Next morning, the day after the Capitol riots, I feel depressed. What’s going on with humanity? The world doesn’t feel quite right today, so I’m glad for some delightful escapist fantasy nonsense with 2011's Annie Claus is Coming to Town . It’s journeyman director Kevin Connor (Motel Hell) again, bringing us the colourful tale of Santa’s grown-up daughter Annie taking her first trip away from the North Pole in search of love and adventure in balmy California. Maria Thayer is brilliantly game as Annie, St Nick’s spunky but naïve offspring, who takes a ‘season off’ before deciding if she wants to take over dad’s toymaking enterprise, sort of like the Amish tradition of Rumspringa. However, Santa’s conniving ‘head elf’ wants the top job for himself, so employs an oafish but handsome actor named Dean (Ryan Bittle) to woo her away.
It's a blatant Elf rip-off, with the naïve and slightly mental North Pole fish-out-of-water having fun and charming everyone in the big city, but has ample original ideas and personality of its own to just about get away with it.
It's more of a spectacular production from Hallmark than I’ve seen so far, with clearly a lot of effort put into creating Santa’s workshop. It does bother me, though, that the elves don’t have pointy ears and there’s not a lot of consistency in the way they look. You’ve got a few dwarves in there, a few regular sized people, all in costumes. It’s an odd bugbear, I admit, but these things matter.
Still, this is a fun little movie and Thayer is wonderful, conveying just the right sense of childlike wonder, even if her lines are never as hilarious as Will Ferrell’s demented Elf ad-libs. Annie’s mega-enthusiastic about all things yuletide, going gaga over hot chocolate, decorations, Christmas pageants and the like, but without ever going totally Ferrell loud, shouty bonkers. Just the right amount of restraint.
Samuel Page plays Ted, the obligatory love interest, a toy store boss who needs some Christmas magic to warm his heart. It’s enjoyable that this one features a love triangle, keeping things interesting, with Bittle’s initially charismatic Dean revealed as a despicable dirtbag douche who thinks nothing of hiring orphans to help make him look awesome.
Thayer’s committed performance makes this silliness work and, like the film itself, she’s corny but irresistible. The movie crams a whole load of Christmassy stuff in there, from caroling to decorating to ice-skating, with plenty of cookies, toys, cute kids and oodles of hot cocoa, making for a thoroughly gratifying, comforting watch.
Wow. It’s dark, grey and miserable outside and the world may be on the verge of ending, but Annie Claus… for all its faults, has brightened my day. I find myself genuinely devastated for Annie when Dean betrays her, shouting “You bastard!” at the screen and I’m overjoyed when it all works out fine. This may be derivative tosh, but there’s definitely something magical here.
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