The Santa Clause

BUY

General		Extras
Category	Comedy	Theatrical Trailer(s)	None
Rating		Other Trailer(s)	None
Year Released	1994	Commentary Tracks	None
Running Time	94:00 minutes	Other Extras	None
RSDL/Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Movie
Region	2,4	Director	John Pasquin
Studio Distributor	Warner Home Video	Starring	Tim Allen Judge Reinhold Wendy Crewson Peter Boyle
Case	Amaray
RRP	$34.95	Music	Michael Convertino

    Scott Calvin (Tim Allen) is a master toy salesman who has just about lost whatever Christmas spirit he may have had. His young son Charlie (Eric Lloyd) is spending Christmas Eve with him rather than with his ex wife Laura (Wendy Crewson) and her new husband Neal Miller (Judge Reinhold). Trouble is Neal has been telling Charlie that the big bloke in the red suit does not exist, whilst Scott tells him the opposite. But the matter is resolved once and for all when the real Santa falls off Scott's roof. In accordance with The Santa Clause, in such circumstances the next person who dons the outfit becomes the new Santa Clause. Guess what? Scott dons the outfit and becomes the new Santa, although he tries to deny it. But over the course of the next year he puts on a stack of weight and grows a large white beard, sort of making it difficult to avoid the possibility, especially with Charlie reminding him all the time. Between Charlie and Scott, the rest of their small world becomes convinced of the fact despite being extremely sceptical to start with.

    As I said, this hardly raises a smile let alone a laugh and as a comedy this falls down quite badly. However, if you accept it as a family film, this is nonetheless a pleasant enough experience. Tim Allen is not a person that I have found especially entertaining and this does little to change that feeling. The rest of the cast is nothing more than run of the mill and if there was such a thing nowadays as the studio system, where actors were contracted lock, stock and one smoking barrel to the studio for life, this is the sort of film they used to churn out ad infinitum without too much thought. In some respects, the more you watch Di$ney films, the more it starts to feel as if they are the last studio still caught in the old studio system. The special effects are not especially special and the animatronics of the reindeer are less than lifelike, which probably suits the film well. Overall, a pleasant enough way of spending ninety minutes, but not something that I would return to often.

Video

    The video transfer is presented in Pan & Scan only, which is a tremendous let down as the Region 1 version is a widescreen presentation.

    The transfer throughout is not especially sharp, and as a result the definition is not the best around. The transfer seems to lack a little depth although the latter part of the film shows some improvement in this regard. Shadow detail was in general pretty good, although not quite up to the very best standards of more recent films and hampered a little by the richness of the transfer. There did not appear to be any low level noise problems with the transfer.

    The colours are very well saturated throughout, resulting in a very rich tone to it. However, this is by no means consistent and at times the colours seemed to be a little flat. The skin tones at times come up just a little unnatural, but nothing that really is seriously amiss. Because of the very rich colour tone, darker scenes come up just a little too dark at times. Despite the very rich tone, there is no hint of oversaturation at all.

    There were no significant MPEG artefacts noted in the transfer. There were a few instances of film-to-video artefacts throughout the transfer, mainly in the form of aliasing. There was one instance of some film jitter at around the 18:46 mark of the film. There were film artefacts throughout the film, but none that were really noticeable and intrusive.

Audio

    There are three soundtracks on the DVD, all Dolby Digital 5.1 efforts: the default being English, and the others being French and Italian. I listened to the English default soundtrack.

    The dialogue was clear and easy to understand throughout the film.

    There did not seem to be any audio sync problems with the transfer.

    The music score is provided by Michael Convertino, and it really is not an especially memorable score at all.

    This is a not an especially well detailed soundtrack, and I really was expecting a little more from the surround channels than was delivered. Still, even though it was not especially present, what was there was more than acceptable. The overall balance is not too bad and the resultant soundscape is quite believable. The bass channel did not get a huge amount of use during the film.

Menu

• Widescreen presentation
• Theatrical trailer

    A decent enough video transfer, but why did we not get widescreen?

    A decent enough audio transfer.

    No extras whatsoever.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Ian Morris
3rd January 2000