At last, it’s December and I can get away with watching this stuff without attracting any funny looks. Decorations are going up on all the houses and it's all definitely, positively beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Hurrah! On the day we open the first door on our advent calendars, we come to the most recent version of Miracle on 34th Street, the 1994 incarnation directed by Les Mayfield.
This one takes original writer George Seaton’s 1947 script and adds a few bells and whistles courtesy of that man John Hughes, who tinkers with the tale just enough to update it for the ‘90s. Again, like the 1973 TV version, the film is perfectly pleasant and beguiling but it’s hard not to compare it to the original which still feels eminently superior.If I hadn’t seen a few of the earlier versions, I’d probably like this one a lot more. That’s the trouble with remakes - they need a valid reason to exist, other than to make lots of money off parents who’ve run out of ideas during the school holidays.
Richard Attenborough is decent, if slightly creepy to me as Kris Kringle, the man who swears he’s the real Santa and who coincidentally nabs the job as Father Christmas in the “Cole’s” (here replacing Macey’s who wanted nothing to do with the film) Thanksgiving Parade and then at their store. His new boss is Elizabeth Perkins as pleasant but sceptical mom Dorey whose faith in miracles has been dented ever since the departure of her ex-husband. Dorey instilled in her precocious daughter Susan (Mara Wilson) that - ooh-er - Santa most definitely does not exist. Wilson, it needs to be said, is superb here and quite rightly became a huge child star afterwards. The performance is potent with this cute, intelligent child easily holding her own against qualified thesp Attenborough and is probably the main factor that makes this retread worth seeing.
I’m pleased that this one puts less focus on the controversy surrounding Kringle’s questionable mental health, with the whole psychiatrist subplot eliminated completely. Instead, this time Kringle is stitched up by the sneaky owners of a rival store who provoke him into very publicly lashing out and twatting the boozy, grumpy Santa impersonator he replaced in the first place. This quickly leads into the whole courtroom sequence, with not just Kringle, but the whole of America’s faith in Christmas put on trial.
I still have many issues with this tale, making a man with likely very serious mental health issues its hero and using ‘Christmas magic’ as an excuse for the guy not being able to control his violent rages. I think we can all feel sorry for a troubled old man being locked up in a cell but I still don’t think he can be excused for lashing out and hitting someone. Just my opinion.
Curiously, this version leaves out the bit where the U.S. Postal Service gets involved, downsizing this plot element to some dull business about the wording on a one dollar bill that just doesn’t carry the same emotional heft. Getting Santa’s reindeer into the courtroom is a nice touch though. The prosecution argues that if Santa’s real, the reindeer will fly but - d’oh! - Santa explains very casually that they only fly on Christmas Eve, teehee.
Attenborough is good as Kringle but, for me, his turn still pales in comparison to Edmund Gwenn’s Oscar Winning 1947 performance. J.T. Walsh (the bad guy in everything), naturally makes a brilliant, hateable prosecutor trying to put Santa away - the guy was just so good at playing assholes. Walsh even has me bubbling a bit at the end when, case over, he chats to Kringle man-to-man to make sure there’s no hard feelings and to check he’ll still be coming to his house this year. That’s the good stuff. Little moments like that definitely give this film a reason to exist though the original will always be top of my Miracle list.
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