Xmas: 'The Santa Clause 2' (2002) Dir. Michael Lembeck

Tim Allen, Eric Lloyd, Elizabeth Mitchell, Wendy Crewson, Judge Reinhold, Liliana Mumy, David Krumholtz, Spencer Breslin, Aisha Tyler and Peter Boyle

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Eight years after the original, Tim Allen returns to expand the lore and adventure behind 'The Santa Clause' which works in places, not in others...

Santa Claus / Scott Calvin (Allen) is finding it difficult to split time between his festive duties and being a father to Charlie (Lloyd) who finds his way onto the naughty list.

To make things worse, there is another clause overlooked in the original contract; the Mrs Clause, in which Santa needs to find a wife or he will stop being Santa.

Scott forms a bond with Charlie’s principal, Carol Newman (Mitchell). Facing a deadline to win Carol over, Scott must also help Charlie and save Christmas...

A worthy sequel to the 1994 original, this time heaping on cartoonish comedy and slapstick, and featuring more fantasy and magic than the first time around.

We have the manic, comical mishaps at the North Pole featuring an over-zealous Toy Santa taking over Santa’s workshop coupled with a more heartfelt setting in Chicago as Scott tries to win over a frosty school principal and fix his family.

This film works best with heart, and the segments with Scott and his family trying to repair the stress of keeping a secret like “My Dad Is Santa”, and as he has fun with the likeable Elizabeth Mitchell to woo her over, are great to watch. They are witty, but humane and focus on just what you’d want from a Christmas film; heart and family and relationships, sprinkled with discovering the real meaning of Christmas. 

It falls flat cut with the North Pole chaos, with an over-acting Tim Allen as a dastardly Toy Santa who takes over the workshop to effectively cancel Christmas. These moments are a little TOO silly with the overall story, and it detracts from the grounding of things. When both stories come together, it provides a few entertaining moments as the elves battle the toy soldiers, and a mini-revolution takes place. The added danger and confrontation to stand it apart from the first is welcome, it’s just handled a little sloppy.

Added with very irritating reindeer who now talk (with a god-awful Jar Jar Binks-esque voice) and fart, this makes me cringe also as it seems to lower the standard set in the first for something a little more stupid, and it doesn’t really need to do that to be effective, as we see in moments here.

This does the job and continues a story with all the main cast returning 8 years later for a decent sequel that tries it’s best but falls under the slapstick at times.

'The Santa Clause 2' is a Walt Disney Pictures production