Get Santa

Get Santa

Once upon a time it seemed like there wasn't a lot of choice when it came to Christmas movies. You took your pick between watching Miracle on 34th Street, It's A Wonderful Life, or some version of A Christmas Carol. And for genre fiction fans, it's not like there was a derth of fantasy films when you consider that any film involving Santa and "elves", is by definition a fantasy film. It's just that the best holiday films were the ones that left out the fantasy elements entirely and focused on action and drama. Films like A Christmas Story, for example.

Beginning in the 1980s with films like Die Hard, Hollywood almost accidentally discovered that with the rise of home video, the perennial returns on holiday-themed films were a good investment. Now we get one or two good films every couple years. So it's easy to overlook some of the smaller genre films. In the past we've reviewed Black Christmas, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, and Rare Exports. This year we take a look at a far more mainstream film that you may have missed: Get Santa.

Get Santa is an apologetically family film ala Home Alone or Jumanji. You know exactly what you're getting with a plot that can be summed up like this: Santa crashes his sled and winds up in jail. It's up to one little boy and his ex-con dad to break him out and save Christmas. Wacky high-jinks of course ensue. But unlike a lot of holiday fare, the sentimentality is tempered with an offbeat sense of humor  (at one point Santa shoots a semiautomatic poop-gun at the pursuing police).

It's sad that a film that was meant to console and comfort was the last film Tony Scott produced before he tragically took his own life in 2012. And, while some jokes fall flat, there's still more hits than misses, and the misses can be more easily forgiven because the film genuinely has a warmth to it that a lot of pre-fab Christmas films just don't.