THE CHRISTMAS CHRONICLES (2018)
Tagline: Santa’s In Town Early This Year
(Adventure, Comedy, Reindeer) [PG]
I'm Santa Claus, Teddy, not Yoda.
In this one, a little girl named Kate, sees what she is convinced is “Santa’s Arm” on a Christmas video recorded the year before. Determined to meet Santa, she and her brother stay up and end up sneaking onto his sleigh. Startled, Santa crashes the slash and now the 3 must spend the night trying to figure out how to get “Christmas” back on track.
First off there are very few movies I am not fond of Kurt Russell’s character in. GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY: VOL 2 and DEATH PROOF being a few of them. However, in this thing, he actually plays Santa and it’s almost impossible not to like him in the role. It’s a bit of a different look for the character, but Russell pulls it off with such skill, it almost feels like he was born for the part.
One thing I liked about this one over many of the other “Let’s save Christmas” secular Christmas movies is the ideas we get in this. In a lot of Christmas, movies have elves as just being small humans or even kids with pointy ears, but this movie goes into some fairly unique territory by making them not even human-looking at all. The other crazy concept we get in here is that most of Santa magic is stored in his hat and that gift bag pretty much goes all the way to the North Pole somehow?
All of this kind of adds to the whimsical nature of this film even though some serious elements are thrown in. Kate’s older brother is literally a jerk of a brother and a car thief on a dark path towards a life of crime, and both Kate and her brother are still coping with the death of their father. So yeah, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows, but it still allows the comedy to take front and center and the more light-hearted moments shine.
Acting-wise I thought Judah Lewis who plays Kate’s brother Teddy, was just okay. When I say that it has the idea that just about anyone could have taken on the role of Teddy in this movie and done fine. Judah Lewis is the main actor in both the BABYSITTER movies. Darby Camp plays Kate and literally seems like she just got here. Not just in acting, but like on planet earth. She was born in 2007 and already has 19 acting credits including CLIFFORD THE BIG RED DOG. Camp’s effort in this required a bit more acting skill than you would ask most kids her age, and she crushes it. As I mentioned early Kurt Russell knocks it out of the park as Santa and probably single-handedly made this movie far more entertaining than it has a right to be given the super simplistic storyline. He even does a really cool musical number in this. Kate and Teddy’s mom in the movie is played by Kimberly Williams-Paisley and I am going to throw her performance into the just okay category as well. She is most famous for her role in FATHER OF THE BRIDE. The rest of the cast also does pretty good, but let’s face it, Kurt Russell is the stand-out here.
One cool tidbit about this thing is that we also get a very brief Goldie Hawn sighting. Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell have now been married for 38 years. This is an extremely rare feat these days in real life, let alone for a Hollywood couple.
Overall this is a really fun family Christmas movie but finding the BLU-RAY or DVD is a bit challenging. I have to give this one a solid 6 out of 7. It’s not as great as some of the Christmas classics or even 8-BIT CHRISTMAS but it is really fun and has some awesome concepts.
GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF 1492 PICTURES AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY.
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