Review of Miracle on 34th Street (1947) by Manicure — 22 Nov 2020

Miracle on 34th Street became a forced holiday classic due to its obsessive airplay in the past twenty years, but it's so empty in content and lifeless in execution that it can merely serve as a background to Christmas dinner.

The story is actually made of some interesting ideas: Santa gets a job in a department store, manages to convince disenchanted children that he actually exists but ends up being under trial. Too bad that they used the corniest and most uninventive pretexts a writer could ever think of to get such a story developed. The ways Santa gets framed and the whole trial unwinds just didn't make any sense. Richard Attenborough's Santa Claus was the only convincing thing here and probably the only reason the kids of the 90s still remember this film.