Cancel Christmas from 2010 is another film that demonstrates that Hallmark is a haven for once fleetingly popular actors looking to keep their careers alive. This substandard effort from director John Bradshaw features one-time heartthrob Judd Nelson, who must have been wondering where the hell it all went wrong.
Nelson stars as Santa, who discovers that Christmas is in danger of being cancelled by ‘The Board,’ because modern kids are too darned spoiled and greedy. To save the season, he goes undercover as a school janitor to teach two kids the importance of charity. He’s joined on this mission by his campy elf compadre Randal (Justin Landry), who is one of the most gratingly irritating characters I’ve ever encountered. Seriously, I know Santa’s helpers are supposed to be jolly, but this grinning goon takes any opportunity to laugh shrilly and manically like a demented ghost train clown. He is super pantomime camp dialled up to eleven and really gets under my skin.
Nelson never seems like his heart is in it and makes for an unusually flat, depressing Santa. Even his ‘ho ho hos’ sound a little off.
The movie has a sweet message, but is horribly executed. The production’s miniscule budget is clear to see in scenes like Santa’s meeting with ‘The Board,’ that takes place between him and one other person in a gloomy, deserted hallway. I’ll bet this wasn’t what was in the script.
Lots of it is nonsensical, like where Santa is being interviewed for the janitor’s job, during which it is established that there is no job to interview for. So how did he get an interview? It makes me sad and hurts my brain. Then he somehow gets the job anyway and within minutes is invited to live in the house of kind-hearted teacher Natalie (Jeannie Claymore). She also just happens to have a disabled kid and her husband died in a car crash, ticking a few of the requisite boxes for this sort of fare.
It turns out that one of the naughty boys Santa is here to convert (Connor Price) also recently lost his mum and that’s why he’s turned into a tearaway bully knobhead. There are uncomfortable tonal shifts where the kid watches taped video messages from his dead mum that are heart-breaking and jarring. These sad, emotional scenes feel out of place in an otherwise silly, supposedly funny film. Also, what is the deal with so many kids having dead parents in Christmas movies? It’s crazy.
Anyway, Santa doesn’t do much, just gives a few pep talks, encouraging all the kids in school to buy the disabled boy an amazing futuristic wheelchair. Oh, and there’s a bizarre subplot where he moonlights as a department store Santa, for reasons not too clear. He uses his undefined magic to alter his race, skin colour and language to match the child on his knee, which is seriously weird. Then the whole world decides that, due to this insane shape-shifting, he must be the real Santa, which, of course, he is.
I can’t argue with the film’s moral - giving is better than receiving – but this is hard work to sit through. It’s a potentially moving film about learning to live with grief, but squanders any gravitas it might have had by trying and failing horribly to be funny. Avoid.
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