The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause (DVD)

There once was a time when Disney actually respected the intelligence of their young audience. As The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause will attest, that time has clearly passed. This movie is so horrendous, so disgusting in its delivery of a shameless cash-in on a corporately directed "Christmas Spirit", that it's nearly impossible to review without digressing into an unintelligible angry rant. Alas, I will try.

Santa Clause 3 opens with a sequence involving a false-alarm regarding the impending birth of Santa's (Tim Allen, who clearly has no more dignity) child with his wife, Carol. The scene, consisting of a group of elf doctors and a sassy head elf named Curtis that "wittily" tries to quote Jerry Maguire, epitomizes all that is wrong with the movie. It is nothing but infantile humor that is far below any child that might happen to watch this, and outdated pop culture references for their parents. Unfortunately, the movie gets even worse from there.

Santa is quickly whisked away to a meeting of the Christmas Council, and we are informed of the malevolent intentions of Jack Frost (Martin Short, clearly off his meds), an unbelievably flamboyant individual who resembles a dirty old man and wants to usurp Santa's authority and create his own holiday. After Santa is done repressing the proletariat, teaching Mr. Frost a valuable lesson about respecting his authority, the rest of the movie's excruciatingly long 92 minute run-time is devoted to Jack Frost's attempts to steal Santa's power and several tried and not true sitcom style clichés, most notably of which, is about Santa bringing his in-laws to the North Pole. The truly sad thing about this sub-plot, however, is that Santa's father-in-law is played by Alan Arkin, who is usually so damn good. I was one of those people who loved his role as the heroin-addicted grandfather in Little Miss Sunshine, and I found it disheartening to see him play a clumsy, kind old man, as opposed to one who tells his grandson to "fuck a lot of women". That kind of disappointment is par for the course throughout The Santa Clause 3. Whenever you think it has reached its nadir, it gets worse, which is an accomplishment in itself. Whether it be unfunny stereotypes, flatulent reindeer, or the "Elfland Security Act" (Santa is a fascist!), Santa Clause 3 never falls short of ways to disappoint.

In terms of the DVD, it has a fair amount of special features, but due to the actual movie, they are all to no avail. While the types of features on the disc would have been great with this year's releases of genuinely good movies that did not get the care they deserved, in the context of The Santa Clause 3, no one will care to watch them. Kids who get this DVD will not be able to sit through director Michael Lenbeck's commentary or the featurettes, and parents will not want to. The only feature that is even remotely fun is the "Christmas Carol-oke", but watching a child struggle to sing is just not as fun as watching your friends and family fail at real karaoke.

As cute as it may seem to a family looking for a way to get into the Christmas Spirit, The Santa Clause 3 is a movie to be avoided. It is a crass, vulgar (literally, not figuratively) attempt at humor that will leave a bitter taste in your mouth, and quite possibly make you lose faith in the numerous joys that the holiday season can bring. To genuinely get ready for Christmas I would recommend tracking down any of the Charlie Brown Christmas specials or even Die Hard. Anything is better than this.