Sinterklaas, Belznickel, Père Noël, Kris Kringle, Old St Nick, Father Christmas. Call him what you will, everyone loves Santa Claus and the feeling of seasonal good cheer that he embodies. So, whether you're in the mood for a nostalgic wallow or a bit of millennial merriment, let Cinema Paradiso take you through the naughty and nice items on Santa's movie wishlist.
What can you do to keep excitement levels on the scale in the run-up to 25 December? Watch a film, of course. There are dozens of live-action and animated titles about Santa Claus to choose from and Cinema Paradiso has plenty to please children of all ages. So, whether you fancy getting misty-eyed over cute creatures discovering the true meaning of Christmas or are ready to chuckle at some humbugging humans being sugar-coated in the spirit of the season, why not read on?
And don't forget to check out our jam-packed articles about the 12 Days of Christmas Past and the 12 Days of Christmas Present.
Trouble At T'North Pole
It's almost a given that any movie set at the North Pole is going to centre on something going wrong at Santa's secret workshop. Take Jackie Cooper's The Night They Saved Christmas (1984), in which Claudia Baldwin (Jaclyn Smith) discovers that the oil company her husband Michael (Paul Le Mat) works for is threatening the village where Santa (Art Carney) lives with Mrs Claus (June Lockhart). David Huddleston is the one in peril in Jeannot Swarc's Santa Claus: The Movie (1985) after a disgruntled elf named Patch (Dudley Moore) has his head turned by crooked toy manufacturer, BZ (John Lithgow). All is not well, either, in Terry Hughes's Mrs Santa Claus (1996) because Santa (Charles Durning) has been taking his wife (Angela Lansbury) for granted. So, in order to show him how much he relies on her all year round, Mrs C heads to New York, where she finds lots of people in need of her seasonal magic.
Every year on 24 December, Granny Rose (Mary Tyler Moore) helps Santa (Neil Shee) get ready for his rounds. As Enzo D'Alò's How the Toys Saved Christmas (1996) begins, however, she is feeling under the weather and the toys are appalled to discover that Rose's replacement, Mr Grimm (Tony Randall), plans to sell them to the highest bidder before they can be delivered. Things are a little more peaceful in Glenn Hill's The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus (2000), which sees Robby Benson and Jim Cummings voice the child raised by Faire Folk, who discovers that his vocation is to spread joy around the world at Christmas.
Young and old alike know what happens when the oversized Buddy (Will Ferrell) realises he's a human and has to be separated from Santa (Edward Asner) in Jon Favreau's Elf (2004). But, while he's excited at landing a job in Gimbel's famous New York department store, Buddy is anything but impressed with the grotto Santa (Artie Lang). This witty picture has become a firm festive favourite, but have you seen Mark Caballero and Seamus Walsh's Elf: Buddy's Musical Christmas (2014), which sees Jim Parsons taking the title role opposite Edward Asner's Santa?
Tom Hanks has a busy time voicing six characters, as an unnamed boy makes some new friends and gets to meet Santa in person when he climbs aboard the eponymous engine in The Polar Express (2004), which was adapted by Robert Zemeckis from a much-loved Chris Van Allsburg book using the latest motion-capture technology. Two more wishes are granted in Harvey Frost's Single Santa Seeks Mrs Claus (2004), as a letter from Jake (Dominic Scott Kay) to Santa (John Wheeler) about his lonely mother proves just the thing the old man's son has been hoping for, as Nick (Steve Guttenberg) needs to find a wife before he can inherit the family business.
Another relative comes out of the woodwork in David Dobkin's Fred Claus (2007), as hissable Chicago repo man Fred (Vince Vaughn) drops in on Papa (Trevor Peacock) and Mama Claus (Kathy Bates) at the North Pole to discover that his saintly brother, Nick (Paul Giamatti), is facing the prospect of Christmas being shut down because it doesn't meet the exacting standards of sneering efficiency expert, Clyde Archibald Northcutt (Kevin Spacey).
Taking their inspiration from a popular video game, Dave Kim and Rex Piano's Elf Bowling the Movie (2007) is a decidedly left-field festive frolic that sees Santa Maria Clausewitz Kringle (Joe Alaskey) become a pirate in order to sail around the world to Fiji to rescue the elves kidnapped by his wicked brother, Dingle Kringle (Tom Kenny). The theme of the festive season becoming overly commercialised recurs in Douglas Barr's North Pole (2014), as Santa (Robert Wagner) and Mrs Claus (Jill St John) can barely recognise a home that used to be so magical. Luckily, help is at hand in the form of another young believer, Kevin (Max Charles), who is determined to restore the old traditions and the cherished spirit of Christmas.
Aspiring inventor Bernard D. Elf (Martin Freeman) keeps having to return to the drawing board in Leon Joosen and Aaron Seelman's Saving Santa (2013), as none of his brainwaves are sufficiently thought through. However, when Neville Baddington (Tim Curry), and his scheming mother, Vera (Joan Collins), abduct Santa (Tim Conway) in a bid to take over the North Pole, Bernard dusts down his patented time-travelling device.
Christmas Critters
This year marks the 80th birthday of one of Christmas's most iconic figures. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was created by Robert Lewis May for a 1939 advertising campaign at the Montgomery Ward department store. A decade later, singing cowboy Gene Autry (who features in Phillip Dye's documentary, Christmas From Hollywood, 2003) hit the top of the American hit parade with his recording of the Johnny Marks tune that is now sung the world over.
Fifty-five years have passed since US television audiences first saw Larry Roemer's Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964), which has been essential family viewing ever since. Cinema Paradiso users can also enter the magical realm of Christmas Tree Forest in the company of Sam the Snowman (Burl Ives), as he relates how Santa (Stan Francis) came to rely on Rudolph (Billie Richards) on the biggest night of the year. This lovely film was produced by Jules Bass and Arthur Rankin, Jr., who followed it up with another timeless gem, Frosty the Snowman (1969), which is narrated by Jimmy Durante and casts Paul Frees as Santa and Jackie Vernon as the snowman who comes alive when a little girl places an old silk top hat on his head. Rankin and Bass also recruited Fred Astaire to narrate Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town! (1970), which stars Mickey Rooney as Kris Kringle.
In William R. Kowalchuk's Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: The Movie (1998), Rudolph (Eric Pospisil) is ridiculed because of his bright red nose and runs away to the North Pole, where he is befriended by Slyly the Fox (Eric Idle) and Leonard the polar bear (Bob Newhart). However, when Zoey the doe (Myriam Sirois) is kidnapped by Stormella the ice queen (Whoopi Goldberg), Rudolph and his new pals have to help Santa (John Goodman) and Mrs Claus (Debbie Reynolds) rescue her. Such animated animals always up the 'Ahhh Factor' around the holidays and few will be able to resist the calf born on Christmas Day who longs to help Santa by flying like one of his reindeer in Roy Wilson's Annabelle's Wish (1997).
Equally eager to do her bit is the Jack Russell Terrier that teams up with a penguin in Steve Moore's Olive, the Other Reindeer (1999) in order to get the better of a grumpy postman who is tired of lugging his festive mailbag. In LeVar Burton's Blizzard (2003), things have become so strict at the North Pole around Santa (Christopher Plummer) that a young reindeer (voiced by Whoopi Goldberg) risks being thrown out of the magic village because of her friendship with aspiring 10 year-old skater, Zoe Warner. Another young reindeer named Niko needs to overcome his fear of heights so he can help pull Santa's sleigh in Michael Hegner and Kari Juusonen's The Flight Before Christmas (2008).
Narrated by James Earl Jones, Kamoon Song's Nine Dog Christmas (2003) reveals how Buzz the Elf (Scott Hamilton) trains homeless hounds Tank, QT, Snowplow, Frenchie, Cheech, Chester, Fetch, MacGregor and No-Name to replace the reindeer and help Santa (Pat Fraley) pull his sleigh. Spun off from the popular Air Bud franchise, Robert Vince's Santa Buddies (2009) sees Puppy Paws (Zachary Gordon) get into trouble with both his father, Santa Paws (Tom Bosley), and the man in the red suit himself (George Wendt), after causing chaos in the North Pole workshop. But the 10th film in the series takes us back in time to show how Santa (Richard Riehle) first befriended his faithful snow-white Great Pyrenees hound while teaching some children in New York about the lost Christmas spirit in the same director's prequel, The Search For Santa Paws (2010). He completed his trilogy with Santa Paws 2: The Santa Pups (2012), which sees the cute quartet of Hope, Jingle, Charity and Noble stowaway on the sleigh when Mrs Claus (Cheryl Ladd) leaves Santa (Pat Finn) at the North Pole while she pays a visit to Pineville.
In Edward Hightower's Santa's Dog (2011), Father Christmas (George Maguire) has entrusted his famous Naughty and Nice list to his faithful companion, Hercules. Each year, the Labrador selects a child to make a case for switching lists. But this proves easier said than done with mischief-prone 12 year-old Max Moogle (Anthony Robinson) when he arrives at the North Pole. Troubled teen Vincent Giovagnoli gets to learn that others have a much tougher life than he does when he is sent to work at an animal rescue shelter by his probation officer in Charlie Vaughn's 12 Dog Days Till Christmas (2014), which features Chuck Barrow as Santa.
The motto remains 'All for One and One for All' when thieves break in and steal the family's presents and Barkos, Wagos and Arfamis go in search of Santa (Richard Riehle) in order to ensure that no one goes without a gift in Jesse Baget's The Three Dogateers Save Christmas (2014). There are more canine capers in Joe Clarke's Merry Woofmas (aka Up on the Wooftop, 2015) as Toby (Adam Hicks) gets left behind by Santa (Dennis Haskins) during a trial sleigh run in the days before Christmas and he has to convince an Iowa family of his identity and expose the crimes of a crooked mall Santa and his evil elf sidekick before he can head home.
Eight year-old Charlie (Gavin Fink) emails Santa when he finds a gangly baby deer in the woods and becomes convinced that he's the son of one of the reindeer who pull the sleigh in Joshua Butler's Prancer Returns (2011). But what do you do when a talking moose crashes through the garage roof? Young Dutch boy Max (Dennis Reinsma) finds out when Santa (Derek de Lint) has a mishap during a trial flight in Lourens Blok's The Christmoose Story (2013) and his new friend helps Max cope with some school bullies.
When Father Christmas (John P. Fowler) develops an allergic reaction to a kittenish quartet in Glenn Miller's Santa Claws (2014), Patches, Mittens, Maisy and Hairball have to rise to the occasion and deliver a sleigh full of toys by themselves. The focus falls on Internet sensation Tartar Sauce (with the voice of Aubrey Plaza) when she meets 12 year-old Chrystal (Megan Charpentier) in Tim Hill's Grumpy Cat's Worst Christmas Ever (2014). Russell Peters turns up in a red suit, as the new friends go in search of the valuable Leonberger dog that has been kidnapped from the pet shop where Grumpy Cat lives.
What's in Store?
The department store Santa has featured in a number of films, with Kris Kringle being easily the most celebrated. He is played with an Oscar-winning twinkle by Edmund Gwenn in George Seaton's Miracle on 34th Street (1947). Novelties always go down well at Christmas, but so does the tried and trusted and Richard Attenborough followed in Gwenn's bootsteps in Les Mayfield's reworking of Miracle on 34th Street (1994), which saw Mara Wilson take over the role of the sceptical Susan Walker from Natalie Wood.
Nine year-old Peter Billingsley's faith is shaken in Bob Clark's A Christmas Story (1983) when the Santa at Higbee's Department Store in 1940s Indiana echoes parents Darren McGavin and Melinda Dillon in warning him of the dangers of owning a Red Ryder 200-shot Carbine Action Air Rifle.
Raising the tone, family matters complicate the issue in James Orr's Christmas in Wonderland (2007), which has Matthew Walker playing five roles, including Santa Claus and Kris Kringle, as three kids from Los Angeles move to Edmonton in Canada to stay with their dad and find a bag of counterfeit money in the shopping mall.
For Kids of All Ages
One of the enduring pleasures of the Christmas period is the family settling down to watch a film together and Cinema Paradiso has something to appeal to the biggest and smallest kids this year. Some stories seem destined to be made again and again, with a redemption tale by Theodore Geisel proving particularly popular with film-makers. Chuck Jones set the benchmark with his 1966 cartoon classic, Dr Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas, featuring the inimitable voice of Boris Karloff as the green grouch who disguises himself as Santa in a bid to prevent the residents of Whoville from having a happy holiday. Jim Carrey embodied the killjoy in Ron Howard's live-action retelling, The Grinch (2000), which boasted Anthony Hopkins as its narrator. Computer-generated 3D visuals were added to the mix in Scott Mosier and Yarrow Cheney's The Grinch (2018), which sees Benedict Cumberbatch assume the title role, alongside narrator Pharrell Williams.
Flights of fancy seem to go down well with festive audiences and few have acquired more of a cult following down the decades than Nicholas Webster's Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964), which saw Doris Rich make screen history by becoming cinema's first Mrs Claus, alongside John Call, who is taken to the Red Planet by Kimar (Leonard Hicks) to teach Martian kids how to have fun.
Disney also know how to sprinkle the festive magic dust in compilations like Jun Falkenstein and Alex Mann's Mickey's Once Upon a Christmas (1999), which sees Goofy and Max meet Santa (voiced by Jim Cummings) in the middle of three stories, with the other two centring on Mickey and Minnie Mouse and Donald Duck and his nephews, Huey, Dewey and Louie. Released five years later, Carole Holliday and Matthew O'Callaghan's Mickey's Twice Upon a Christmas has Chuck McCann pop up as Santa, as Donald gets grouchy over the holidays and Mickey and Pluto learn the meaning of friendship.
Drawing on two books by the legendary Raymond Briggs, Dave Unwin's Father Christmas (1991) sees Santa (Mel Smith) take a holiday to recover from the stresses of his annual delivery before returning to duty with a special visit to Buckingham Palace. Staying in the realm of Yuletide animation (albeit for a ghoulish twist on the traditional tale), Pumpkin King Jack Skellington assumes a Santa disguise after he learns all about the festive traditions after stumbling out of Halloween Town in Henry Selick's ingenious romp, The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993).
With 136 year-old Grandsanta (Bill Nighy) being too old and Malcolm (Jim Broadbent) being busy on his 70th mission, the youngest member of the Claus clan (James McAvoy) has to deliver a forgotten present in Sarah Smith's Arthur Christmas (2011) after it slips off the S-1 conveyor belt devised by Arthur's jobsworthy older brother, Steven (Hugh Laurie). Teamwork saves the day in David H. Brooks's Holidaze (2006), as Santa's Nice and Naughty O'Matic goes kaputt on Christmas Eve and Rusty the Reindeer has to forge an alliance with Albert the Thanksgiving Turkey, Candie the Easter Bunny, Mr C the Grouchy Cupid and Halloween teens Trick and Treat in order to keep a deserving kid off the wrong list. In Peter Ramsey's Rise of the Guardians (2012), Nicholas St North (Alec Baldwin) similarly joins forces with Jack Frost, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy and the Sandman to defend childhood from Pitch Black.
Jailbird Horace McNickle looks so much like Santa Claus that he's able to make a festive getaway in Alan Shapiro's The Christmas Star (1986). But, as this is a Disney story, he learns the error of his ways when siblings Billy and Trudy Jameson (Nikolas Van Burek and Vicki Wauchope) mistake him for the real thing when he arrives in their hometown to recover his hidden swag. New parents John Travolta and Kirstie Alley have to get used to chatty canines Rocks (Danny DeVito) and Daphne (Diane Keaton) after their son asks Santa for a pet in Tom Repelewski's Look Who's Talking Now (1993).
Tim Allen headlines three droll ways of holding the attention of restless tinies, as a rooftop accident sees him donning the famous red suit in John Pasquin's The Santa Clause (1994). Over the next 12 years, Allen would find himself a new wife in Michael Lembeck's The Santa Clause 2 (2002) and prevent Jack Frost from pinching Christmas in the same director's The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause (2006).
With Harry Connick, Jr. as the narrator, John Rice's The Happy Elf (2005) sees an elf named Eubie (Rob Paulsen) convince Santa (Mickey Rooney) to bring Christmas to the sad little town of Bluesville. Lawyer Elizabeth Gates (Shelley Long) has hated the holidays ever since her widowed father reinvented himself as Santa and embarrassed the life out of her. Now, in Tom McLoughlin's A Different Kind of Christmas (2006), she is faced with the case of Robert George (Bruce Kirby), who claims to be the real deal, even though his festive philanthropy had led to endless complaints from the humbugging townsfolk.
Having missed out on a Johnny Seven toy as a kid, Arnold Schwarzenegger is prepared to do whatever it takes to find a Turbo Man for son Jake Lloyd in Brian Levant's Jingle All the Way (1996). But even Arnie has his work cut out taking on a warehouse full of furious Kris Kringles, including hulk wrestler Paul Wight, who threatens to 'deck his halls' during an epically slapstick Santa smackdown. College student Jonathan Taylor Thomas gets stuck in the California desert in a Santa suit in Arlene Sanford's I'll Be Home For Christmas (1998), while William Dear's Santa Who? (2000) has Leslie Nielsen losing his memory after falling from his sleigh and relying on journalist Steven Eckholdt, who thinks he's stumbled across the scoop of the century.
Peter Werner's Call Me Claus (2001) marked the final screen appearance of Nigel Hawthorne, who plays Nick, who just happens to be the real Santa and who remembers an encounter in 1965 with a young girl he thought would make a perfect successor. However, Lucy Cullins (Whoopi Goldberg) has lost sight of the Christmas spirit and is now a harassed executive looking for a suitable Santa for the Shop-A-Lot Channel. More poignantly, a letter to Santa (Robert Clark) at the North Pole lets him know that a five year-old girl would be happy to receive the cheapest bicycle in the shop in Beth Brickell's involving Depression-era drama, Mr Christmas (2005).
Narrated by William Shatner, Greg Kiefer's Stalking Santa (2006) sees Santologist Dr Lloyd Darrow (Chris Clark) attempt to prove that Father Christmas (Ed Mangum) really does exist and his research takes him from Ancient Egypt to the scene of the Roswell UFO sighting before the clues lead him to a shopping mall in Polka City, Ohio. Trevor (Cory Doran) is similarly tired of hearing classmates deny the existence of Father Christmas (William Shatner). However, when he teams up with geeky twins Errol and Gabriel (Nathan Stephenson) to kidnap Old Nick, they unleash LeFreeze (Cal Dodd), an ice monster who believes that revenge is best served cold in Jin Choi II, Peter Lepeniotis and Jamie Waese's Gotta Catch Santa (2008).
The narration duties are undertaken by Jay Leno in Robert Zappia's Christmas Is Here Again (2007), which follows a young girl named Sophianna as she joins up with an elf, a fox, a reindeer and two polar bears on a quest to find a magic toy sack and return it to Santa (Andy Griffith). Christmas might have to be postponed in Yelena Lanskaya's The Santa Incident (2010) after Nick (James Cosmo) has his sleigh shot down over restricted air space. But 10 year-old Daniel (Scott Graham) and his younger sister, Sophia (Ally Lyons) vow to help him escape some pesky Homeland Security agents and take to the skies.
Two weeks before the festivities, Niklas Goodfellow (Alexander Scheer) is forced to flee in his caravan after Gerold Geronimus Goblynch (Volker Lechtenbrink) and his sinister Nutcrackers threaten to turn him into chocolate. However, as Oliver Dieckmann reveals in his lively adaptation of Cornelia Funke's novel, When Santa Fell to Earth (2011), Niklas crash lands on the doorstep of friends Ben (Noak Kraus) and Charlotte (Mercedes Jadea Diaz), who vow to help him regain control of the Grand Christmas Palace.
Santa (Peter Jason) uses a special snow globe to keep tabs on his daughter, Anna (Maria Thayer) when she takes her first trip away from the North Pole in Kevin Connor's Annie Claus Is Coming to Town (2011). But she proves a chip off the old block when she gets a job at Wonderland Toys and helps owner Ted (Sam Page) popularise his traditional gifts with kids obsessed with all things digital. The last place Father Christmas (Jim Broadbent) expected to find himself when he set out to test-drive his new sleigh was in a garden shed in London. But that's where he fetches up and, moreover, PC Finkerton (Ewen Bremner) wants to lock him up for dangerous driving and letting his reindeer run amuck. However, nine year-old Tom (Kit Connor) and his dad Steve (Rafe Spall) have other ideas in Christopher Smith's Get Santa (2014).
Penguin princesses Crystal (Hilary Duff) and her mardy sister Lucinda (Haylie Duff) have to try to get along in order to keep out of the clutches of hungry predators and some rascally pirates to prove the existence of Father Christmas (French Tickner) in William R. Kowalchuk's In Search of Santa (2004). Eight year-old Julius is a bit of a loner at the orphanage where he lives in Jacob Ley's animated saga, A Christmas Story (2016). He believes the principal's anecdote about Santa Claus delivering him to his new home when he was a boy. So, when the others dismiss it as nonsense, Julius sets out to discover the truth.
There's two for the price of one in Ken Feinberg's Santa's Boot Camp (2016), as Eric Roberts cameos as the mall Santa being pestered by the six unruly teens that the real Father Christmas (Doug Kaye) selects to be his new helpers when the elves go on strike because they are tired of ungrateful kids. They are presumably thinking of someone like Danny (Jack Brunault), who has stopped believing in festive magic in Tom DeNucci's Saving Christmas (2017). But he gets a surprise when his hairdresser mother, Elizabeth (Brooke Langton), gives the head of the toy company in Norpole. Maine a makeover so that Rick (Edward Asner) can enter the annual Gingerbread Brawl wrestling competition.
For more special holiday recommendation, visit Holidays Film Collection and celebrate the season!
