Now, then, we turn to 2009’s Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the sixth outing in the mega-popular franchise. I personally thought the first four Harry Potter movies were unrelentingly boring and murderously awful. Given that, this sixth movie manages, if you can believe it, to be the worst one yet by the a wide margin.

It’s at this point that I’d usually give you some broad strokes of a movie’s story, and therein lies our major problem. This picture has no story whatsoever. Now, you can get away with this in an arty kind of movie, one that deals with character or thematic exploration. But your Potter flicks are mass-audience, popcorn-chompin’, effects-laden plot movies all the way. Luckily for all concerned, the Harry Potter fanbase is so slavishly devoted they’ll overlook any number of flaws in their haste to put on silly hats and slob all over Daniel Radcliffe’s knob.

But not me. Fuck this movie. For two and a half hours nothing happens that can be called a story. It’s just a series of various events, only a few of which can really be considered “important” from the broader perspective of the series as a whole. This picture was totally unnecessary; its 150 minutes could easily and economically have been distilled down to 10 and made the opening sequence of the final film (or final half-film, as the seventh movie has been infuriatingly split into two). The audience would have lost nothing of value from these edits; the filmmakers would have missed out on millions of dollars. So I guess I’m not surprised how this one went down.

Harry Potter and the Longass Title also has the same huge flaw as the other movies do. Our protagonist essentially just spends each film’s running time bumbling around while events happen around him, never taking an active role in anything. Then, at the end, a competent adult or, often, some sort of deus ex machina does all the work and Harry takes all the credit.

Hooray!

Okay, let’s talk about one more thing for a second before I choke on my own rage and die. Let’s talk about the look of the movie. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is, without a doubt, the ugliest big-budget movie I’ve ever looked at. Everything is brown and gray and gritty and dingy. I don’t mean in a stylistically interesting way. I mean in an ugly way that makes me feel like I need a shower. Attention, cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel: Fuck you, and I hope you die.

Hey, guess what! This movie was nominated for a Best Cinematography Oscar. Attention, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences: Fuck you, and I hope you die.

I know this review hasn’t been very thorough or interesting or appropriate, but holy shit this movie sucked. Let’s go ahead and never speak of it again.

Film criticism is of course always a subjective exercise but, despite my informal and personal style, I usually try to write a review based not just on my personal feelings while watching a picture but on my knowledge of cinema technique and history as well. It’s hard for me to do that with Audition, because I think it’s probably not that bad but I very much didn’t like it. At the same time, I almost liked it, and can see how I could have.

The story is that of Mr. Aoyama, a widower (Ryo Ishibashi) who, when told by his son that he looks old and lonely, decides it’s time to remarry. But he is old—older, at least, than his first time around—and doesn’t know if he has what it takes to jump back into dating, a young man’s game. He wants to find his ideal woman, but on the other hand he doesn’t particularly want to work at it. What’s interesting here is that it’s never quite clear whether he actually worries that he no longer knows how to go about finding a wife or if he’s just not actually that interested in the process, only doing it because his son suggested it and it seems like the right thing to do.

When a friend suggests the idea of holding a phony audition for a nonexistent movie as a pretext for screening many wifely candidates Aoyama agrees—half-jokingly but, as always when something is half a joke, half not.

Scores of young women arrange for an audition, but through all the process only one catches Aoyama’s eye: A quiet yet charming girl named Asami (Eihi Shiina). Aoyama’s friend advises him that something about the girl doesn’t feel right, and besides they should really hold at least one round of callbacks; this is an audition for an important part, after all. Aoyama ignores his friend. Since first seeing her résumé, he’s had eyes only for Asami.

He calls her, meets her for dinner, is more enchanted by her all the time. Eventually he invites her to go away with him for a weekend, during the course of which he intends to propose. After Asami makes him promise that he’ll love only her, the two make love. By morning, she’s disappeared.

If it seems I’ve described a lot of movie without mentioning anything horrifying, it’s true. If you didn’t know going in that Audition was billed as a horror movie, it would be a long time before you’d ever guess. For most of its running time, the movie has no dealings at all with the trappings of the fright film. It’s deliberately slow-paced, showing Aoyama’s life as no different in its mundane details from anybody else’s and keeping firmly, almost defiantly, grounded in realism. This story of a man with an unorthodox plan to find a wife is the stuff of either romantic comedy or melodrama. As the movie goes on, the viewer decides it must be the latter and begins to bring his own notions to the proceedings; a lifetime of seeing movies means we know what to expect in this kind of movie.

And that’s why I almost liked this movie. Audition is essentially a long, slow buildup to the last 25 minutes or so, when the audience’s trust is violated and its expectations are thrown aside as the film does a quick about-face and becomes something else entirely. This could make for a wonderful horror movie experience. Audiences have seen a lot of movies; we’re pretty savvy and we have a good handle on the way things are done in different kinds of movies. I don’t know if it’s possible for a modern audience to be completely fooled like this—we remember what happened with Janet Leigh and so are wary of giving our trust 100% to any movie—but in Audition it’s done about as well as it can be. By gaining your trust before violating it so completely, the movie works for its scares, something so many horror movies are unwilling to do.

It’s what happens after this turnaround that made me not like the movie. Asami is revealed to be not so sweet and demure as she’s seemed but a violent maniac. So far, so good. But the events that follow, as she feeds a previously mutilated victim a bowl of barf (though it’s not 100% clear whether that part actually happened in the film’s reality or was merely a dream, you have to watch it either way) and tortures Aoyama with needles and piano wire, are so thoroughly unpleasant, so much more a test of endurance than anything else, that I couldn’t enjoy it.

It’s not that I had to look away and hide my eyes against somebody’s shoulder, like a girl in a cliched movie about kids on a date in the 1950s. It’s just that I wished I wasn’t watching it at all, and that a movie that had worked so hard at pulling me in for the last hour and a half would then try to scare me rather than just try to turn my stomach. And it is stomach turning. Those with weak constitutions and an even moderate aversion to gore should avoid the movie entirely. There’s none of the fun sort of splatter you can laugh and hoot at, as in a well-done zombie picture. There is only unrelieved awfulness.

This movie really drove home to me the idea that I think I’ve outgrown the horror gorefest. By outgrown I don’t mean to say it takes a childish mentality to enjoy that kind of movie. I know that isn’t true. But I think that I’ve come to a place in movie watching habits and that I’ve seen that kind of blood-spraying movie so many times that it no longer interests me. That combined with just how far Audition goes in its efforts to make you feel bad made it impossible for me to enjoy.

A certain kind of audience loves this movie just because it has such icky scenes. I’m sure there are others who are delighted by the way Audition plays with our expectations and turns what we think we know about movies upside down, and who also found that the nastiness of the film’s last half hour was just right for them. But I suspect there are a lot of viewers like me, who wish the end of the picture had been something else, something worthy of all the work done getting there.

Police sergeant Howie (Edward Woodward) arrives unwanted on the Scottish island of Summerisle, famous for its one-of-a-kind produce. He’s investigating the disappearance, brought to his attention by an anonymous letter, of a young girl named Rowan Morrison. None of the island’s residents are at all helpful; at first they deny that any such person as Rowan ever existed, and when that is revealed as a lie they resort to other obfuscations or simple silence. A grave marked with Rowan Morrison’s name is found, but no death certificate is on file and nobody has anything to say about the circumstances of her death. Even the girl’s mother won’t go so far as to confirm she ever existed.

The people of Summerisle also practice an ancient pagan religion and make no secret about it, circumstances which don’t sit well with the priggish and rigidly Christian Sergeant Howie. He nearly has an infarction when he hears a classroom full of schoolgirls talking about phallic religious icons, and when he sees a group of  nubile young women dancing nude round a bonfire…well, it’s more than his delicate sensibilities can bear.

Howie eventually arranges a meeting with Lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee), the island’s leading citizen, who grants him permission to exhume the mysterious grave, explains the island’s pagan ways, and suggests maybe Howie would like to leave Summerisle before the next day’s May Day festival. With his Jesus-heavy values set, Sergeant Howie would no doubt find the celebration distasteful.

Howie may be 100% unlikeable and have an odd understanding of how far police authority extends, but he’s no fool—he knows that pagan rites and missing girls must surely add up to human sacrifice.

To say any more about the plot would be to say too much. The movie works because it gradually builds, and even though Howie is surrounded by behavior we might consider outlandish, events nonetheless make an internal kind of sense as they progress inexorably toward their conclusion.

Then, of course, you’ve got Christopher Lee. His Lord Summerisle doesn’t actually appear until about the halfway point, but once he’s on screen you can’t help but be spellbound. Lee has appeared in movies of the highest and lowest quality and everywhere in between, but he’s always a joy to see, even when, as in this picture, his haircut is pretty out of control.

Out of control awesome, I mean

Another thing that’s none too unpleasant for the eyes is the innkeeper’s daughter, Willow, played by Britt Ekland (who would appear with Christopher Lee again the next year in The Man With the Golden Gun). Among other things, she spends a great deal of time prancing around her bedroom naked and pounding on the walls, which is something I endorse with no reservations.

BRITT EKLAND BREAK: You may also remember seeing Britt Ekland in Get Carter, back when it was a great movie with Michael Caine instead of a terrible movie with Sylvester Stallone.

BRITT EKLAND PHOTO BREAK:

Just call me the man with the golden boner

We first meet up with Dobbs in desperation and penury, homeless and begging on the streets of Tampico. All he wants is to get his head above water, to live comfortably without having to depend on handouts from rich American vacationers. Nothin’ fancy, just freedom from poverty.

Even when he first hits on the idea of prospecting for gold, his ambitions remain modest. Howard (Walter Huston, in one of the best-deserved Academy Award winning performances of all time), another drifter with some experience as a prospector, tells him what gold does to a man, the way getting a little only makes you hungry for a whole lot more. Dobbs insists that won’t happen to a simple, reasonable man like him, that he’ll just collect his little piece and go home.

We know better, of course. Dobbs, Howard, and a third young down-and-out named Curtin (Tim Holt) set off in search of veins of gold and barely any time has passed before they all, but Dobbs in particular, begin to feel the effects of potential wealth. Once they actually start to find gold, Dobbs plummets into greed-fueled madness in record time.

Dobbs views everyone’s actions with suspicion, and the more gold the three companions find the more pronounced his paranoia becomes. Soon this regular guy is pulling guns on his friends and voting to kill strangers, all to make sure nobody comes near his supply of gold, already greater than he ever expected it would be.

And that’s what the movie’s about, the immediate, irresistible corrupting influence of a avarice. It’s the greatest exploration the snowballing effect of lust for money and what it can do to a person since von Stroheim’s Greed. (The film shares other surface similarities with that silent masterpiece, including its budget-busting location shooting.)

It’s a slight to the fabulous Walter Huston to talk only of Bogart, but man is he great. His transformation from likeable loser to nasty paranoiac to murderous madman is what performance is all about. When his greed finally forces him to kill, his lonely monologue where he tries to convince himself he’s done all the right things, regardless of what a pest like a conscience might say, is one of cinema’s all time highlights.

If your New Year’s resolution was to see some of the great movies you’ve missed out on, and you haven’t yet experienced The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, there’s no better way for you to start your year’s viewing.

BONUS NOTE: What’s the deal with Humphrey Bogart being in movies whose most famous lines are never actually said by anybody? We all know no one in Casablanca ever actually says “Play it again, Sam,” and in  The Treasure of the Sierra Madre the menacing bandit almost but not quite says “We don’t need no steenkin’ badges.” Coincidence, or secret government plot?

Though there are other excellent holiday movies that are indispensible for any merrymaking movie buff, none is more perfectly realized than this story of a little girl learning to believe.

That little girl is Susan (Natalie Wood), as adorable as anything you’ve ever seen but sadly lacking in the childlike sense of wonder department. Her mother (Maureen O’Hara) has raised her by the generally appropriate maxim of “deal with the real world and don’t go falling for a lot of dopey nonsense,” but this has had one unfortunate consequence: Susan doesn’t believe in Santa Claus!

This cannot stand, so it’s rather fortuitous that a man claiming to be the one and only real Kris Kringle plops right into her lap. The kindly old man teaches Susan a thing or two about imagination and manages to bring a little Christmas spirit to everyone he encounters, to boot. When working as a department store Santa at Macy’s, for example, he doesn’t hesitate to send shoppers to other stores if that’s where they can get the best deal on what they need. It’s about making the children happy, after all, not about which store should make the biggest profit.

But you can’t go around claiming to be Santa Claus and, most egregiously, being nice to strangers without people growing suspicious, so it’s only a matter of time before Kris Kringle is committed and made to stand trial to prove his sanity. It’s this trial that gives us one of cinema’s most well known and most often parodied moments: an army of mailmen bringing sack after sack of letters addressed to Santa Claus into the courtroom.

Throughout the picture are scenes of genuine comedy, of pathos, of unabashed emotion. When Susan writes a letter to Mr. Kringle saying she believes in him and her mother adds the postscript “I believe in you, too,” I cry every time. That’s right, I cry. You wanna fight about it?

My DVD copy of Miracle on 34th Street features a colorized version of the film in addition to the original black and white. Now, even if you were the sort of inhuman monster who normally watched old movies in colorized form, you’d be making a particular mistake here. The black and white—aside from imparting an easy elegance and just being the way movies looked best—also helps to sell the fantasy. By providing that slight disconnect from the way your real life works, the movie can draw you into its story of belief in the implausible all the more easily.

The movie has been remade several times, to varying degrees of success. But even with such names as Thomas Mitchell, Ed Wynn, Sebastian Cabot and Richard Attenborough in the Kris Kringle role, none of those subsequent tellings have matched the breezy charm and potency of story of this original version.

Watch Miracle on 34th Street and learn to believe in Santa again. It’s the best Christmas gift you could give yourself.

Mickey’s Christmas Carol wasn’t one of the first versions of the story that I saw, but it’s now one of my favorites. In fact, this theatrical short is probably the best thing Disney animation did between One Hundred and One Dalmatians in 1961 and the renaissance period begun with The Little Mermaid in 1989.

What makes it so good? First is the artistry on display in the animation, which in style is far more akin to the earliest Disney classics than what was coming from the studio in the 70s and 80s. Second is the good use of existing Disney characters in A Christmas Carol’s roles, particularly Mickey Mouse as Bob Cratchit, Goofy as Marley’s ghost, and Scrooge McDuck as—surprise!—Ebenezer Scrooge. This allows for two things: the right amount of freedom and looseness in the characterizations and the storytelling and at the same time the ability to treat the story with the seriousness it warrants.

And perhaps most importantly, the piece succeeds by recognizing the strengths of Dickens’ novel and distilling the book to its essence, moving through it in 25 minutes without ever feeling rushed. As someone with the approximate attention span of a cocker spaniel puppy, I appreciate that brevity. If all movies were less than half an hour long, I’d be very happy indeed.

For the thousandth time in your life, let’s recap the story. Scrooge: mean. Some ghosts! Past, present, and future. Scrooge: nice. Somewhere in there, Goofy falls down the stairs. End.

What you’ve got here is a quick little cartoon that rests comfortably alongside the best adaptations of A Christmas Carol, the best Disney animation, and the best of all Christmas movies generally. How can you beat that?

A short review, I admit, but it’s a short film. You shouldn’t need me to sell it to you; quit wasting time on the internet and watch this with the whole family.

Now that’s what I call a Christmas bonus!

DONALD DUCK: STUCK ON CHRISTMAS

Despite what that title would have you believe, it’s actually Donald’s nephews Huey, Dewey and Louie who are stuck on Christmas. If Christmas is like Groundhog Day, Huey, Dewey and Louie are like a feathery, three-headed Bill Murray.

Yes, the three ducklings make a wish that it could be Christmas every day and hey! presto! their wish is granted.

As Tom Petty warned, it’s Christmas all over again. And again and again and again. First the boys are thrilled by this development. Then they grow weary of the unceasing sameness. Then they realize that they can get up to all manner of ducky didoes without fear of reprisal and they take full advantage of that situation.

But then, as you’d expect, they learn some Important Lessons. Their continual exposure to Christmas teaches them to eschew their selfish ways, that it’s better to give than receive and the true meaning of Christmas is love and all that.

The other moral imparted to Huey, Dewey and Louie is that if Christmas came every single day it wouldn’t be so special. That’s just crazy. Christmas every day would be awesome.

A VERY GOOFY CHRISTMAS

This slapstick adventure deals with Goofy’s son Max and his crisis of faith. Max isn’t sure he believes in the one person that the holy season of Christmas is really all about: Santa Claus.

Spoiler! Santa eventually shows up! Hooray!

MICKEY AND MINNIE’S GIFT OF THE MAGI

O. Henry’s “Gift of the Magi” happens, but to Mickey and Minnie Mouse.

Mickey’s a harmonica player who wants to buy Minnie a watch chain; Minnie’s a lady with a nice watch who wants to buy Mickey a case for his harmonica. Things proceed from there to their inevitable conclusion.

So that’s what goes down in Mickey’s Once Upon a Christmas. It’s not that great, but it doesn’t hurt your feelings or anything (except perhaps by the disturbing inclusion of a family of ducks eating a turkey for dinner). The movie was created as a direct-to-video item, so the animation doesn’t exactly blow you away, but it’s of the same cut-above quality of the old Disney Afternoon cartoons, so that’s good.

The first two cartoons left me a little flat—neither good nor bad but mostly just there—but the third is what earns this movie its three stars. O. Henry’s story is a classic for a reason: It’s a can’t-miss. Positioned as it is at the end of the feature, “Mickey and Minnie’s Gift of the Magi” and the sweetness it delivers leaves you feeling good when the credits roll.

Sometimes that’s all you need.

Christmas with the Kranks

Jamie Lee Curits and Tim Allen are Nora and Luther Krank, a pair of empty nesters who decide, on the first Christmas without their daughter at home, to take the money and effort usually spent on the trappings of the holiday and spend it on a Caribbean cruise instead. Rather than string lights on an empty house and put up a tree they won’t be there to enjoy, they plan to skip Christmas this year and enjoy themselves in warmer climes. As Luther explains to his coworkers, he’s “not angry and [won’t] yell ‘humbug’ at anyone offering holiday greetings,” he’s just not doing the Christmas thing.

Now, I love Christmas decorations and cram my house with just about every piece of red and green crap you can name. They could slap a googly-eyed snowman on a home enema kit and I’d buy eight. But that’s me. I’d never do it, but I can see that what they’re planning is a perfectly reasonable thing for Luther and Nora to want to do.

Not so their neighbors.

As soon as the Kranks make it clear that they won’t be participating in any Christmas activities, all the people on the block turn on them. It isn’t just that they give them the cold shoulder for a while, or privately think that the Kranks are a couple of weirdos; they actually go so far as to continually bully and harass the tropics-bound couple.

Nora and Luther are abused, chased and threatened, all because they won’t buy a tree or put an enormous snowman on their roof. It’s not as if the Kranks are going around stealing people’s presents and stuffing their trees one by one up the chimbley—they just aren’t decorating their own house or throwing a Christmas Eve party. Yet all their busybody friends and belligerent, pushy neighbors act as though they’ve decided to host a Manson family reunion on a playground, followed by random acts of arson.

Of course, things take a turn when the Kranks’ daughter calls, less than 24 hours before her parents are scheduled to leave on their cruise, and announces she’s coming home for Christmas after all. Now Luther and Nora are in a hectic, comic-antic-filled race to throw together a good old fashioned Christmas in a matter of hours.

This, too, I can understand. I can see why, with their daughter at home instead of a continent away, they would want to give her the kind of Christmas she expects rather than foist on her a disappointing surprise. It makes sense.

What makes no sense is the way everyone, even after the traditional holiday doings are underway, is still pissed at Luther for having the audacity to suggest skipping Christmas and, what’s more, for being disappointed that he couldn’t go on his cruise. Nora, suddenly on the side of those who had hours before been subjecting her to threats and intimidation, berates Luther for his gall in being disappointed that his “stupid, ridiculous, childish scheme” didn’t work out. Yeah, Luther, you jerk! How dare you be a little bummed that the vacation you’d been planning for six weeks and, for all we know, dreaming about for a lifetime, was canceled at the very last second? For shame!

The people on the Kranks’ street don’t come around to forgiving Luther and accepting him until he learns that he was wrong to ever dream of doing something different in the first place. That, after all, is the message of Christmas love: you’re only entitled to it if you do what everyone says. Isn’t it?

Oh, right. Of course not.

The movie is not without its isolated charms—in addition to the two leads, its cast features the likes of Dan Aykroyd, Cheech Marin and M. Emmet Walsh (and a brief appearance by Tom Poston!), and has funny moments and lines of dialogue throughout. Unfortunately, none of this helps the movie as a whole to transcend its weirdly unpleasant characters or the repugnance of its ultimate message.

The film is based on a novel by King of All Things Boring John Grisham and the screenplay was written by King of Filmmaking Style I Don’t Like Chris Columbus, so it’s not really a surprise that this movie is deeply flawed.

Skip this one. Stick with a movie that gives you a message of joyous Christmas togetherness rather than enforced Christmas sameness.

It’s Christmastime and the Muppets are preparing for their big holiday show. They’re auditioning acts and building sets and everything seems to be falling into place for one great Christmas extravaganza. Alas, it’s then that the cruel, malicious businesswoman (Joan Cusack) who holds the lease on the Muppet Theater* announces that if she isn’t paid all of the extensive back rent she is owed, she’ll shut the theater down. The Muppets will have nowhere to put on their shows, and I think it’s suggested that most of them live in the theater, so I guess they’ll be homeless as well.

Of course, a way is found to raise the needed money in time. After a frantic rush through busy city streets, Fozzie Bear ends up failing in his attempt to deliver the payment, and things look dire for the Muppets indeed. Kermit the Frog is utterly dejected; he feels that everyone was counting on him to save their Christmas and, consequently, that he let them all down and ruined their lives. Wandering the icy streets alone, he makes that time-honored Christmas wish: that he’d never even been born.

Yes, the framework of the story is a parody of It’s a Wonderful Life, and many of the movie’s funniest scenes come when the helpful angel (David Arquette) is showing Kermit a the world in which he never existed. Sam the Eagle is a raver, Beaker is a ‘roided-up bouncer at an insufferable nightclub, and Miss Piggy is a desperately lonely cat lady who fakes a Jamaican accent to pick up a few bucks as a phony telephone psychic.

Before all the riffing on It’s a Wonderful Life there are other spoofs as well. The Muppets mount an elaborate production (their Christmas Spectacular Spectacular) spoofing Moulin Rouge!. Fozzie is chased through the streets by a man with more than a passing resemblance to the Crocodile Hunter. My personal favorite parody scene involves Fozzie accidentally being mistaken for the Grinch and accosted by a crowd of angry Whos.

But trumping everything yet mentioned in terms of hilarity are all the scenes featuring Pepe the King Prawn, who steals any scene quite handily. His mispronunciation of words and his unwavering confidence, in spite of mounting evidence to the contrary, that his hipness and sex appeal are unmatched make him perhaps the funniest of all the Muppets. He’s come quite a long way since he was an elevator operator on Muppets Tonight.

The movie does have its weak spots. As in all Muppet media, any scene that features only human characters loses your attention quickly, and unfortunately the beginning of the movie is weighted down with such scenes. The picture’s one song, sung by Kermit and a homeless Gonzo in the alternate Kermit-was-never-born reality, is called “Everyone Matters” and the only way to describe it is “lame.” Gone is the jauntiness of “Movin’ Right Along” or “Can You Picture That” from The Muppet Movie, and even though that film’s biggest song, “The Rainbow Connection,” was a sweet one, this song is more sappy than sweet, more cloying than charming.

Fortunately, these complaints are relatively minor compared to the other delights It’s a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie holds. There’s more than enough of the comedy and quality you expect from the Kermit and the gang to make this flick worthy of your attention.

NOTE: It’s a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie was directed by Kirk Thatcher, whose affiliation with the Muppets goes back to 1989 but who you may remember best as Punk on Bus from Star Trek IV.

*Didn’t we learn on The Muppet Show that Scooter’s uncle owns the theater?

Our third meeting with Santa Claus/Scott Calvin (Tim Allen) takes place almost entirely at the North Pole and involves two separate stories. In one thread, Santa’s very pregnant wife Carol (Wendy Crewson) is feeling a bit morose and lonely as a result of her husband’s busy schedule at Christmastime. In an attempt to cheer her up, Santa agrees to bring her parents (Ann-Margret and Alan Arkin) to stay with them for the holiday—though of course the illusion must be maintained that Scott’s just a toy company executive and that their operation is in Canada.

While these in-law antics are going on, Jack Frost (Martin Short) is making himself something of a bother, as well. He doesn’t much like being Jack Frost—he doesn’t get a holiday of his own, little kids have never even heard of him—and he longs for something more grandiose. When he finds out about an Escape Clause in the contract that made Scott Calvin into Santa in the first place, Jack Frost does all he can to trick Scott into giving up the position of Kris Kringle. Frost intends to take the job himself, and he intends to run a very different kind of North Pole.

And in those two preceding paragraphs you’ve read much about what’s wrong with this movie. Mrs. Claus is pregnant, Jack Frost is trying to ruin things and depose Santa. These elements probably could work in a different kind of movie. But in a light-hearted family comedy, Santa’s magical world at the North Pole shouldn’t include such things as sabotage, coups d’état and—somehow most disturbing of all—sexual reproduction.

In the first Santa Clause film, they got this right. Most of the scenes took place in the real world that we all know, and so it was okay for them to include anything we’re familiar with from that world. But the other world—the world of magic and joy and nonstop-Christmas that is the North Pole—was treated differently, immune to the thousand petty problems we regular people deal with.

In The Santa Clause 3, the North Pole is no different than Scranton, New Jersey.

So the very foundation of the film was far too flawed for it to have ever been good. The execution of the thing is what saves the picture from being zero stars all the way. Alan Arkin as Santa’s father-in-law and Martin Short as Jack Frost are both hilarious. They’re always unmistakably Alan Arkin and Martin Short rather than Bud Newman and Jack Frost, but why quibble? They do their best with the material, and their best is very good indeed.

And then there’s Ann-Margret. Absolutely as sexy as ever. I probably don’t need to remind you that my obsession with Ann-Margret goes back many years, far into my youth, and those earliest feverish adolescent desires have abated not a whit since then. Oh, Ann-Margret. I realize that you’ve been married for over forty years, but if you ever decide what you really want is to run away with an impoverished, homely fatso, I’m here for you.

Despite the positives of the performances and the many successful jokes, The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause just has too many negatives to overcome. I hope it’s the last we’ll hear of this franchise. I hope the series will be allowed to end with whatever integrity it still has intact, with our fond memories of the first movie (and even the second) relatively untainted.

But it’s a Disney property, so I ain’t holding my breath. Integrity and untainted fond memories aren’t exactly the way that company does business.