Fred Claus
Neither as terrible as it could be nor as funny as it should be, with that cast, Fred Claus is a painless way to catch a new holiday movie this season without getting into a fight about what part was the lamest. The premise is interesting - Fred is the never-measures-up older brother of Saint Nick himself, and despite Fred’s selfish motivation ends up (holiday movie spoiler alert!) saving Christmas when even the Big Guy couldn’t do it - and himself, of course. If I am ruining something here, then you have never seen a Christmas movie.
Anyway, I probably had higher hopes than a David Dobkin film merited (he did Wedding Crashers, but he also did Shanghai Knights, so….) but come one! Vince Vaughan, Paul Giamatti, John Michael Higgins, Rachel Weisz, Miranda Richardson, Elizabeth Banks, Kevin Spacey?? How is this not a sure thing? Granted, the ladies as always take a back seat to the gents insofar as generating farce and mayhem. Kathy Bates comes in as the brothers’ mother, the woman who caused the Rift That Almost Killed Christmas, and gives it that extra tang of reality that made it enjoyable rather than shrill.
Besides the inevitable Saving Christmas Theme (patent pending), holiday movies do tend to commit the crime of being too safe, despite their potential. Would It’s A Wonderful Life have survived with its bleakness intact in such times as these today? Casting so many people who usually come with interesting barbs and baggage in a homogenized feel-goodery is hobbling your racehorse at the starting gate. However, despite this lukewarm praise, the film does have entertainment and emotional merit and some fairly earned sentiment with real triumphs over dysfunction. But imagine these darkly funny and wicked souls given a script that let them really be who we love them to be in movies!
Giamatti is genius casting as Saint Nick. He’s real, of course, in this world, so Paul plays him true to form: preternaturally jolly but also a realist. Vaughan is as Vaughan does, fast-talking and unwittingly a disaster waiting to turn epic, but he is the most castrated by the venue. Spacey gets to be a cartoon version of Spacey and that’s OK too, but he seems very uncomfortable with the inevitability of his character’s arc.
John Michael Higgins (you recognize him from Christopher Guest movies, at least) is Willie the head elf, and they shot him elf-sized (read: little person). Higgins being probably closer to 5′ 10″, the two ways to solve this problem are: 1. Do the Lord of the Rings trick, carefully shooting and compositing the full actor body into a larger-than-himself scene, or 2. Paste his face on a little person and shoot a lot of long shots where he’s not clearly seen. Wherever they could, the filmmakers shot Willie on the cheap, and some of the face-pasting shots are quite jarring. Considering how many years it’s been (14) since Spielberg stuck Ariana Richards’ face on a stunt woman in Jurassic Park, wouldn’t you think they would have that technology smoothed out by now?
Fred Claus had a huge budget, evidently, but they spent it on the extraordinary North Pole sets. The modern world-friendly (brand-name manufacting) workshop is fantastic, and the village around it is incredible. The whole place, from each unique house exterior and interior to the gleaming halls of the workshop, has this fabulous holiday-swiss lodge-germanic fairyland flavor, with colors and lights and patterns that dazzle but never overwhelm. The North Pole is packed also with more little people (apparently Russian circus performers!) than Under the Rainbow. It’s gorgeous.
So, if your family fights a lot at Christmas, or you suffer from parent-induced sibling rivalry, or you just love Paul Giamatti, you’ll do OK renting this movie for a pleasant and mild couple of hours.
MPAA Rating PG
Release date 11/9/07
Time in minutes 107
Director David Dobkin
Studio Warner Brothers
