Santa Clause 3 with Tim Allen and Martin Short

An Easy to Swallow Sugar Confection

My mother used to make the candy confection ‘divinity’ each year at Christmas. Her recipe produced sweet, light sugary-goodness. As a kid I’d eat it by the fistful and wonder why, at the end of the season, she didn’t make it more often.

Truth be told, my blood-sugar counts couldn’t have handled it more than once a year.

The Santa Clause movies feature that same kind of treacly sweetness. But at Christmas time I find I have a sweet-tooth.

Judged by the movie trailer, I expected to dislike Santa Clause 3. The infinitely talented Martin Short looked mean-spirited and Tim Allen appeared to be sleep-walking. Instead, I found myself enjoying this frothy holiday confection.

It involves Santa Claus/Scott Calvin (Tim Allen) finding a jealous rival in Jack Frost (Martin Short). The original Santa Clause developed a clever back story for Santa Claus and explained such head-scratchers as ‘how does Santa deliver the goods when there’s no fireplace?’

Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause, doesn’t revisit Santa lore so much as it invents new lore for a guild of Legendary Figures that includes Santa and Frost, but also Mother Nature (Aisha Tyler), the Easter Bunny (Jay Thomas), Cupid (Kevin Pollack), the Sandman (Michael Dorn) and Father Time (Peter Doyle). The cast also includes the reliably droll Alan Arkin as Santa’s father-in-law, and Ann-Margret as his mother-in-law.

Frost learns that there is a way for him to assume the mantle of Santa. By trickery he transports himself and Calvin back to the moment when Calvin first slipped into the big red jacket. In a Back to the Future moment Frost gets to the jacket first and Calvin is suddenly living a joyless life as a successful toy company executive.

As Santa, Frost crassly exploits the commercial possibilities of the North Pole. Christmas, it turns out, could actually be more commercial. This is, as I say, a sweet movie so suffice it to say that the movie doesn’t end there.

This is a deeply-talented cast with not enough to do, although the producers somehow managed to fit in musical numbers by Ann-Margret, which was too short, and Martin Short, which was too long. And maybe someone can explain why flatulence jokes… in this case involving the reindeer… are now part of every G-rated movie these days. Sigh!

Santa Clause 3: the Escape Clause is rated G for general audiences.

DMR grades Santa Clause 3 a B.

The Dollar Movie Review Grading System: The Dollar Movie Review grades on a curve. Movies that make choices to be course or vulgar are downgraded a full to a half grade or more. Likewise, movies that don’t gross out or offend too much can be upgraded as a ‘thanks for trying’ attaboy. Santa Clause was upgraded a half-grade because it was clean and because I want to encourage more movie producers to cast Ann-Margret.