Review of The Santa Clause (1994) by Logan W — 11 Dec 2014

I grew up on the Santa Clause and this was the right-on mix for me as a kid. Re-watching it now, I come away half impressed and half unimpressed on this movie. It's cheap looking and a little unpleasant (in the way that it really follows through on the consequences of if someone believed himself to be Santa Claus, .

E.g. losing custody of your kid, people thinking youâ??re insane) and those S.W.A.T. team elves are the dumbest thing I've seen in a movie possibly ever. Yet I really admire the movie for having some follow-through with its own story (it's a cross-guarder for me) and I speak very highly of the lead performance from Tim Allen.

He's the star-lit tree-topper of this movie. He's funny, charismatic, warm, sweet without being saccharine and so likable that he becomes the life preserver that saves us from drowning in the frost-bound washout of the second half of the movie.

I really enjoy the first half of the movie too, I must say. The sequence where Allen and his son (Eric Lloyd) perform the duties of Santa Claus for the first time are inspired and fun.