FRED CLAUS [PG]
It may not become the perennial holiday favorite that Elf is, but if nothing else, this Christmas comedy starring Paul Giamatti (The Nanny Diaries) as Santa Claus and Vince Vaughn (Into the Wild) as his stewing, overlooked brother, Fred, will forestall for at least a year the arrival of another moronic colonic from Disney and Tim Allen. Writer-director David Dobkin, thankfully toning down his over-amped Wedding Crashers style, is pretty meticulous in his re-creation of the Santa Claus mythos. He has a real asset in Giamatti, who is very genial while he becomes the soft-spoken one for a change, graciously allowing Vaughn to be the one who achieves critical mass as the cynical ass. The ages-old beef these two immortal men share is epic and personal, tender and palatable, and is sure to strike a nerve with a lot of viewers, especially those with unresolved family issues of their own. Kathy Bates’s doting mother is a riot, and even if Kevin Spacey’s dastardly efficiency expert bent on shutting down the North Pole is a little too much of a moustache-twirler, it is nice to see him mellowed by the Power of Goodness, like Bill Murray was in Scrooged. The CGI dwarfing effects used on normal-stature actors John Michael Higgins (Evan Almighty) and Chris “Ludacris” Bridges (Hustle & Flow) are a little creepy, but watching Higgins reenact a scene from Top Gun with unrequited crush Elizabeth Banks (Spider-Man 3) as Kelly McGillis to his Tom Cruise is priceless. Even if Dobkin rambles just a bit, he connects and resolves all the subplots very nicely (and pulls off a “famous brothers” support group scene brilliantly). Despite the movie’s giant gimmick, the movie easily trumps pale fare like Bee Movie, and is far more appropriate to bring the family to than over-jazzed spectacles like the violent Beowulf. [And we’ll let you write your own superlative Christmas pun tag line with which to close.] –Robert Newton