Movie Review – "Fred Claus"

OK — so I had to see a holiday themed movie this weekend to kick off the holiday season — my choice: “Fred Claus”!!! I wasn’t sorry — I liked it! It was fun and entertaining! Very funny, good story, a nice holiday and family spirit message, and, yes, I even got a little teary eyed in a couple of the more sentimental scenes!!!! Vince Vaughn was really good as Fred Claus, Paul Giamatti makes a great Santa Claus, and I loved seeing Kathy Bates as Mama Claus – the woman who helped make sure that young Fred could never quite live up to his little brother Nick with comments like “why can’t you be more like your brother” delivered only as Kathy Bates could deliver them!!!

There is a backdrop theme of the age old story of the threat that Christmas will cease to exist and Santa’s North Pole will be shut down forever. But the real story is one of brotherly love and family loyalty. It starts out with young Fred on the day his little brother is born. He immediately loves his brother and promises to be the best big brother ever! But, he soon finds that promise difficult to keep — his brother, Nick, turns out to be PERFECT and his parents (especially his mother) are openly proud of everything Nick does and consistently let Fred know that he is far from being the boy his brother is. In fact, Mama Claus refers to Nick as a “saint”!!! Fred becomes increasingly resentful of his brother and distances himself from the entire family – especially once Nick fulfills the prophecy of becoming Santa Claus!!!! Nick gets himself arrested in a hysterical scene where he is chased by a crowd of Salvation Army bucket bell ringers dressed in Santa costumes! He calls his brother for bail – a call which is answered with “yes, but you have to come to the North Pole and earn the money!” The rest is a roller coaster of funny and emotional scenes leading up to the much welcomed happy ending!

The music is great, too — not just the Christmas music (of which there isn’t as much as you may expect), but also the other music that is used to set the various scenes. The score folks really did a great job of picking the songs that frame each scene!!!!

I liked the whole movie — yeah, so I admit there was a point where it started to get a little boring and I thought it was time to move it along, but it didn’t spoil the movie at all and it didn’t last long! But, the scene that stuck out for me (not necessarily my favorite scene, but the one that stands out as memorable) was when Fred was in a support group meeting for guys who have to live in the shadow of highly recognizable brothers who made it big — in the support group were Frank Stallone, Roger Clinton, and Stephen Baldwin – each had a story about how hard it is to live up to their brothers………….it was a riot!!!!

Anyway — I recommend this one as a must see sometime during the holiday season – it is an entertaining couple of hours!