Hats off to the maniac that thought up 2014’s cute-kittens-save-Christmas flick Santa Claws. Much like with Santa Buddies, it seems like someone eager to make a quick buck asked “how can we make a festive movie with adorable kittens in it"? and someone said “hey, will this do”? And so we end up with this zany tale from director Glenn Miller, stalwart of infamous studio The Asylum, notorious for producing cheapie ‘mockbusters’ that often use titles and scripts litigiously similar to those of current blockbusters (see Transmorphers, Lord of the Elves, Snakes on a Train) in order to lure in naive customers. I’m not sure whether this tale of kittens rescuing Christmas because of Santa’s allergies is a rip-off of anything in particular, but the DVD certainly features impressive cover art that belies the quality of the movie that lurks within.
The set-up is bonkers, but compelling in its willful oddness. Weird kid Tommy (Ezra James Colbert) leaves a box of unwanted kittens out for Santa on Christmas Eve, in the hope he’ll take them away to the North Pole. His borderline demonic mum (Nicola Lambo) hates cats because she apparently got bullied as a child because Santa was allergic to her cat, sneezed and broke all the presents, then when she told people they laughed. Naturally both cats and Christmas are to blame, so her son is scolded for even mentioning the holidays. That’s dodgy enough in itself, but then things get crazy when Santa visits and it turns out he’s allergic to pretty much everything and is a totally careless liability.
I guarantee you’ve never seen a film where Santa’s hands swell up after eating peanut butter cookies then he has to be saved by his obscenely large and scary epi-pen, in a scene surely inspired by Pulp Fiction. It's the stuff of nightmares but funny in a WTF? way. This sort of stuff could quite reasonably scar kids for life.
This movie is messed up but I admire the originality and ballsiness of its ideas, if the execution is a little shoddy. About 10 minutes in I realise I’m enjoying this infinitely more than Santa Buddies, so it’s doing something right. The ‘talking kitty’ effects are a bit rough, but still more convincing than their Disney equivalent, so they get away with it.
So Santa sneezes himself into a life-threatening injury and the feisty felines take control of his handy ‘smart sleigh,’ with Santa’s reindeer strangely all too happy to leave him behind, potentially dead. Cute/naff hijinks ensue with the kitties delivering presents and causing a mild hullabaloo by knocking some stuff over. Meanwhile, back home Tommy teams up with eccentric nerd neighbour Marcus (Evan Boymel) who just happens to be a Santa-tracking enthusiast and who fancies Tommy’s mom. They try to nurse Santa back to health, as if the presents don’t get delivered by dawn, the world is doomed or something. Despite the tight deadline, this seems to take an age, involving a lot of mucking about with milk and cookies and stuff.
This is a film made by people who understand that the cuteness of kittens can really cover up a lot of shortcomings. The film sags badly whenever the kitties aren’t onscreen, but they clearly could only afford a limited amount of effects shots. I’m realising that with Christmas movies we are often ready to overlook and forgive a lot of things, as long as the film delivers sufficient warmth and good cheer. Amazingly, Santa Claws gets the job done though I’m struggling to fully comprehend why I enjoyed it. This is the sort of film where a man can be woken by the sound of a kitten mewing, but not by someone shouting. Where Santa, a man allergic to all pets, somehow has managed to last hundreds of years without something like this happening. Where Santa repeatedly warns his magic won’t work after sunrise, but then flies off into the sky right after – you guessed it – sunrise. It’s dumb, but it's also cute and, with a crafty wink, lets you know it doesn’t give a damn what you think. You got a problem with that? Look - Kittens! Aaawwww….
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