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Shelf Beauties
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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2006 - WaffleMovies.com
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