The Santa Clauses Episode 1 and 2 Review
Yesterday we got the two episode premiere of The Santa Clauses, the sequel series to the Tim Allen trilogy of Santa Clause movies. So how are the first two episodes? Are they worthy of the original? Or is it a missed opportunity?
The Good:
Like the best thing about the The Santa Clause trilogy, the best thing about these episodes is Tim Allen as Santa Claus. Where he’s just so much fun as this lively personality that gets a bunch of jokes. Sure, Tim Allen might be a weird guy in real life but he is very funny. He has a great sense of humor about it, and he knows how to apply that sense of humor to this show. The original movie, The Santa Clause is a great Christmas movie for a number of different reasons. But the glue holding that movie, and the trilogy together is Tim Allen. And I feel like that would be the same positive for this show.
Along those same lines, the supporting cast here is fun. You get Elizabeth Mitchell returning as Mrs. Claus and her dynamic with Tim Allen is just a lot of fun. Because Santa is a more goofy character while Mrs. Claus is more serious and strict. And those two personalities play off of one another really well in these first couple of episodes. Then you get Kal Penn joining the franchise, and he’s just a lot of fun in projects. Once again, he does have a sense of humor about him and I find it funny. And I liked the character, I think there is an interesting idea that they set-up with this character. I'm excited to see where it goes in the next four episodes of the show.
Finally, I just appreciated that the episodes don’t overstay their welcome. Each episode is about 33 minutes long with about 5 minute credits. So each episode is under 30 minutes in length, and that’s a good length for these episodes. With Andor and some of these other tv shows they are like 45-50 minutes long, so it’s nice that every show that Disney puts out has to be 45-50 minutes long.
The Bad:
And when it comes to these episodes, they were very flawed. I was kind of excited for this show, because The Santa Clause is one of the definitive Christmas movies for me. So getting another adventure with Tim Allen as Santa Clause got me excited. But these episodes didn’t fully work for me. And the big thing here is that I think they went modern with this show. What I mean by that is the humor and the way characters are designed feel to 2022. Obviously, all of the elves are kids and in the original movie they didn’t act like kids from 1994. They acted like elves, that were kids. Here they act like 2022 kids that are elves, so you get them saying a bunch of 2022 jokes and references. And they even drop Harry Styles’ name at one point in time, and when the humor was focused on being modern. I don’t think it worked all that well. I get that the target audience for this show are kids that are growing up in 2022, but that doesn’t mean that you have to try so hard to appeal to the modern generation.
Another thing here is that the elves themselves (that rhymes) I didn’t care for. They were very charming in the original movie, they were nice spice characters for that movie. This time around they give them more personality and more to do through-out the episode. And therefore, I just found them annoying. Especially Noel who is Santa’s elf sidekick person, I didn’t like him at all. He was very annoying on screen and written in a very weird fashion. Where he would learn information about Santa from another elf, that he’s not supposed to tell Santa. So what does he do? He goes and tells Santa, and it comes off charming and he’s just forgiven because he’s so naive. And I just didn’t think that worked, I really didn’t like that character.
Finally, it is a Disney production with a big budget to it. I don’t feel like the CGI and visuals were all that good. There’s a scene in episode 2 where Santa and his son, Cal are flying the sleigh in The North Pole. And in the background are the Northern Lights, and it’s so obvious that they were on a green screen. There’s no other way around it, when the show uses CGI it’s not that good.
Final Thoughts: In general, the first two episodes of The Santa Clauses were fine. It’s great to see Tim Allen back in the title role, he’s just as funny as ever. Kal Penn and his character are a nice addition to the show. But I think the magic was just lost in the mix. The show went for two parts with a modern sense of humor that didn't work for me. The elves weren’t that great of characters and the CGI was not good at points in time. So I’m interested enough to check out the rest of the show. But I don’t see this being one of the great tv shows of the year.
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