TITLE: Get Santa
YEAR: 2014
WRITER AND DIRECTOR: Christopher Smith
After previous works in horror (e.g. Creep, Triangle, Black Death), Christopher Smith goes for a universal audience with a U-rated family film that, until at least the third act, enjoys the creative freedom that Ben Wheatley seems not to have had so much of in the two episodes of Doctor Who that he directed (despite going for a more "Classic Who" style). Whereas Wheatley took on the Doctor, Smith offers a take on Santa Claus that fuses British realism (cinematographer Christopher Ross's back catalogue includes Eden Lake, 2008) with Christmas fantasy in a manner that suggests he has what it takes to author a future Who movie. The film even opens with a scene not unlike a Who episode from the Russell T Davies era, with news coverage of reindeer being rampant in London. And on the evidence of a scene involving a model railway, perhaps Smith and Ross can work on rebooting Thomas The Tank Engine.
The film takes a setpiece from Ernest Saves Christmas (1988) and making it the premise of the whole film - Santa is imprisoned and the protagonist has to break him out. The protagonist in question is the just-released getaway driver Steve (Rafe Spall) along with his son (Jodie Whittaker appears as the boy's mother and, as with Black Sea released in the same year, plays the protagonist's ex), who discovers Santa in a garage. After Santa is imprisoned, the unbelieving Steve is taken along by his son on a quest to find reindeer Dasher as part of the rescue mission to save Christmas (cf. Ernest Saves Christmas and Elf, 2003). Whereas Ernest has the prison inmates seem to believe Santa's claim to his identity pretty quickly, Get Santa has him hired out as the Santa for a family Christmas get-together.
As suggested before, it is essentially a British realist take on the "Santa-is-real" family fantasy (the least believable thing in the film is that an episode of the BBC's Porridge is being rerun on Channel 4) although at one point it is suggested that this is not the first time that Claus had been in trouble with the law, putting his identity in question but it does not really go anywhere (perhaps a more "realistic" film to compare this to is Danny Boyle's Millions, 2005). Apart from references to adult films The Godfather (1972) and The Shawshank Redemption (1994) there are also references to similar fantasy-meets-domestic films Mary Poppins (1964) (a letter to Santa flies up and out of a chimney) and Matilda (1996) (Steve has a Miss Trunchball-like parole officer). And as with Arthur Christmas (2011), Jim Broadbent gets to play Santa. And despite the somewhat disconcerting trailer (featuring the scene in which Channel 4's Jon Snow reports no presents from Santa), the film does manage to be occasionally amusing even if it isn't gut busting (it's not on the level of Aardman). Perhaps the subtlest gag is that fantasy actor Warwick Davis is not playing an elf (but does get to dress up as one) while the most overt is that the Reindeer communicate by breaking wind.
Interest does dissipate after a trip through a vortex to the North Pole and it's much more preferable when we are in home territory and perhaps it might have been more interesting to play it more ambiguously. As a Warner Bros. release, it's not entirely free of American influence - apart from the Father Christmas figure being referred to as Santa, at least two songs on the soundtrack are from Home Alone movies (Bobby Helms's 'Jingle Bell Rock' and The Drifter's 'White Christmas'). There is also a distracting moment in which a scene in a car which evidently suggests that the HD video had not been put through the "filmising" process. It might not merit repeat viewing and if it did attain some sort of cult-ish following, it could in the company of Santa Claus Conquers The Martians (1964) and Jingle All The Way (1996).
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