If you’re like me, you were probably surprised to hear the recent news of a new planned Santa Clause sequel. Obviously, Hollywood has been heavily trading in nostalgia lately, and there’s always a market for Christmas movies. But this particular franchise used up all of its good ideas in the first movie. The second was a slog, with a dull plot involving Santa (Tim Allen) needing to find a wife or he’ll lose the Santa job on a legal technicality. Unfortunately, The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause is even worse.
As we join the story, Allen has been holding down the Santa gig for 12 years, during which he’s married Carol (Elizabeth Mitchell), thus making her Mrs Claus. The happy couple are expecting their first child, and the timing couldn’t be worse: Not only is Christmas upon them, but Santa’s workshop is terribly behind schedule, and the Council of Legendary Figures has called an emergency meeting at the North Pole to discuss some recent troublemaking by Jack Frost (Martin Short).
In the midst of all this chaos, Santa attempts to make things a bit easier for his pregnant wife and flies off to gather her parents and bring them back to the North Pole. He must do this without revealing the secrets of Santa to them, so he drugs them and wakes them up upon arrival. Ann-Margret and Alan Arkin play Carol’s parents, and even their considerable talents can’t do much with the awful scenes they’re given. For their characters to make it even 10 minutes into the visit still believing themselves to be in “Canada” nears the depths of human stupidity ever depicted onscreen.
Anyway, things get even more stressful for Santa with the annoying in-laws around, and Jack Frost (who is serving probation at the Pole) takes the opportunity to launch a plan to take over the title of Claus. It involves getting Santa to say the words “I wish I’d never been Santa” while holding his favorite snowglobe. This invokes the “Escape Clause” of the movie’s title. Well, it works, and Santa finds himself once again Scott Calvin, toy salesman. The movie briefly becomes It’s a Wonderful Life as Scott drives around in dismay tracking down family members who are all hilariously worse off than they were when he was Santa. From here, we get the predictable climax of tracking down Frost and reversing the spell, followed by a showdown back at the North Pole. Would you believe me if I told you Frost gets his frozen heart thawed by a hug from a little girl? If you’ve read this far, then you probably would. And you’d be right.
This movie was a paycheck job for everyone involved. The writers were clearly out of ideas. This was now three Santa Clause movies in a row where the driving force of the plot was Santa’s ambivalent feelings about being the man in the red suit. Even the set design, one of the best parts of the first movie, looked drab and barren. This looked like the clearance rack North Pole.
Allen is fine once again. By this point he could play the role in his sleep. I did find it amusing that all three movies contained plot devices that allowed Allen plenty of time on screen sans-Santa makeup. Must’ve had a CLAUSE in his contract, huh?
I assure you – you laughed as hard at that pun as you’ll laugh at any of the jokes in this movie.
Elizabeth Mitchell was the one bright spot, as she found a way to play some recogniziably human moments in the midst of the otherwise lifeless plot. I was very amused at her delighted reaction to finally having some visitors her own height, especially since those visitors were Santa’s ex-wife and her new husband (Wendy Crewson and Judge Reinhold, returning for the third time with Allen in these roles).
The low spot was Spencer Breslin as Santa’s head elf (God, I miss you, David Krumholtz). I liked Breslin just fine in 2000’s The Kid, opposite Bruce Willis. He had all these weird mannerisms and a quirky way of speaking that were hilariously offbeat for a child actor. But here he is six years later, looking about 6′ tall and with a deep voice, and he’s talking and moving the exact same way as when he was 8 years old. I actually felt unsure of going after a child actor’s performance like this, so I did a little research to see if anyone else was saying things about it. What I discovered is that Breslin at this point already had an award category named after himself at the Stinker Awards (“The Spencer Breslin Worst Child Actor Award”). He received this honor in 2003 for his performance in The Cat in the Hat, then took home multiple trophies in 2006 for this film (I’m vindicated), The Shaggy Dog, and Zoom.
I didn’t intend for the last paragraph of the review to be an evisceration of a child star’s performance, but on my life I had more fun researching and writing that paragraph than I did at any time while watching this movie. Skip it. And regard the new sequel with caution.
⭐️
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