[7.1/10] *The Santa Clause* is the odd movie that both absolutely should work and absolutely shouldn’t.

It should work because it’s premise is pure gold. (Pure tinsel?) What if your dad became Kris Kringle? What if you got to see the North Pole and Santa’s Workshop in all their glory? What if a man tried in vain to resist his yuletide vocation, but slowly found himself succumbing to the magic anyway? What if the spirit of the season warmed his heart? There’s a strong dose of wish-fulfillment, whimsy, and sweetness to the central idea here, and it makes sense that the concept would continue to suck people in, year after year.

And it shouldn’t work because the film’s values are aggressively rotten. Our protagonist, Scott Calvin, is an unlikable jerk for seventy percent of the movie. He doesn’t change from any personal epiphanies or earned moments of growth the audience gets to witness; it just happens by magic. His wife, Laura, is the bad guy for most of the film for daring to note that Scott is a less-than-great dad. Her new husband, Neal, is likewise painted as an antagonist, despite being a father figure who seems to care about Scott’s son more than he does, because he’s intellectual and less manly.

The cherry on top is that, Laura and Neal are particularly “bad” in the film’s perspective for daring to question whether Scott’s gone overboard in fostering a belief in Santa Claus, particularly since it seems like he might be doing it to steal the affections of the child who didn’t want to spend Xmas with him. Whom we’re supposed to root for, and whom we’re supposed to resent is pretty backwards here when it comes to who’s reasonable and caring, and who’s mainly a jerk.

I don’t know how to resolve those two sides of the movie. On the one hand it is charming, imaginative, and filled to the brim with broad but chuckle-worthy comedy. On the other, it falls into the crappy tropes so many other 1990s blended family comedies do, with where its sympathies lie and how it spackles over some pretty unconscionable behavior. The best we can do is take these things as we find them.

But there’s something to be said for the pure wish-fulfillment of it. Setting aside the meat of the story for a moment, director John Pasquin and his team construct a fantastic wonderland and craft no end to delightful holiday magic. The North Pole itself is simultaneously whimsical and technological. There’s a superb combination of candy-colored toy box settings and cutting-edge (for the time) trappings like portable cocoa-makers and candy-striped garage door openers. It walks the line between the fantastical and the accessible for fellow nineties kids who saw the film when it was released.

At the same time, the puppetry of the communicative reindeer, the prosthetics and costuming involved in Scott Calvin’s body transformation, and the various morphing effects to adjust the shape of both his torso and the chimneys and fireplaces he squeezes into and out of are downright magical. And my god, are the jet-packed elves unbearably cool for reasons I still don’t fully understand. For all the misaimed heart *The Santa Clause* tries to pack in, part of what makes it work despite its shortcoming is how it sells you on the wonder and awe of what it depicts, making you want to spend time in this world even when the story falters.

Plus, god help me, Tim Allen does a superb job as Calvin. He can’t help the fact that the script makes his character into an utter asshole, neglectful father, and jerk of an ex-husband we’re nevertheless supposed to root for. (Or maybe he could have, being the star.) But his shtick works here, as his casual, mugging vibe works in a family comedy to bring out the humor in things that aren't hilarious on the page, and he even manages to sell the saccharine elements of this one when called upon. Allen may be a garbage human being in real life (which hey, may help with his portrayal in the first two acts of the film), but he does well with what the film gives him.

What it gives him is an unearned transformation. Suddenly, from the wizardry of becoming Santa, Scott Calvin is miraculously a better person without ever really growing. He’s not much of a better dad, better co-parent, or better person. He’s just a little jollier. If you squint, you can make out the outline of a story where believing in Santa brings him and his boy, Charlie, together, but it’s never really filled in, and culminates in an uncomfortable child abduction story where he’s supposed to be the good guy. And his willingness to believe is supposed to elevate him above the co-parents who, justifiably, don’t think Santa’s real and consider him nuts for acting as though it’s him.

And yet, if you can ignore the circumstances, and accept the personal transformation-by-fiat, the movie will give you some of that good sap. After all they’ve been through, Charlie *wants* to be with his dad on Xmas the following year. Scott Calvin buys the need for Charlie to spend time with his whole family, including the stepdad Scott’s been a total ass to the entire movie. Laura and Neal receive the childhood gifts whose absences led to their loss of belief in Ol’ Saint Nick. Even the little girl who verbally jousted with Scott in his first, rocky outing as Kris Kringle provides him with some soy milk to help with his lactose intolerance the next year.

Everything ends on a high note, one so full of holiday cheer that you’ll be sweating eggnog and coughing up candy cane dust. It’s manipulative, but it also works, or at least it worked on me.

Therein lies some of the true magic of the holiday season, in the ability for the mirthful and fun to push some unpleasantness out of our minds and our hearts, if only for ninety minutes at a time. A fun sarcastic elf makes up for an annoying, twerpy moppet. A dose of winter wonderland escapism distracts us from a hacky, miscalibrated story about a blended family. A wallop of gingerbread sweetness at the end of the road covers for the unearned, misguided path to get there. I don’t know if it counts as an Xmas miracle, but like the fabled reindeer, *The Santa Clause* shouldn’t be able to get off the ground, and yet somehow manages to stay airborne, and even soar now and then.