Fred Claus
DIR: David Dobkin • WRI: Dan Fogelman• PROD: David Dobkin, Jessie Nelson, Joel Silver. • DOP: Remi Adefarasin• ED: Mark Livolsi• DES: Allan Cameron• CAST: Vince Vaughn, Paul Giamatti, John Michael Higgins, Miranda Richardson, Rachel Weisz, Kathy Bates, Trevor Peacock, Ludacris, Kevin Spacey

As a child, Fred Claus is so overshadowed by his younger brother, the future Father Christmas, that he grows up to become a frustrated, somewhat embittered motor-mouth (Vince Vaughn). When he gets into a fight with a gang of charity workers in Santa costumes, he ends up calling his brother (Paul Giamatti) for bail, which Santa decides to make him pay off by coming to work for him. If you’re wondering if complications ensue, you would be correct. Hilarity doesn’t ensue quite so much, but there are complications aplenty. 

It’s a family film, which often means not being quite enjoyable enough for adults or for kids. It’s debatable whether children really want or need to be presented with a Santa Claus whose hair is white from stress (and who has aged a lot worse than his older sibling), and who appears to be a problem eater with passive aggressive tendencies. Not to mention contending with the contrivance of saints and their families being granted immortality. But this may not be the place to argue about logic, and the film has its heart in the right place. It confronts the issue of what it means for a kid to be naughty or nice, which is well intentioned, although how much of an issue is that? They get presents regardless of how naughty or nice they are. The presents are more often determined by how rich or poor they are—but maybe the naughty-nice conundrum is really aimed at those kids who feel they’re being punished without really doing something wrong.

The casting is interesting. Vince Vaughn as Paul Giamatti’s older brother is pretty weird to begin with; Giamatti as Santa is even more surprising, but he’s very good, and manages to bring off some of the film’s more cheesy moments. Vince Vaughn does what Vince Vaughn does—in fact the film’s a bit more enjoyable if you imagine that he’s actually playing the same guy he played in Swingers. It also has Rachel Weisz, playing a meter maid. She’s good, but it’s an odd casting choice and she seems a bit wasted in a standard love interest role. There’s also Kevin Spacey, as the Christmas-hating villain, which is a little less unexpected.

So it’s not a great movie, but there are some good moments, especially between the brothers. The art direction and effects are nice, from a gingerbread house to Santa’s factory town to a sled zooming over various landmarks, though there are a few spots where the effects don’t quite work. Vince Vaughn appears to do a lot of ad-libbing (unless the character was written that way), and the sense of improvisation kind of spreads out to the other actors until you get the feeling everyone’s just making it up as they go along, with the results being a bit hit-and-miss. Which, incidentally, is not a bad way to describe the film as a whole.

Tim Hanan
(Read biog here)

Rated PG (see IFCO website for details)
Fred Claus is released on 30th November 2007
Fred Claus – Official website