Get Santa *** (2014, Jim Broadbent, Rafe Spall, Kit Connor, Warwick Davis) – Movie Review

Okay, then it’s nearly Christmas, and everybody wants to see Jim Broadbent’s Santa Claus – and here it is!

The ho-ho-ho jolly Broadbent’s got top billing is the showy, fun role. Broadbent’s a classy actor and he wasn’t going to waste this opportunity. He really gets his acting claws into Claus, raising lots of cheer.

But it’s appealing Rafe Spall who has to do all the real hard work in the star part as estranged dad Steve, who gets out of jail after a stretch for being a robbery getaway driver and calls up his frosty remarried ex-wife (Jodie Whittaker). Next day he comes round in his van to pick up his earnest little son Tom (Kit Connor) for a reunion day out. But then he reluctantly teams up with the kid on a quest to save Christmas when they find Santa sleeping in their garage while on the run from the police after crashing his sleigh.

Santa urgently needs them to find his sleigh and his reindeer. As I said, it’s nearly Christmas. [Spoiler alert] Santa soon ends up in jail, too, and there he meets tiny Warwick Davis, whom he mistakes for his little elf helper, an elfper, I guess. Davis is not amused, but soon joins the National Elf Service to help Santa after all.

It’s hard to do new riffs on the Santa myth [sorry, that’s a spoiler alert!] and come up with a fresh Christmas-time story, but Get Santa does. The film is briskly paced, likeable and charming. With Santa in prison, there’s a little too much of the jail sequences, and Get Santa slightly runs out of full steam towards the end, with a climax that’s not quite huge or satisfying enough, or able to tie all the loose ends up neatly enough. But, slight faults aside, the movie’s nevertheless a little winner for Christmas.

It’s very creditably written and directed by Christopher Smith, known for Creep (2004), Severance (2006), Triangle (2009) and Black Deatb (2010). Christmas must have jollied him up too.

I’m afraid the biggest laughs with the kids in the audience when I saw it were Santa’s reindeer communicating by farting and nasty probation officer Joanna Scanlan eating a fly. You can never fail with these ideas in a kids’ movie. Scanlan, by the way, gets a lot of other laughs, enjoying her good scenes and dialogue in one of the movie’s better roles.

Get Santa has got a U certificate and is a nice little treat for all of us this Christmas.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Movie Review

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