlie ends up going to the North Pole and Laura and Neil notify the police that Charlie has been kidnapped by Scott/Santa. Santa is thrown into jail when he tries to deliver presents and his elves break him out. Santa is soon able to make Laura and Neil believe that he is Santa and all ends up happily.

This is a nice, cute, clean movie.

97 Minutes. Rated PG. I give this movie THREE AND A QUARTER STARS.

The Year Without A Santa Claus (1974)

I realize that this is not a theatrical movie, but I felt that since it has been around since I was a kid, that I had to include it. This movie is made in Stop Motion Animation.

Santa Claus(the voice of Mickey Rooney)wakes up with a bad cold and is told by his doctor that he can't do his regular trip. It then falls to a couple of elves, Jingle and Jangle, to find people that still believe in Christmas. While they are doing this, their reindeer Vixen is mistaken for a dog and is thrown into the pound. The Mayor of the town, Southton, agrees to let Vixen go if they can make it snow in this hot area on Christmas.

Mrs. Claus then goes to the famous stepbrothers, Heat Miser and Snow Miser, who control the weather in the world, to help them out. Neither one wants to compromise and Mrs. Claus has to tattle on them to their mother who happens to be Mother Nature. It works out and they end up finding some generous people to help Santa out. Spurred on by this outpouring of good cheer, Santa decides to make the Christmas Eve deliveries.

The pictures above are of Brian and Steve as the Heat Miser and Snow Miser last Halloween. Thanks for the pictures Mykel!

48 minutes. Not Rated. I give this movie TWO AND THREE QUARTER STARS.