It's Friday night and our family is snuggled in the den, the smallest and warmest room in the house. Keeping with our plan to watch mostly Christmas movies, we watched one that was new for us: Fred Claus. This movie stars Vince Vaughn, Paul Giamatte, Rachel Weisz, Kathy Bates and Kevin Spacey. Fred is Santa's ne'er-do-well older brother who grew up in the shadow of the kid who could do no wrong. Fred finds himself in trouble and must retreat to the North Pole for help.
This movie is your expected mix of "cute and funny" with "stupid and vacuous." Some scenes reach actual ROFL status: Santa's secret service elves do Ninja moves, dance scenes in the workshop and Frosty's Tavern, the siblings anonymous meeting. Kevin Spacey plays Clyde Northcut an efficiency expert who threatens to shut down the North Pole. He walks around as a sort of "angel of death" in his black coat and thick-rimmed glasses.
Personally, I like my Christmas movies to be a bit cuter and cleaner. Vince Vaughn's character was a bit too "ghetto" for me. As in most movies, it all works out in the end, but I was disappointed in the overlay of a religious song with opening presents. The movie as a whole rated, for our family, an "OK, but we don't have to watch it again" rating. According to Yahoo Movies, it rates between a B and a C-.
One reviewer complained that Vince Vaughn, like many comedic actors, plays himself:
Much of the problem is Vince Vaughn himself, as he doesn't bother to play any character other than Vince Vaughn. And he's yet to perfect how to be likable and a jerk at the same time.
While we have a number of Christmas movies that we re-watch each year, Fred Claus just doesn't make the cut.
No comments:
Post a Comment