December 14th – Santa Clause

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Growing up in Austria means: no Santa Clause for children – but you can bet that marketing is hell bent on establishing Santa Clause here as well for brand recognition, but as for this article, Santa Clause is not yet the thing that brings Christmas.
But no matter if you believe in Santa Clause or Jesus or Optimus Prime to bring you presents, sooner or later you will wake up and there comes the moment when you get told that it’s not Santa but actually your parents who are behind Christmas.

Which is exactly why even people who never believed in Santa Clause but something else (Godzilla) can relate to this movie. Tim Allen is faced with the fact that Santa Clause actually exists – despite having grown up under the assumption that it is just a fabrication of your parents.

Unlike other movies about Santa who escape into a magical parallel dimension acting as if everyone knows Santa personally, this movie makes good use of “grounding” this tale in “reality”, delivering probably the most believable version of Santa Clause that has come along – or at least a version where you start wishing that it might actually be that way.

I never liked the ending of this movie, but the first 45 minutes are such a great ride that one can forgive them drag at the end.