Thank goodness for Youtube and mobile data today, as everything is packed away. In a daze, in between last minute checks and waiting for the bloody removal truck to show up, I manage to squeeze in a viewing of 1999’s oddity Must Be Santa, though I’m worried I’m not really giving this one my full attention. The plot feels awfully familiar, with an ageing Santa’s helpers searching for his replacement and , due to a comical case of mistaken identity, trying to convince an ex-con that he’s the man for the job.
Kudos to the filmmakers for doing a film with a black Santa and not making a big deal out of it but this one is still a confusing, unfunny mess, albeit one with a seemingly sizable budget and decent effects. The tone of the whole thing just feels so decidedly off, as we start with a curmudgeonly old Santa suffering a near-fatal heart attack (ho ho ho!) after being frightened by a small child in a terrifying reindeer mask. I’ve been surprised by just how many of these films think nothing of presenting Santa as a frail mortal who could die any second. It’s messed up.
Aware Santa’s number could soon be up, the North Pole’s C.E.O. Tuttle (Dabney Coleman) sends angel Natalie (Deanna Milligan) to sort out a replacement. However, there’s a mix-up at the mall and Santa accidentally bestows all his heavenly Christmassy power to the wrong dude, Arnold Pinnock’s shirtless, desperate African-American shoplifter Floyd. This leads to a very peculiar spin on the Santa Clause formula, with another reluctant, morally suspect guy having to don the beard and find a way to rescue the spirit of the season and so on.
Pinnock is a weird choice for the lead as he doesn’t have a whole lot of screen presence and talks in an odd high register that reminds me of Michael Jackson. His Santa is also hard to root for as he’s not just a thief but an escaped convict on the run following an arson-related insurance scam. He was doing it all for his kid but still, this is probably a tough concept to try to explain to younger viewers. Milliagan, who was also in Karroll’s Christmas is enjoyably pleasant as the angel teaching Floyd the tricks of the trade, though when the script calls for her to suddenly fall in love with this shifty weirdo, it’s not at all convincing.
Coleman phones it in as the exasperated North Pole head honcho, while Joe Flaherty, for reasons I still don’t comprehend, keeps popping up on TV screens as his SCTV vampire character ‘Count Floyd’. I’m not sure if it’s just down to my stress-frazzled brain today but I truly have no idea what’s meant to be going on there or why there’s a vampire in this. It’s a real curiosity of a film but it’s probably best left forgotten.
Comments