Chaos Attraction

Hallmark Movie Reviews: Steve Guttenberg Santas Edition

2014-12-05, 8:22 p.m.

I wrote an entry for today and it was so goddamned boring I couldn't post it. It was a pleasant enough day except for rain, but nothing much happened and I was bored writing it. So since I'm not entirely done yet typing up my Hawaii entries yet, I'll be posting more Hallmark movie reviews. I wrote a bunch last year and then never got around to posting them, so I'll be doing some now!

Previous reviews:
Christmas Mail, Christmas Kiss, Snow Bride.
A Princess for Christmas, A Bride for Christmas, The Christmas Card, Christmas With Holly.

Today's entry: The Steve Guttenberg Santa Series.

Single Santa Seeks Mrs. Claus:

Okay, so Santa is hitting forced retirement age and son Nick Jr. has to step up as of midnight on December 26, and he still hasn't met the right Mrs. Claus yet. For whatever reason, the list of acceptable ladies is all in SoCal ("I never thought my Mrs. Claus would be a surfer girl."), so Nick moves on down there for the season to meet a girl. He meets Beth, who works in advertising and has a son. Beth's a nice girl and all (though I don't think the two of them have super amounts of chemistry. Then again, it just seems kinda wrong to have sexual chemistry with a young version of Santa), but she's "not on the list" because she flat out doesn't believe in Santa and even doesn't let her kid write letters to him. To which I'm inclined to say that uh, if your #1 requirement is that an adult woman (with a kid, no less) believe in Santa Claus, no wonder you're still single, because pretty much everyone else outside of the Pole would consider that a dating detriment. Especially when she's a widow woman who's buying all the presents herself, eh?

This is something nobody ever really covers in all of these Santa movies: if Actual Santa exists and is actually bringing presents to people, why are parents still going out and buying things? Are any presents just mysteriously showing up at anyone's homes? Or is that just for the orphans or something?

I was just waiting around until the last ten minutes when he finally tells her who he is so I could hear the giant "WHAT?!?!" that followed.

I also keep wondering if what happened to Tim Allen in The Santa Clause is going to happen to Nick Jr., i.e. suddenly the hair turns white and shaving won't help and there's a giant gut. (No, that didn't happen.)

Meet The Santas:

It's the sequel to Single Santa! For some reason, these two haven't like, eloped two days after the ending of the previous movie. Oh no. No, they are stalling around on getting married UNTIL DECEMBER 24 because Nick Jr. was so busy doing all of the planning for Christmas. BECAUSE HE'S NOT GOING TO BE TOO BUSY ON DECEMBER 24 DELIVERING PRESENTS FOR 24 HOURS OR ANYTHING. Oh yeah, and Beth thinks they're going to have "a family Christmas" on the same night. ARE YOU PEOPLE OUT OF YOUR MINDS?! YOU'RE FUCKING SANTA AND MRS. CLAUS. He is gonna be gone every December 24 and sleeping off every December 25 for the rest of your lives until retirement. She will be staying at home watching NORAD. You two will be having Christmas Eve Eve Christmasses like all of the people in law enforcement do.

Oh yeah, there's a magic clause (har) saying that nobody but a Claus or an elf is allowed at the Pole, so Nick Jr. has been doing all the prep by himself, which is why he's so busy.. (Which makes me wonder how they are going to handle Jake. Adoption? Is stepClausing enough to count? Or is the kid going to have to be raised by his grandma?) Eventually the question is answered: adoption is just fine, and Jake will be Santa in the future. He's down with that.

Steve Guttenberg got a very short haircut and....bronzer?.... in between movies. Dude is orange. This is just wrong. On the other hand, Beth's hair is GORGEOUS. Looks fairly likely to be fake (especially since the actress's usual hair seems to be all over blonde and not have dark streaks, or curls), but gorgeous curly ponytail there.

Beth's mother, i.e. The Grinch, is enlisted to "help" with the wedding, i.e. snob it up and disapprove of Beth's very existence as a human being. It's probably the most triggering "mama drama" movie I have seen since Tangled. The only time you see her happy early on is when Mom uh....BROUGHT A DATE FOR BETH WHO BROUGHT HIS OWN MISTLETOE AND USED IT to dinner with Beth and her fianc�. CLASSY. Nick is vague about his "distribution" job at Beth's instruction--telling her mom would be even worse--and at one point the random new dude is all, "It just seems like some kind of fly by night organization." "That's one way to put it," Beth agrees.

After finding out that Mrs. Claus is the one who actually picks out the gifts (seriously, you've lived up there 30 or 40 plus years and you don't know this, Nick Jr.?), Nick Jr. is all, "I knew I should have gotten married in January!" NOOOOOO SHIT, BUDDY!

Oh, and Mrs. Claus has to bake all the elves' cookies...but neither Nick Jr. nor Beth can bake! Oh, for fuck's sake, if I of all people can regularly produce cookies without (too much, most of the time) disaster, you two grown ass adults can. Mrs. Claus also has to do all the wrapping....oh for the love of crap. And Beth's mom is constantly telling Beth how awful she is and how she can't do anything at all, so the Mrs. Claus is perfect crap is beaning her over the head double time....

I like that Mrs. Claus is taller than her husband. They also apparently wear red matching tracksuits when retired.

So Beth's mom wants to know what the family does... Ernest the Chief Elf Officer flat out says the CLAUS family has been distributing toys and running their own factory and distributing other people's goods for generations, and not a red flag does raise in the mom's brain. Wow. Ditto the tracksuits and beard.

Anyway, poor Beth has a total breakdown at the engagement party and tells her mother and everyone there who the Clauses really are and breaks off the engagement because she'll suck at being Mrs. Santa. At which point all the power goes out on the Christmas lights and people start throwing out their trees (with ornaments on) and canceling their plans just....well, I dunno, I'm just not feeling it any more. So Beth and Nick make up and have a spontaneous elopement-y wedding FINALLY.

I do remember at some point last year after seeing this that I would keep bringing up Beth's mother in arguments with mine, saying that nitpicking the shit out of someone all the time doesn't help matters....


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