Thursday, December 04, 2008

Christmas movie review: Fred Claus

Rating: A-

Fred Claus
was a theatrical release last year and is new to DVD, which is where I caught it. It also stars Vince Vaughn, who is one of my most favorite actors, so I can't imagine me ever giving a low rating to a movie of his so there's my admitted bias. But, it was kind of enjoyable. The storyline of Fred Claus is that Fred is Santa's older brother who has turned into kind of a scam artist and pretty much derides the whole Christmas holiday but flies to the North Pole to see his brother because he needs money and Santa only agrees to give him some if he comes to work for a week. While Fred's there, he kind of spices things up a bit and messes up some of the processes and procedures and threatens Santa's whole operation. Of course, he's given a second chance to save the day and pulls through with shining colors. But Vince is charming as always and I found myself chuckling a decent amount so I gave it an A-. It does run a little longer than it needed to and, of course, it's extremely predictable but Christmas movies are the one type of movie where I think predictable is okay.

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