Time for something seriously different with 2010’s The Santa Incident, director Yelena Lanskaya’s high concept but terribly executed tale of Santa (James Cosmo) being shot down by a fighter jet when his sleigh is mistaken for a UFO. Stranded in a small town and being tracked by the Feds, with the help of two cute kids, jolly old St Nick has to make Christmas happen without the resources of his North Pole workshop. You know how it is.
It's a cool idea, but hampered by an obviously tiny budget, shoddy effects and a dreary, un-Christmassy location. They shot this in Ireland and must’ve picked the greyest, rainiest week of the year to shoot. Everything just looks dull and awful. This also explains a lot of dodgy ‘American’ accents and some of the most ‘Oirish’ sounding elves you’ve ever heard.
It's really different from everything else I’ve seen so far, but that’s not necessarily a good thing. For starters, it’s the first one to open with some children stumbling across what they assume is a dead body about to be dismembered by a crane. It’s also the first film I’ve seen to feature a goofy, bumbling, paranoid FBI agent (Ally McBeal’s Greg Germann), convinced Santa is actually an alien and out to settle an old score 'cos Santa made him look silly one time. The film affords loads of time to him and his fellow dim-witted agent Cunningham (Sean McConaghy) squabbling and prat-falling, but it’s mostly painfully unfunny and cringey.
Cosmo makes a good go of doing an American accent and makes for a loveable, if scabby-looking Father Christmas. Problem is, he's stuck in a lazily scripted, poorly conceived film. The kids go and visit the injured homeless guy they think is Santa in the hospital and, for reasons that remain unclear, their mother (Ione Skye) decides it’s totally cool for this mysterious, possibly insane old dude to come live with them. It’s bizarre.
Santa uses his super-speed to set up a makeshift workshop, which everyone acts like is the most awe-inspiring sight they’ve ever seen, but is actually colourless and crap, amounting to nothing more than a few decorations flung into someone’s dank garage.
Also, what is it in films with Santa and his helpers always making crappy wooden toys that no modern child would actually want? Like, does anyone ask Santa for wooden dolls and wind-up robots anymore? Just an observation.
The naffness continues with the arrival of Santa’s elves on the hunt for their missing master. Looking like some local kids they must’ve hired off the street, the elves have a secret weapon – a super-smart ‘tracking robot,’ that’s really just a flimsy Robosapien toy that sort of flails about a bit and mumbles “tracking…tracking…” It’s rubbish.
It's all so ugly and soulless, the opposite of what I’ve come to expect from Hallmark. This does not make me feel happy in the way a ‘Christmas’ film should. Any laughter I have is ironic, giggling at the awfulness of it all. I’m relieved when it’s over, but also strangely glad to know that not all Hallmark movies are predictable mushy romance tales.
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