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November 16, 2007 > Arts & Entertainment > Fred Claus fails Christmas season with poor slapstick

Fred Claus fails Christmas season with poor slapstick

By Jackie Ammons | Thresher staff

A baggy-eyed Vince Vaughn popping out of a fireplace is not a pretty sight. In fact, it is rather disgusting and downright disturbing.

Nevertheless, this picture sets the scene of Fred Claus, the first Christmas film of this season. It follows the life of Santa Claus’ (The Nanny Diaries’ Paul Giamatti) brother Fred (The Break-Up’s Vaughn), a party animal who does not buy into the whole Christmas thing. The movie starts with the moment Fred sees his brother come into the world uttering “Ho, ho, ho,” and ends with Fred helping Nick save the world from the evil clutches of the accountant Clyde (Superman Returns’ Kevin Spacey), who wants to shut down the North Pole for some reason. Extensions to the plot involve familial tension with Fred’s parents (Charlotte’s Web’s Kathy Bates and Kevin Peacock of “Kingdom”) and his on-again-off-again relationship with his girlfriend (Eragon’s Rachel Weisz).

The basic problem of Claus is that it tries to cover too many bases. These divergent goals cause Claus to be disjointed and confusing — the potential talent in this film spreads itself thin. It wants to be funny, yet address serious family problems; it wants to be a classic Christmas movie, yet continually drops modern themes and pop culture references. Think of the classic It’s a Wonderful Life, which incorporates Christmas themes without dabbling too much in reality.

Claus, in contrast, is too realistic. It is not too realistic in the sense that it denies the existence of the North Pole or fails to include Santa sliding down the chimney on Christmas Eve. Rather, it takes away the wonder children have at the magic of Christmas by showing Santa’s mother’s anguished screams in childbirth and Fred’s psychological problems in Siblings Anonymous. While Claus attempts to make the film more hip, more up-to-date and more comical with these seemingly realistic elements, it just crashes and burns by confusing children and ending up flat on the comedy side.

While Claus attempts to capture the Christmas spirit with warm, fuzzy family values and twinkling Christmas lights, it fails to capture the mood of a truly heartfelt Christmas movie. It reduces itself to a mere screwball comedy that focuses more on the slapstick than on the Christmas theme. Actions like stealing money from the Salvation Army and knocking over department store Santas with children’s toys make the comedy appropriate for anything but Christmas.

This failure to capture the Christmas spirit may also be due to the fact that Claus is too much like other holiday films. The movie covers the banal “let’s save Christmas” theme of Santa Claus, the tired “I believe in Santa” mantra of Miracle on 34th Street and the worn-out elf jokes of Elf.

More annoying than the un-Christmas spirit of Fred Claus is Fred’s constant babbling throughout the film. It is as if Vaughn eschews the script for ineloquent, stuttering improv. While the character’s personality may call for some uncomfortable dialogue, it should not be at the expense of the audience’s sanity.

On the other hand, Giamatti lives up to his reputation as a versatile actor. While he can be crazed in one film such as Big Fat Liar and insightful in Sideways, Giamatti yet again surprises audience with his soft-hearted and genuinely jolly Santa.

Nevertheless, aside from Giamatti’s excellent acting, Fred Claus remains a bizarre and disjointed waste of time. The random, scattered plot and fast-paced zigzags can grab attention superficially, but the film is empty and purposeless. Even replacing Vince Vaughn with Jimmy Stewart could not have saved Fred Claus’s Christmas.

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