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by Willie Waffle

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The Santa Clause 3:
The Escape Clause

Can we stop celebrating THIS Santa Claus?  Santa Tim Allen has almost ruined Christmas three times in twelve years!  He chokes worse than Alex Rodriguez in the playoffs.  It’s time for a new Santa.  Can we start one of those referendums like the one that got Arnold Schwarzenegger elected Governor?         

Tim Allen is back again as bumbling Santa Scott Calvin, but he’s facing even bigger problems than ever before, and it’s going to take a Christmas miracle to save the day.  Mrs. Claus (Elizabeth Mitchell) is pregnant and ready to pop some time near Christmas Eve (does that mean she is giving birth to Jesus Christ?), but Santa is horribly behind in this year’s planning and execution of the most wonderful holiday of them all.  Of course, this means he is paying less attention to Mrs. Claus than he should (is that why I saw him kissing Mommy underneath the mistletoe last night?), so he decides to break a few rules and invite her parents, and his ex-wife’s family to the North Pole to help ease the burden (Yeah, that’s going to go well.  How many Christmas songs do we have about St. Nick’s mother-in-law?  I rest my case). 

Meanwhile, Jack Frost (Martin Short) is desperate for attention and has been trying to raise his public profile in ways that violate the Code of the Legendary Figures (rules for The Easter Bunny, Sandman, Mother Nature, et al.).  On the verge of being banished (they just should have sent the Heat Miser after him and been done with it), Frost agrees to help Santa as community service, but his real plan is to sabotage Christmas and take it for himself by tricking Santa Scott into giving up the job via The Escape Clause (I think Bush has been trying to do the same thing to Rumsfeld).

Will Jack Frost be successful?  Will Santa go crazy before it’s all said and done? 

The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause (which for parents and critics means, oh lord where is the exit?) is so bad, it makes me want to convert and celebrate Hanukah this year.  With each successive movie, the franchise gets worse and worse, and even Disney knows it (which is manifest in their decision to hide this clunker from critics until it was well past deadline for almost all writers and broadcasters, which puts Disney on my naughty list this year).  Sadly, after one classic movie and a sequel we can live with, the creators have run out of ideas for the third, and need to resort to Martin Short’s intolerable mugging for the camera and stale jokes about Canada (Santa can’t tell the in-laws he is Santa, so he constructs an elaborate ruse to make them think they are in Canada.  I hope that convinces you to put the ticket money back in your pocket).         

Writers Ed Decter and John Strauss rely on the same old same old to try to make us laugh, but waste an enormous amount of talent to do so.  Santa faces the same battles with his in-laws that have been driving better jokes since the vaudeville days.  He is too wrapped up in work to pay enough attention to his wife when she needs him, like we have seen a zillion times (and usually in Christmas movies).  Even the magic of the North Pole is starting to seem ho-hum and bah humbug since we have seen it in three movies now (I think some of the elves are starting to sport a few gray hairs).  This leaves Allen, Mitchell, Ann Margaret, Alan Arkin and the rest of the cast to do the impossible and make this predictable plot lovable and interesting.  Not even Santa’s magic dust can accomplish that.

However, Decter and Strauss display some hope in an It’s a Wonderful Life plot twist that shows Santa what Christmas would be like without him, which could have been a funny commentary on the commercialization of Christmas if it was taken a bit further.  This is the best part of the movie and provides the most tension, potential and drama, yet, it’s quickly scuttled in favor of a sickeningly sappy, candy cane syrupy sweet ending that won’t put a lump in your throat, but will probably make you want to leave a lump of coal in Tim Allen’s stocking.   

Event though I am a fat guy who is predisposed to being jolly, nothing in The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause made my belly shake like a bowl full of jelly. 

½ Waffles (Out Of 4)

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