It’s cold up north, around the storyline
In the art of writing, there are so many little things that you have to remember that sometimes things turn bad when you forget. In the movie The Santa Claus 3: The Escape Clause for example, you have to remember rhythm. It’s so darn important to remember rhythm. When you forget it, things go wrong.
Santa (Tim Allen) is back for a third time and this time Mrs. Claus is a bit pregnant (okay, she’s completely pregnant) and the baby is due right around Christmas, which poses a ‘timing’ issue. When Santa is swamped and juggling personal and work life, he gets the ‘shaft’ from Jack Frost (Martin Short) who is feeling a bit underappreciated (he has no holiday of his own). When Frost takes Santa’s place, Santa finds himself back as Scott, thanks to an escape clause. Going back to the beginning of the moment where Scott became Santa, Scott must figure out how to get Frost to perform the escape clause so that he can reclaim his role as Santa.
Sounds like a fun movie, right? It is until you see the gigantic amount of time it takes to put together the set-up, the small amount of time it takes for the conflict to ensue and the small amount of time it takes to clean it all up. It’s a very unbalanced story that makes you feel bad for Tim Allen for giving it his all. Add to this that Martin Short plays Martin Short in this movie, which makes Jack Frost a really ineffective villain, and you’ve got yourself a very lackluster film. Not to say that this couldn’t have been good, it could have been real good, but it simply wasn’t. Too many characters, too many stories, not enough rhythm in them at all.
The good part about this film is that most kids will love it. My kids adored it, so that’s a plus
I’m hoping their tastes will improve later in life.
HD me, in a Blu-ray way
The presentation of the film in HD is pretty nice. The blacks and whites of the film really stand out in HD and since there is nothing but snow and dark colors, your eyes will have an HD feast. Blu-ray is gorgeous, there is no denying that. I think this type of film fits perfectly with the reason why someone should go the extra mile and take the Blu-ray plunge. Simply put, it’s the next gorgeous step in home entertainment and it shows in this one.
As for the features, I was actually impressed with what this Blu-ray brought to the house. My favorite portion of it was a tie. The first was the gag reel, which my daughters actually laughed at (they usually don’t laugh at anything like this, but Martin Short apparently amuses them in a childish way – I mean that respectfully). The second feature I really liked is the way you can turn the menus off and just have a christmas background for your television. It’s a neat concept for a Blu-ray and/or for any DVD. I’m glad they put it in there, it made me holiday-ready inside.
Final Thought
I don’t hate Martin Short, in fact I adore him. I think he’s funny and witty. But, I think he doesn’t make a very good villain and can’t really say I know why he chose to do this film. His lack of villain talent could be from the lack of storytelling or the lack of directing or even the lack of editing skills. Regardless, the movie wasn’t good, even in Blu-ray. It looked pretty, it had nice extras, but that’s really about it. It certainly wasn’t as good as the first or even the second.