Almost 10 years after ‘The Santa Clause’ traumatized audiences up and down the globe, someone, somewhere at Disney was short one tax write off to meet their yearly quota, and so…’The Santa Clause 2′. A film that…in some ways *isnt* as creepy as the original…while simultaineously being in some ways creepier.

The plot? Tim Allen IS Scott Calvin IS Santa Claus…and he’s been doing it for about 10 years and things are going about as well as they can do. But theres a snag…for SOME reason, that *isnt* fully explained…Santa HAS to be married…I cant tell you why, because the film sure as shit doesnt bother either. In any case he has until christmas day to find a woman (and the film is clear on this…it HAS to be a MRS Clause…goddamnit Disney) who will upend her entire life to basically move to the north pole, become a bit frumpy, and sit in the background of Santas workshop and tend to her husband…What a deal…

If Santa fails to find a bride in time, he’ll fully revert back to Scott Calvin (he basically spends the majority of the runtime reverting back) and….I dunno what will happen if that happens…Again the film isnt entirely clear…you would THINK that basically it would be down to someone else to wear the santa suit and BECOME Santa…but the film *kinda* implies that, but to raise the stakes, also mentions a few times that Christmas will basically just…not happen, if Tim Allen doesnt get a wife.

You would think this was the ‘A-plot’ for the film, but ‘The Santa Clause 2’ is in fact, just 2 B-plots ducttaped together. Because the other main plot of this film is that, because Santas detransitioning, they need to figure out how christmas day is going to happen…enter, a new elf we havent seen before who works in the workshop testing labs…He’s developed a machine that creates plastic ‘toy’ based duplicates of whatevers put inside. and his plan is to load Santa into the machine, hit ‘copy/paste’ and then while Scotts trying to cajole a lady into servitude, ‘Toy’ santa can run operations at the north pole and maybe even do the christmas run if Scotts running short on time.

The only problem is, they train the ‘toy’ Santa on literal guidebooks on how to BE Santa…and that backfires a bit when the demented ‘toy’ version takes things a bit *too* literally and starts basically planning to cancel christmas.

And…having just come out of the first ‘Santa Clause’ this thing is jarring as hell. We’re basically treated a reverse of the last movie in which Santa turns into a normal man, and for some reason now DESPERATELY WANTS to be Santa again…despite the fact that for most of the last movie, and some of THIS movie. he desperately DIDNT want to be Santa… while the last film ended with indisputable proof that Santa Clause exists, this film slowly undoes that…not with any specific plot points, but just by…pretending the last 15 minutes of the first film didnt happen. The only people who know that santa exists now are Scotts kid, his ex-wife and her husband…Everyone else just…pretends he doesnt exist again…

Not to mention the casual mysogyny of objectifying women down to a part of some ‘terms and conditions’…which in and of itself gave me the ‘ick’. This film basically feels like a less smart, lower budgeted, broadest common denominator piece…and thats kind of a shame, because introducing an additional term that means that Scott cant stay as Santa could have had the scope to really open the series up a bit. Give Scott the option to ‘opt out’ if he really wanted to…But instead the film gets so tied up with fart jokes, ‘will they/wont they’ humour and weirdness that all that kind of just gets written off as a ‘given’ that he’d want to be Santa…

The pacing is very Stop/Start, with chunks of the film whizzing by at 3 plot points a minute, while other segments crawl totally unecessarily…at an hour and 43 minutes, this could have easily been 15 minutes shorter and much better for it. The characters all feel like they’ve had their edges sanded off. with only Scotts son getting any kind of development on from the first film, and even thats rubbish because they just make him a bit of a troubled teen…a troubled teen who has a romance element introduced in the first act thats barely built on and (from what I can remember) basically abandoned. All the other characters appear to have been frozen since 1994, with Judge Rhinehold getting the rawest deal by being forced to wear ugly late 80s sweaters for most of the runtime…Even though that makes absolutely no sense.

In fact, on that note…Not only is the continuity with the first film disjointed and ‘off’. Even basic rules the film sets up IN ITS OWN RUNTIME are discarded by the 3rd act. I sincerely dont think a script continuity advisor checked ANY of this film…or if they did they were having a HELL of an off day because I asked my partner so many questions during this runtime she told me to basically ‘not overthink it’ because ‘its just a movie…relax.’ But no! I cant! this film is WEIRD and wont explain itself..IT WONT EXPLAIN ITSEL-

Tonally, its a bit yucky too. the ‘wife’ element I found quite offputting, and even if they try to romanticize it up by making the plot about two characters hating each other, but eventually fully falling in love…its hard not to see through that here. The Cronenbergian elements are a little smoother here…I think its easier psychologically to watch a fictional over the top figure detransition into a normal man, than vice versa. But they replace that horror with ‘Toy’ Santa, a character whos appearence utilizes horrifying prosthetics, his personallity is alien and unpleasent and in the 3rd act, he builds an army of life size tin soldiers that WILL put the fear of god into you…

It leaves the film really rather struggling to muster ANY kind of goodwill because the characters arnt well written enough, the plot points are either terrifying or icky, the pacing is scattershot and makes it hard to settle into and the humour is significantly more ‘Miss’ than ‘Hit’ compared to the first film…I think I stifled a chuckle twice for the whole duration, but otherwise I just sat there in fear and bewilderment.

The direction is a bit less inviting than the first one, this feels like it was shot more in the style of a TV movie with a ‘theatrical’ set budget. What I mean by that is that, it feels more like something that wasnt intended for the big screen, and more a disposable piece of media, meant to look clean, do the job once a year and then get the hell off the TV…I dont *hate* it. But I found it ultimately kind of unremarkable. Direction of the cast is kind of similar, Tim Allen is basically the only thing keeping this film afloat as Scott/Santa and Toy Santa. Of the three, the sheer alien-ness of Toy Santa is probably the most mezmorising element here…or at least, it was the thing that stopped me flicking through my phone. He interacts with characters and the set space like he doesnt understand how reality works, and it creates several bizarre, but entertaining moments which I quite liked.

Other than that though, its generic on all sides…people are clearly there for the paycheque and once it clears…you better believe ANY kind of caring about this film went clean out the window. Hell most of the characters are just flat out abandoned in the final 10 minutes because the film doesnt think its worth closing their story off…I can only assume the writers thought that most of the family would be asleep or wandered off by this point.

The cine is fine, for a TV movie i’d say it was pretty good! but for a theatrical release..its actually kind of poor, the CG isnt great throughout, compositional choices are basic and uninteresting, it looks cheap…especially compared to the first film. The editing too is a bit all over the place…It very much feels like a film that was thrown together from odds and ends rather than competently composed.

Performance wise, as mentioned Tim Allen is basically carrying this film from start to finish…but Judge Rhinhold has a few good moments and some of the supporting elf cast get their physicality and line deliveries just right timing wise to not go without notice…But yeh, outside of that everyone else is just…there out of obligation of the kraft service.

The score was so generic and forgettable, I actually didnt make any notes on it…other than its basically doing what it did in the last film (orchestral christmas sounding music + 50s christmas hits) only the amount of christmas hits is significantly less this time around and the orchestral pieces sound cheaper, thinner and are likely midi.

Overall? I could tolerate ‘The Santa Clause’…but if it wasnt for ‘Toy Santa’ in this film, i’d have been here RAGING that a christmas movie from Disney wasted damn near 2 hours of my time. ‘The Santa Clause 2’ has half a dozen good moments spread thinly out over 104 minutes of weak plotting, below average cine and direction, poor scoring and mediocre performances. My partner loves these films…and i’ve been with her now for 13 years…Most would say its unreasonable to break up with her over this…im stuck watching these now till one of us expires…send help.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-santa-clause-2/