FRED CLAUS (FANTASY/COMEDY, 2007)Directed by David Dobkin
Starring Vince Vaughn, Paul Giamatti, John Michael Higgins, Rachel Weisz, Miranda Richardson, Kevin Spacey, Elizabeth Banks, Kathy Bates, Trevor Peacock, Chris 'Ludacris' Bridges
PG for mild language and some rude humor.
Naughty or Nice?: Naughty
Religious or Secular?: Secular
Cynical or Sentimental?: Mostly Cynical
OVERALL: 0 out of 4
The bare bones concept of a comedy about Santa Claus having a brother who's a Christmas a**hole has potential, but more as an unsentimental and irreverent PG-13-rated goofy comedy. Unfortunately, what FRED CLAUS is is more of a would-be "family movie" with an excessive nasty streak, inherent creepiness, lazy screenwriting, shoddy production values and an inexplicably impressive supporting cast.
In the first half hour, we've already been subjected to Baby Santa with a CGI mouth (to accommodate his "Ho-Ho-ing"), a child actor in a pear-shaped fat suit, the main character letting a soon-to-be-destitute child know that she'll probably grow up to be a pregnant teenager, the main character stealing from and then fighting with Salvation Army Santas and then abandoning his girlfriend to a restaurant packed with loud, sweaty Japanese stereotypes.
Vince Vaughn plays this dreadful title character, Fred Claus, big brother to Nick 'Santa' Claus (Paul Giamatti), himself. The brothers were born in the European Middle Ages, but because Santa becomes a saint, the whole immediate family becomes immortal, which as the narrator explains, everyone knows that that happens to saints and their families(?!). Anyway, over the years, Fred has grown bitter about his famous brother who's always outshone him, so now, in contemporary Chicago, Fred is working as a repo man, repossessing gifts from children and telling them why Santa actually sucks. Fred consistently mistreats his English girlfriend, Wanda (Rachel Weisz), forgetting her birthday and standing her up, not to mention keeping it a secret about being hundreds of years older than her. Fred's not all bad though. He's pretty good friends with an orphaned little boy (Bobb'e J. Thompson), who wants a puppy for Christmas, but luckily, Fred nips that dream in the bud. Why is Fred such good friends with this parentless child? We never find out, but maybe Fred actually is "all bad". Anyway, Fred has dreams of opening a casino and getting rich, but when time runs short to get the starting money, Fred fakes being a charity representative, drawing people away from giving to the Salvation Army (to be fair though, Forbes reports that of each dollar given to the Salvation Army, only $0.83 goes to charitable cause, so they aren't that great either), then brawling with Salvation Army Santa bell ringers in a toy store. Now arrested under $5,000 bail, Fred is forced to call up Nick at the North Pole to post his bail, and while he's at it, Fred presses for an extra $50,000 to get his casino going. Mrs. Annette Claus (Miranda Richardson), the grouchiest, Grinchiest Mrs. Claus of all time, is not pleased at all with the idea, but Nick agrees to pay Fred the fifty grand if he comes to the North Pole (he's never visited) and helps out for a couple weeks. Santa's head elf, Willy (John Michael Higgins), shows up with the sleigh to take Fred to Santa's Workshop, and once there, Fred goes about wreaking havoc, which is especially inconvenient due to an efficiency expert (Kevin Spacey) observing the work process, and eager to shut down Santa's operations and move them to the South Pole.
How they ever pulled together such an impressive cast (I am not referring to Vaughn) for this Christmas poo is beyond all reasoning. We get Weisz, Higgins, Giamatti (that one makes a little sense), Richardson, Spacey and Elizabeth Banks, all playing embarrassing and ridiculous roles (Spacey comes the closest to bad movie greatness, but never quite gets the chance to really be the "Christmas villain"; a real shame). I've mentioned before that for movies that depict Santa Claus, one of the most common pitfalls is Santa's elves looking creepy, and FRED CLAUS is far from the exception. For the most part, the elves are played by little actors, which of course are played to low-brow cliched comic effect, beating up on Fred (particularly a cheap gag involving Santa's ninja bodyguards (Question: Why is this an actual concern at the North Pole?)). There are two horrifying cases of well-known faces placed over the bodies of little persons via far-from-convincing CGI. Comedic actor John Michael Higgins, known for his roles in cult television comedies Arrested Development and Community, as well as appearing as Elizabeth Banks' misogynistic co-announcer in PITCH PERFECT, is used for this effect as the head elf, who also happens to be in love with Banks' character in this film (more on that later). This character is awkward, embarrassing pitiful, all in the least enduring ways, but he's not helped at all by this creepy computer effect, which looks very much like a computer effect. Even worse is rap artist Chris 'Ludacris' Bridges as the North Pole DJ, DJ Donnie, whose head never seems to be part of his body, moving completely out of sync. It's just... sad.
Paul Giamatti, who plays Santa, is not a bad actor, and in many performances he has been stellar, but he also has a way of finding himself in some pretty freaking bad movies. As Santa, a role that he comes off as completely miscast in (to be fair, nobody involved in making this movie seems to understand anything about Santa Claus), Giamatti only brought to mind for me his performance as the sleazy human-trading orangutan Limbo from the 2001 remake, PLANET OF THE APES. His beard and wig look like something ratty pulled from a bargain barrel at the back of a costume shop, but removing the middle of his face while leaving the teeth and the eyes consistently brought that earlier role to mind.
Banks' character serves practically no purpose to the plot, relegated to mere PG-safe eye candy and a love (lust) interest to Willy the Elf, so that Fred can teach the hapless loser some confidence. Banks plays Charlene, "Santa's Little Helper," which I think means that he keeps her around for s-e-x. She's not an elf; she's a full grown, well proportioned human who happens to dress rather like an elf tart. We don't know how she's at the North Pole, or what she does there. She's simply the token elf hottie, and for Willy, little women just aren't enough.
I did not realize that Kevin Spacey was in this film before he showed up on screen (funnily enough, I knew he was in SE7EN before I watched that one), and his presence here is by far the most bewildering. His character, Clyde Northcutt (say, what's up with that last name?), is the effeiciency expert sent to the North Pole to check out Santa's operations and determine whether or not things are getting done as they should. Naturally, this bureaucrat has his own agenda to shut down the North Pole and have Santa fired forever, because he never got that one present he so desperately wanted as a child. Where Mr. Northcutt comes from or who he works for is never divulged or even approached, but one thing is clear: if you thought that Santa was some sort of independent operation, you're wrong. Maybe God sent Mr. Northcutt, or maybe there's some massive secret corporation that runs secular Christmas, but the fact is that this movie doesn't give a damn further than using it as a cheap plot device. That present which Clyde never got, a Superman cape, also inevitably draws connections to the underrated SUPERMAN RETURNS, in which Spacey played Superman's archnemesis, Lex Luthor, so there's plenty of fun to be had there.
The reason why Clyde never got that present is because that year, he wound up on Santa's infamous Ten Most Naughty children that year (there's different levels of "naughty"; sometimes a naughty child will receive a lump of coal or nothing at all, but there's a few especially naughty kids to whom Santa brings eternal damnation). During the course of the film we see the number one naughty child in the world is wielding a baseball bat at his sister, smashing up her bedroom as he chases after her, but apparently that child could be beat... by Slam, the orphan who Fred may have an unsuitable relationship with. What on Earth could Sam have done that was so naughty as to push his way all the way up to the most naughty of the year? Why, all it took was telling the other kids at the orphanage that Santa Claus was a sham and then getting in a fight (it probably didn't hurt either that he was black, huh Santa?). The primary message of the film, stated quite explicitly, is that there are no naughty children, just misunderstood children, but that just makes me think that the filmmakers must not know any children. "Naughty" doen't mean "evil" guys. It just means "naughty". Fred Claus, on the other hand, is evil. He does at least a dozen things more reprehensible throughout the film than Mr. Northcutt, the supposed villain, does. Plus, Vince Vaughn's schtick is at its most insufferable her. I just want him to shut up.
Unfortunately, FRED CLAUS doesn't really get to be "so bad, it's good." It's just really bad.
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