Film Reviews & Movie Analysis

Christmas Bells Jingled: 🔔 🔔 🔔 🔔 🔔

The Christmas Chronicles: After finding proof on existence on an old camcorder tape, left alone on Christmas Eve, siblings Kate (Darby Camp) and Teddy (Judah Lewis) stay up to catch Santa (Kurt Russell). Unfortunately as soon as they find what they’re looking for, everything goes terribly wrong.

It had me at “that dude looks like Jeff Bridges and he’s playing Santa”… it really had me at produced by Chris Columbus – director of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, Chamber of Secrets and Home Alone.

You definitely sensed similar aesthetics to the likes of the above mentioned movies and in that it held a nice comfort.

This movie was all the best parts of those classic childhood Christmas movies we all know and love. It had traps, hi-jinks, siblings at each others throats, corralling, a ticking clock and a different viewpoint into the wonders of Santa.

The magic was both subtle and believable – a Mary Poppins style sack? Sure. Pulling gifts out of thin air? Okay. A halo jumping slam dunking Santa? Why not.

One of my favourite aspects of this representation of Santa Clause, was the way he knew the adults too. He remembered what they wanted most as they were growing up, and he even knew what they wanted at present even though they’d stopped believing.

I appreciated that the movie did have a few serious and thoughtful elements to it, and a subtle moral thrown in for good measure. It’s funny that this is essentially a family movie and yet me at my big age was sat laughing, and gasping at all the right moments, for once not mad at the younger cast. Darby Camp (Big Little Lies) was ballsy, lovable and had a good head on her shoulders – exactly what I expect from all children in on screen… and life.

This is one those if you know you know things, but it was a low key “Russell/Hudson Family movie” – if they had gotten Kate for a cameo then it would have been a full set.

Seriously; there isn’t much not to love about this movie. It was fun and it was festive and frankly Kurt Russell officially rivals Tim Allen for my favourite Santa.