Back in 1994, Tim Allen was one of the biggest stars in the world. TV's Home Improvement was a consistent ratings champion, and The Santa Clause became a huge box office success. I never saw it upon release. I was fifteen, and my mind was on Pulp Fiction, Natural Born Killers, and Ed Wood. Mainstream movie comedy was not at a highpoint for most of that decade, at least until Austin Powers started to introduce different elements. If there's any delight in moments of The Santa Clause where Tim Allen reassures his son he feels safe flying through the air by saying, "I lived through the '60s," or when he describes the feeling of delivering presents to a house with, "It felt like America's Most Wanted," it's not that they're funny. It's that in 1994, this was considered funny.
Allen plays Scott Calvin, a divorced father who works at a toy company. He gets along with his son Charlie (Eric Lloyd), but is consumed by work. When Santa Claus falls off of his roof and becomes injured, he's forced into assuming the role. It's never clear why Calvin is the chosen one, but he begins to physically transform into old Saint Nick, greying, growing a beard, and getting visibly fatter, all over night. It's the children's Christmas movie variation of Cronenberg's The Fly.
That's fine in concept, but The Santa Clause is not well thought-out at a script level. It means nothing, existing cynically as a glitzy moneymaker that can star Tim Allen. Once Calvin takes the reigns as Santa Claus, he no longer has an arc. It's not as though he was a Christmas-hating Grinch before that point, and though it brings him closer to his son, he was only previously distanced from him as a legal custodian. This does allow Judge Reinhold, as the kid's stepfather to spend all of his scenes being a douche and telling Calvin, "You're taking this Santa thing a little far."
Most Christmas movies equate belief in Santa with belief in God, which is exclusionary. But really, promoting the belief in Santa as a representation of only Santa is meaningless. If Santa Claus is just a representation of magic and hope, then please, screenwriters Leo Benvenuti and Steve Rudnick, establish a world without magic from the beginning.
I struggle with the philosophy of Santa Claus in Christmas movies. For anyone over a certain age, there are more important values to hold onto at Christmas. And yet, this is a film meant for little kids where the default thinking of every grown character is that Santa Claus does not exist. It never occurred to me as a child that adults don't believe, and I don't think I'd have wanted to see a movie where this is repeatedly stated. It's true that the grown ups in Miracle on 34th Street don't believe either, but as a child, I was able to process that movie as taking place within a Kafkaesque dystopia. The Santa Clause is too shiny to use that excuse.
The Santa Clause is not painful. It's not corrupt (as in Allen's later, still unbelievable Christmas With the Kranks). It's just without matter.
The Santa Clause and The Meaning of Christmas
Santa Claus is real, and you should never stop believing in him. Otherwise, you'll have to figure out some other way to bond with your kids, and things got confusing after Pokemon.
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