Film

Now that Tim Allen has completed the Santa Clause trilogy, and with Will Ferrell’s Elf only a distant memory, Vaughn is the latest to attempt a Kringle-themed comedy for the whole family. Vaughn plays the titular Fred, Saint Nick’s older brother. When Nick achieves sainthood, the whole family is frozen in time, never growing older. (Why younger brother Nick has white hair but Fred looks about 35 is left unexplained, but attacking the movie’s lack of internal coherence makes a critic look like Scrooge.)

Frustrated by his younger brother’s incessant goodness, Fred has become a fast-talking smoothie, the black sheep of the Claus clan. Santa (Giamatti) persuades Fred to visit the North Pole (by paying Fred’s bail). By an unfortunate coincidence, the “home office” (Would that be God? The theology here’s pretty hazy, we scroogily note) has sent an efficiency expert (Spacey) who is determined to shut down the whole Santa operation. Fred has to overcome his sibling-rivalry issues and help save Christmas.

Many of the jokes are lazy retreads (tall man, elf bed; elves beat up a big person; Santa’s got food issues) that aren’t executed with any special zest. Oddly, screenwriter Dan Fogelman has softened Fred’s character by making him nice to an orphan. That means his conversion to Christmas cheer is not much of a conversion after all. It’s as if Fred wanted some of the jaunty cynicism of Bad Santa but chickened out, leaving us with an inoffensive movie that’s never as fun as it should be. Bah, humbug.