Fred Claus

Director: David Dobkin

Cast: Vince Vaughn, Paul Giamatti, Kathy Bates, Miranda Richardson, Kevin Spacey, Rachel Weisz, Elizabeth Banks

Released: November 9, 2007

This is a weird movie that doesn't exactly work. The titular Fred Claus (played by Vince Vaughn) is the older brother of Santa Claus (played by Paul Giamatti). The movie begins in the Middle Ages (according to Wikipedia, but I'll rely on it since we aren't given a certain time period) where young Frederick's mother (played by Kathy Bates) gives birth to a very fat baby whose first words right out of the gate is, "Ho, ho, ho." He is named Nicholas Claus. At first, young Fred is enamored with his baby brother and promises to be the best big brother, but over time he becomes jealous of his perfect brother. Nicholas wants to give all his birthday presents to "the poor orphan down the road" and his mother calls him "my little Saint Nicholas." He likes to be "inventive" and slide down the chimney because "the door was locked" and made himself a red outfit.

The movie explains how it went from olden times to present day by telling us Nicholas fulfilled his mother's prophecy by becoming a saint: "It's a little known rule of saint hood, but when you become a saint, you freeze in time, eternally ageless. The rule apples to the family of the saint and spouses, as well." Oh, that seems convenient. So that means Fred has been around 35 for centuries and centuries. You would think he would have some jokes about all the historical events he's witnessed through all the centuries he's been around, but there are none. It's just a way to explain how Santa's been around all the time and how the movie is set in the present. 

Fred lives in Chicago and Vince Vaughn has a couple scenes with kids where he's doing his Vince Vaughn thing where he's just talking a mile a minute, obviously doing his improv thing. He gets into arguments with these kids about Santa. A little girl tells him Santa brought her a TV for Christmas and in return he tells her that Santa's not looking out for her and she should be outside "playing kick-the-can." A young boy called Slam (his real name is Sam) often drops by to visit him in his apartment. He tells Fred that he asked Santa for a puppy, but he doesn't know "how [Santa] will know where to bring [him] gifts this year, because [he doesn't] know where [he'll] be on Christmas morning." Fred asks him if he's ever really though about Santa Claus and tells him how Santa likes the spotlight and craves the attention and adds, "Don't be a cheerleader for Santa...don't drink the Kool-Aid, you're better than that." I did laugh when Slam replies, "I like Kool-Aid."

Apparently, Slam is living alone because his father died and CPS comes to collect him. I'm not sure if Fred knew about this (he did seem surprised when he hears this news). We will check in on Slam a bit later. 

Fred has been dating a beautiful British woman named Wanda (played by Rachel Weisz) for the past three years and he has forgotten that it's her birthday tomorrow. He tells her he didn't forget, that he has a special surprise planned for her. She's a little skeptical because the last time he told her he had a surprise for her, he told her to brush up on her French and she thought he was taking her to Paris, which she's always wanted to visit but instead he took her gambling on a riverboat in Indiana. They get coffee and she asks him to tell her what the surprise is and he says it won't be a surprise if he tells her. It's so obvious he forgot and doesn't have anything planned. Outside, he sees a sign behind her advertising for a new restaurant called Bonsai Palace and tells her he's taking her to this great new place and names the restaurant. It's funny when she says that sounds familiar (probably because she's seen the huge billboard for it!). I'm surprised we didn't see her seeing it when they left the coffee shop, but they cut from the scene while they're still there. She obviously had to see it when they eventually left!  

Fred is involved in some kind of project involving casinos and real estate. I'm not exactly sure what it was, but he needs $50,000 by the 22nd, which is about a month away. It's not really important what the project is (because, spoiler alert, it will never happen); the main takeaway is that he needs the money. He also needs an extra five grand for bail money because he's been arrested for impersonating a Salvation Army Santa and gets into a huge fight with all these Santas.

Fred calls Nick and at first, it seems like a courtesy call, then he tells his brother if he wanted to send him a gift, he could "send $5,000 to the police station on Michigan Avenue in my name." Nick's wife, Annette (played by Miranda Richardson), doesn't want him to do it, but he tells Fred he'll send it to him. Fred tells his brother he's going to give him a gift in return: "I'm gonna give you $10,000 for Christmas in cash." Of course this confuses Nick because how can Fred give him ten grand when he needs five grand? He points this out and Fred just starts babbling, then adds, "Go ahead and send me $50,000 on top of the five." What the hell? How did we go from five to fifty thousand? It sounds like Fred's done a few scams in his (very long!) lifetime! Nick is firm and tells his brother he'll pay the five thousand for his bail, but if he wants the rest of the money, "then you're just gonna have to come up here" where he can earn the money. Fred isn't so sure, but Nick reminds him he's never come to visit. Really? In ALLLLLLLLLLLL that time, in all those centuries, not once he's ever been curious to check out the North Pole and Santa's Village and see how it all works? 

Fred asks him what he would be doing and Nick replies, "Shave reindeer, sprinkle the doodads on the cookies, put the stars where the little guys can't reach." I'm sorry, but this sounds like stuff that won't make him fifty grand! Fred agrees, but tells him he needs to leave by the 22nd and Nick is fine with that. 

While he was in jail waiting for the bail money, Wanda was waiting for him at the restaurant and breaks up with him because he never showed. Or maybe she didn't break up with him, but just said she needed a break. I'm not really sure because (spoiler alert:) they will get back together. 

Santa's head elf, Willy, has come to pick up Fred in the "company car", which, of course, is the sleigh powered by eight reindeer. When
they land in Santa's Village, the Northern Lights are very prominent and there are many elves running around, wearing greed outfits with red and white striped stockings. Fred meets Charlene (played by Elizabeth Banks) who is also known as "Santa's little helper" and she's the one who keeps Santa on schedule. Her nickname is ironic because she's not an elf and a fully grown person. I would love to know her backstory. She's not an elf, so how did she end up there? Is this a Buddy the Elf situation?  There's a weird storyline where Willy has a crush on her, but she never remembers her name and Fred teaches him how to dance and he ends up wooing her and they're a couple by the end of the movie. It's a very unnecessary plot line and Charlene is really not needed in this movie. There's a million elves that live and work in the North Pole; one of them can't do her job? And at least the title "Santa's little helper" would make sense if it was attached to an actual elf! 

Fred is sharing a room with Willy, no, I take that back. He's sharing a bunk bed with Willy. He's on the top bunk and Willy asks him if he would be more comfortable on the bottom bunk, but Fed tells him it wouldn't make much difference. We see his legs hanging from the end of the bed. I can't imagine how uncomfortable that would be! 

The next morning, Willy gives Fred "a full orientation of the gift giving process" (which was ordered by Santa). They enter the work shop which is full of elves working on and making. toys. Willy explains that kids write to Santa to tell them what they want, then the letter are delivered to the North Pole Post Office, "The busiest in the whole world" (and kids can just write "Santa Claus, North Pole" and they're good to go!). The letters are sent to the toy factory where "each and every toy that a child asks for is handmade by the elves...once built, the toys make their way to packaging...the toys are stored until Christmas Eve when Santa delivers them." I loved Fred's dry reply: "Good to know, thank you, Willy."

Nick shows Fred the "Naughty / Nice Department" which "is the key to the whole process, the nerve center of the entire operation." There's a huge crystal snow globe where you can say the name of anybody in the world and their image will appear at that moment. 

There's a "Ten Most Naughty List" with the names of the kids and what they did. I paused to read some of the reasons for these kids being on the top of the Naughty List:

-bit his dentist and his father

-made her teacher cry every day

-gave mother a nervous breakdown

-got teacher arrested at trip to White House 

-toilet papered house of his vice principal

-stole piggy bank from his best friend

-wore same underwear for 17 days

-poisoned fourth grade class hamster 

-locked little brother in closet 

-changed report card grades

I feel like a couple of these should be higher than the kid who bit his father and dentist, who, at this moment, is the most naughty kid in the world. I don't know, maybe the boy who locked his brother in a closet or the girl who (intentionally?) poisoned her class hamster or the girl who got her teacher arrested? What the hell would she be doing to cause her teacher to get arrested? Biting your dentist seems par for the course for a little kid...a dentist sticks their fingers in your mouth, it seems something a little kid would do. 

Nick tells Fred that sometimes kids are both naughty and nice (duh, I feel like that's the majority of kids) and they do "an up-to-date determination." He demonstrate how the snow globe works by saying a name of a random kid and his location. We see a kid in his sister's room just smashing everything with a plastic bat. I think we all know what list he's currently on! 

Fred's job is to review files of kids and either stamp them as "naughty" or "nice." These files also include the letter they sent to Santa. An elf brings him a tall pile of files and he asks if that's it and the elf replies, "Yeah, right. That's just Bethesda, Maryland." As you can imagine, there will be piles upon piles of files all around the room. 

Nick and Annette (remember, that's Santa and Mrs. Claus) are visited by an "efficiency expert" named Clyde Northcutt (played by Kevin Spacey), who has a backstory of hating Christmas and is trying to ruin it for everyone else. He shows the Clauses (Claus's?) a graph of how "the average size of a child's wish list has grown substantially in the last 200 years." The x-axis shows years and the y-axis shows the number of gifts kids ask for. By "present day" 2007, it's up to 25 gifts! Clyde explains, "In the 1800s, children rarely asked for more than one item and usually these items were of an intangible nature - something like a family member's health or the end of war or famine....today, the average child asks for 15 gifts per letter." He tells Nick that his toy line operation is getting "further behind each year...it's simply not good enough." Nick reminds him he doesn't give every child every toy they want as "part of Christmas is being grateful for the things that we can have." Clyde threatens that he might have to shut him down and a new operation will be "based at the South Pole." He tells Santa that he has three strikes. If he can make it through Christmas without three strikes, he'll keep his job. If he gets three strikes, "the entire operation will shut down permanently."  Well, guess what Strike One is? Oh, wait, you wouldn't know because I haven't set the scene up yet.

So while the Clauses were visiting with Mr. Northcutt, Fred was getting tired of hearing "Here Comes Santa Claus" which is the only song they play while the elves are working. Even though they play different variations of it, I would also get tired of the same song being played over and over again. (And they can't play other Santa Claus themed songs like "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" or "Up on the Rooftop"?) Fred tells DJ Donny (yes, there is a DJ elf whose only job is to play the same song) that he needs to stop playing the same song because it "becomes like mental torture." Donny refuses to change the song, saying it's catchy. Fred puts him in "the naughty cabinet" and plays a different song. He plays "Rubberneckin'" by Elvis Presley, a song I wasn't familiar with, so I don't know if it's a deep cut in Elvis's discography. 

At first, the elves don't like the song and they're covering their ears, but then they soon find themselves getting into the groove and soon start dancing and cheering on Fred when he starts dancing, front and center. DJ Donny gets out of the cabinet looking mad, but even then he starts to get into the music. 

Clyde and the Clauses are on their way to the workshop as Santa is telling Northcutt the elves are hardworking and dedicated. Now do you see where this is going? When they enter the building, all the elves are cheering on a dancing Fred while all the toys and gifts are getting ruined because nobody is there to work on the assembly lines. It was pretty funny when Fred (a rather tall man) jumps into the sea of elves and crowd surfs. 

Clyde gives Santa his first mark and later we will see him shredding many of the files and letters to Santa the children wrote in a way to frame Fred and for this he gives Santa his second mark.

The next day, Fred tells his brother he didn't do anything with the files. Nick tells him how important they are because without them, they "have no idea what the children want, or whether they've been marked "naughty" or "nice" and how it was Fred's responsibility to keep track of them." 

When Clyde gives Santa his second strike, he feigns concern about Fred and asks Nick if he's "asked for large sums of money recently" or if he's "gotten into trouble with the law?" Nick confirms this and Clyde says Fred is crying out for help and that someone needs to step in and help him. This results in an intervention with the family. Even Wanda is there. At first I was wondering if she knew about Santa being Fred's brother, but my question was quickly answered when he tells her, "My brother is Santa Claus" and she replies, "Yeah, I can see that. The whole thing's been a little bit unusual." For someone who found out Santa Claus is real (and is the brother of her boyfriend) and had to travel to the North Pole (how did she even get there? Did an elf pick her up in the sleigh?), she seems pretty chill about the whole thing. The only slightly funny thing about this scene was Annette saying that her husband was "dangerously overweight" and Nick's mother saying there was nothing wrong with him. 

Fred reminds them that tomorrow is his last day on the job and then he'll go home and be out of their lives forever.

A new kid has taken over "the number one Most Naughty spot" and wouldn't you know it, it's Slam. Fred uses the snow globe to check in on him and we see him in the orphanage with other young boys. One kid asks another kid what he wants for Christmas and he replies, "A family" and the other kid says he's asking for one too. This makes Slam get up from his bed and tell them Santa's not brining them families and that "Santa Claus is a clown. He's a fame junkie." He's basically repeating everything that Fred told him earlier. He proceeds to get into a shoving match with the other boys. One of them tells him he's never getting adopted because he's mean. While not great behavior from Slam, does he really warrant the #1 spot for the Most Naughty Kid? I think Santa is a little incensed that this kid is telling other kids unflattering things about him and that's why he made the #1 spot. 

Fred looks at Slam's letter to Santa (luckily it wasn't one of the ones that got shredded, but really, how many files could get shredded out of the millions and millions of children who have files?) and it's a really cute one asking Santa for a puppy. Fred stamps his file as "nice", then starts stamping all the other letters as nice as well. 

Nick finds out about this and demands to know why Fred marked every nice child as "nice and says they cannot make enough presents for all the kids with three days left and deliver them. This results in him getting his third strike and Northcutt hands him a "notification of termination" card as he says, "You're fired." 

Apparently, Fred was paid fifty grand for stamping a bunch of papers (get me a job in the North Pole!) and he's back in Chicago. He finds a present from his brother and unwraps it to reveal a bird house like he used to make when he was a child. Nick apologizes for cutting down his tree where he hung the birdhouse, which smashed it. Of course, all of this happened centuries ago, but I guess it's the thought that counts.

Fred goes to a support group called Siblings Anonymous which felt like it could be a skit on SNL. In fact, this would make more sense to have it condensed to an eight minute skit rather than trying to make it into a two hour movie. It's basically a group of people (I think they were all men) who have a sibling (they all seemed to be brothers) who is very famous. There's Frank Stallone, Bill Clinton's brother, and one of the Baldwins...I think Stephen. I did laugh when Fred introduces himself: "I"m Fred Claus. I'm Santa Claus's brother" and everyone is just looking incredulously at him. This scene is here for Fred to realize he needs to get back to the North Pole and help his brother. He spends all his money he earned to get back. We see him take a plane, a boat breaking through the ice, being pulled on a sled by huskies, then he snow shoes the rest of the way. Was he not allowed to have Willy pick him up in the sleigh? Did he not tell anyone he was coming because he wanted it to be a surprise? It must have taken him a week just to get there that way when riding in Santa's sleigh probably only takes an hour, if that. (Just speculating.)  

Okay, I guess it didn't take him a week to get there because he returned to Chicago on the 22nd and he's back in the North Pole by the 24th. That's gotta give you some jet lag whiplash! He has all the elves gathered in the workshop and tells them they "gotta make as many presents as they can in ten hours." Ten hours? WTF? He asks what would be the easiest toys to make and they decide on baseball hats for boys and hula hoop for girls. Hmm...are baseball hats considered "a toy"? I would say no. Charlene tells him it's possible to do, but it's not what the kids asked for and he says what's most important is that all the kids get a toy and that someone is thinking about them. 

Nick is in bed because he's thrown his back out and can't drive the sleigh (great timing, Santa!). Fred tells Willy he can deliver the presents, but the elf says he can't because the rule is that "only a Claus can deliver the presents." I'll give you three guesses who delivers the presents.

Fred and Nick have a heart to heart where Fred tells his brothers there are no naughty kids, just that "some are scared and some of them don't feel listened to and some of them had some pretty rough breaks." He convinces his brother that every kid deserves a present on Christmas which is a nice sentiment. 

Northcutt sees the sleigh and tries to stop them from going, but they ignore his orders. Once they begin their descent, Willy tells Fred (wearing the Santa suit, of course) they only have ten hours to deliver and they need to be done "by 5.39 a.m. North Pole time", which is sunrise. That doesn't seen like enough time to me. 

Willy gives Fred Claus a few pointers and advice like it won't be pleasant going down the chimneys and to eat the cookies because "it hurts people's feelings if you don't eat the cookies." I can confirm this is true. I feel like there was one Christmas where the cookies were still on the plate when I woke up in the morning  and I'm pretty sure my feelings were hurt! Fred delivers all the presents in a Christmas montage sent to "Christmas Wrapping" (underrated Christmas song if you ask me). 

When they get to Chicago, he stops to chat with Slam. He's sitting so he's not facing Slam and the floppy part of his hat is covering his face so Slam can't see him. Although you would think Slam would be able to recognize Fred's voice. It's a nice moment when Slam says, "Santa, you found me" and "Santa" replies, "Yeah, I found you. I find all the good kids." He takes a puppy out of his bag (hmm, if I were one of the kids who got a baseball hat or hula hoop I'd be a little irritated that this kid gets a puppy!). "Santa" tells Slam he got some advice a little while ago and that he shouldn't heed it and gives him new advice: "The world is what you make it...I want you to believe in yourself, Slam, cause you got a lot to believe in."

Slam will have a happy ending and by the next Christmas he will be spending it with a family who adopted him. 

We also find out Clyde has a backstory where he made the Most Naught List in 1969 because he would get into fights with kids who called him "four eyed Clyde" (because he wears glasses, you see) and he was mad at Santa because he had asked for a Superman cape the year before that he never received. I feel like the whole Christmas-hating Clyde was unnecessary. Fine, he can still be the efficientcy expert and he can still threaten to shut down operations, but have Fred be the cause of Santa getting all three strikes (he already was the reason he got two strikes!) and then Fred makes it up by delivering the presents and saving Christmas. 

There's a very sentimental scene at the end where all the elves and Mr. and Mrs. Claus are watching the kids open their presents the next morning on the snow globe. It's set to a melancholy "Silent Night" sung by Sinead O'Connor. It's a sweet scene, but the tone doesn't seem to match the movie. Fred also joins to watch and Nick tells him, "You are the best big brother anybody could ever ask for." 

Fred surprises Wanda with the trip to Paris she's always wanted and they take Santa's sleigh around the Eiffel Tower. Everyone is happy. Whoopty doo.

The sad thing is, I gotta couple more Christmas movies to review and this might be the best one of the bunch which is saying a lot!