Not A Review: The Santa Clause 2

Welcome back to another award-eligible edition of “Not A Review”, where I use words to discuss a movie, but refrain from reviewing it. I would also use pictures and numbers as a means to convey my thoughts, but this isn’t an EQAO test.

If you had “EQAO Joke” on your Captain’s Speech bingo card, feel free to cross it off.

By the way, that was a joke that only four of you will understand. So, yeah, we’re off to a flying start.

Speaking of flying! Santa! Boom, transition.

The other night, The Santa Clause was on TV. And then The Santa Clause 2 came on. And then The Santa Clause 3 followed. It was a Ho-Ho-Ho of Christmas movies, if you will.

In the first movie, Santa Claus falls off Tim Allen’s roof and disappears into the night like a raccoon. However, the Santa suit remains on Tim’s front lawn with instructions that if anything were to happen to him, put on the suit, and the reindeer will know what to do.

Because when a man falls off your roof, you put on his clothes.

Tim Allen puts on the suit and becomes Santa Claus. His son is thrilled, while his ex-wife and her new husband, Neil, are like, “You can’t be Santa Claus, you’re Scott Calvin. You need help.”

The first movie was made in 1994 when Tim Allen was the star of Home Improvement, which might be the most 90s show there was, though Freaks & Geeks gave it a run for its money in 1999.

BY THE WAY, Tim Allen isn’t his real name. I’ll let you stumble upon the truth on Wikipedia and then you can come back and we can huddle together and say things like, “It’s gonna be okay” when it’s NOT GONNA BE OKAY because everything is a LIE. Is nothing sacred anymore!?

Now that you’re a mess of emotions all caught up, I can discuss The Santa Clause 2 because although I really like the original, the second movie gives me more content for jokes.

It took them until 2002 – eight years – to finally come out with The Santa Clause 2, which tells me the movie industry wasn’t leaning on sequels like a crutch, yet. Yeah, I said it.

The movie starts off and everything is all fine and dandy. Christmas is coming, Tim Allen has full immersed himself into the Santa Claus lifestyle, and Bernard the Elf doesn’t really look much older even though eight years have passed.

But ho-ho-hold on, trouble is brewing when Bernard and other elf, Curtis, tell Tim Allen there was a clause they overlooked when he first became Santa.

THE MRS. CLAUSE.

Oh, the punification. Punification is a word, trust me, I’m basically a pictionary. Or is it dictionary?

So, Tim freaks out that he has to get married. The deadline to do so is Christmas Eve, or else he can no longer be Santa Claus and millions of children will wake up without gifts.

It’s the classic, “Do this, or there will be severe consequences” movie plot.

Tim’s window to find a wife is tighter than the filming schedule of The Bachelor, so he rules out going on the show as an option. Instead, he returns back to his hometown to find a single lady who will accept a proposal within a few weeks.

Both those sentences are ridiculous, but one of them is true because FICTION.

Tim Tool Time Allen (if you don’t get the reference, I can’t help you) also finds out that his son, Charlie, is on the naughty list this year and was caught vandalizing school property by Principal Newman.

Classic case of child actor gone wild in their teenage years.

Since Charlie is now a 16-year-old bad apple, he can no longer fulfill the role of “cute innocent kid”. That role now goes to his little sister, Lucy.

Lucy is the daughter of Tim’s ex-wife and her husband, Neil. She is quite hip to the hop for a 6-year-old and is slowly figuring out that Uncle Tim is Santa Claus, but can’t confirm it with multiple sources. #JournalisticIntegrity

The main giveaway is that Uncle Tim has A REINDEER LIVING IN HIS BACKYARD. It’s Comet. He’s really gassy, which now makes sense because the internet tells me that comets release gas via a process called outgassing.

The more you know.

Tim Allen meets with the principal to fulfill his Dad Duties and we’re introduced to pretty much the only female character who will get enough screen time throughout the movie to even be considered a viable option to become Mrs. Claus – Principal Carol Newman.

Newman comes off as a strict principal, but like any wrestling heel, a face turn is eventually coming.

Back at the North Pole, Bernard and Curtis have created a Fake Santa, so the elves don’t know that Christmas might be cancelled if Tim can’t get someone to marry him within a few weeks.

Fake Santa is basically the Travelocity Gnome on steroids and though he starts out with good intentions, he quickly turns into Bad Santa and drafts toy soldiers into his army to help overrun the North Pole and hand out coal to children on Christmas.

Down in the mortal world, Tim and Principal Carol Newman are getting to know each other and this basically turns into an episode of Married At First Sight. He accompanies her in a horse-drawn sleigh to the faculty Christmas party and learns that her parents forced her to stop believing in Santa when she was a kid.

Well if this isn’t a prime opportunity for Tim to restore her faith in Santa Claus.

I should mention, Tim is going through the de-Santafication process. And you thought I made up words. He’s been slowly losing his beard, belly, and magical powers. This really helps the viewer gauge how much time is left in the film.

At the Christmas Party, Tim uses his magic to get everyone their dream Christmas present. He gets Carol the doll she just told him about in the sleigh.

Now she’s starting to question the logistics of this. How did he buy all these gifts? When did he wrap them? There wasn’t enough time! And then Tim makes mistletoe magically appear above them, instead of just saying, “Haven’t you seen Harry Potter? I’m a wizard.”

She would’ve understood that, but no. He tells her he’s Santa, she gets mad, and kicks him out.

Meanwhile, we find out that Charlie has been acting out because the kids at school brag about their dads being plumbers and pilots, whereas Charlie can’t one-up them and say his dad is Santa Claus.

Alright, how often are these kids bragging that their dads know how to fix a leaky faucet? How often are they telling Charlie that their dad flew a plane to Idaho? It has to be at least three times a week, right?

I mean, it’s gotta be so frequent that Charlie gets to the point where he turns to vandalizing school property as a means to express his anger. Right?

Thankfully, his little sister Lucy talks some sense into him and within seconds, he’s no longer mad at his dad for wanting to get married to the first single woman he finds.

By now, Tim is aware that Fake Santa is on a rampage.

Charlie ambushes Carol at her house, while she’s cleaning snow off her car. He shows her his magic snow globe and that convinces her Tim Allen is Santa Claus. That’s all it took?

In need of transportation back to the North Pole, Tim lures the Tooth Fairy to his house by tying a string to his tooth and flinging himself over the railing. As he’s falling, you can clearly see it’s a stunt double.

On the back of the Tooth Fairy, Tim returns to the North Pole. Charlie and Carol soon follow, as Charlie also pulled out a tooth. It should be noted that neither Charlie, nor his father, had gauze in their mouth to stop the bleeding from a missing tooth. They were immediately fine.

So now it’s the final standoff between Tim and his elves and Fake Santa and his army of toy soldiers.

Two years later, Eminem came out with a song called, “Like Toy Soldiers”. I tell myself this movie inspired that song.

Fake Santa flies away with the reindeer, but have no fear! Chet is here! Who’s Chet? He’s a reindeer in training and flies through the sky about as well as a four-year-old steering a bumper car.

Chet’s voice also sounds like one of the Rugrat characters is controlling his voice box, so there’s that.

Tim Allen has no choice, he must take Chet and fly after Fake Santa. Eventually, Fake Santa is defeated and Christmas is saved.

Tim returns to the North Pole and tells Carol that if she doesn’t marry him right now, millions of children won’t get gifts tomorrow and they will be forced to no longer believe in Santa Claus, JUST LIKE HER WHEN SHE WAS A CHILD.

This is some really layered story-telling, just to coerce a woman into marrying Santa.

She asks if the North Pole has a school because her main concern is being able to still affect the youth of today. Tim says there is and she’s like, let’s get married!

It’s all very anti-2019.

The movie ends with Lucy finding out that her uncle is Santa Claus. When she pouts that she won’t be able to tell anyone, Charlie tells her it’s not a burden to know her uncle is Santa, it’s a gift.

Well doesn’t that just pull at the cheese strings. I’m not convinced Charlie has thrown out his spray cans, but the movie wants us to believe that he is no longer an angry teenager, so that’s what we’ll believe.

The End.

What a ride that was.

Let me know your thoughts below! Have you seen this movie? Do you like The Santa Clause series? How are you coping knowing that Tim Allen isn’t his real name? Any requests for a future edition of Not A Review? I don’t know what else to ask.

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