THE CHRISTMAS CHRONICLES: Kurt Russell Shines In Lame But Harmless Holiday Comedy
The filmmakers behind The Christmas Chronicles should thank their lucky stars for Kurt Russell. Without the iconic star’s gonzo performance as Jolly Old St. Nick himself, I doubt anyone would be talking about this movie. The family-friendly tale would be destined for a long life of anonymity, much like the dozens of other Christmas movies that find their way to Netflix or the bargain bin at Walmart each year.
Directed by Clay Kaytis and written by Matt Lieberman (with a story credit for Safe House scribe David Guggenheim), this is boilerplate holiday fare, seemingly designed in a laboratory to elicit mirthless chuckles from some viewers and exasperated groans from others. Not only is the basic plot a sluggish assortment of recycled tropes, but individual lines of dialogue can be predicted with such astonishing ease that it’s almost a little embarrassing. While I will definitely make some excuses for The Christmas Chronicles, the blatant pandering of the entire affair cannot possibly be overstated.
The Quest to Save Christmas
But at least there’s Kurt Russell. Well, he gets there eventually. The first act is spent establishing the lives of Kate (Darby Camp) and Teddy Pierce (Judah Lewis), two kids in Lowell, Massachusetts who have just suffered an enormous loss. The film begins with a series of Pierce family Christmas celebrations captured on home video, where we learn a very crucial bit of information: Kate and Teddy’s father (Oliver Hudson) is a firefighter. So let’s be real, you don’t need me to tell you what happens next in a movie like this.
This is Teddy and Kate’s first Christmas without their father around, and their mother (Kimberly Williams-Paisley) is too busy and overworked to make it special for them. Young Kate still believes in the magic of Christmas, hopping up and down with excitement over Christmas cookies and even filming a video to send to Santa. For Teddy, things are a bit different. He hangs out with a group of wannabe criminals, who all steal cars and do extremely illegal things all day. Y’know, as teenagers do. He’s the perfect picture of a troubled youth (to the extent that it’s almost comical), and to make matters worse, his sister witnesses his criminal misdeeds one day.
When Teddy and Kate fight over a tape of a carjacking, they accidentally find something else – video footage of what might be Santa Claus. To prove it, they decide to put aside their disagreements and pull an all-nighter, all in the hopes of catching Kris Kringle in the act. Turns out, yes, he’s real, and before they know it, Teddy and Kate are flying on a sleigh carried by eight reindeer. Then Santa sees them. And Christmas turns to chaos.
The Never-Ending Christmas Clichés
Somehow, this mismatched trio ends up in Chicago after Santa’s sleigh crashes, where they begin a journey to save Christmas. As you’d expect, the task of saving the holiday spirit from dropping too low is a monumentally silly one, involving gadgets, gizmos, and elves galore. It’s a family movie through and through, so it has to maintain the charm and mystery of Santa while simultaneously creating technological rationales for his magical abilities for the skeptics in the audience. The adventure aspect is passable enough, and I admired the Chicago setting for its adherence to Christmas movie tradition.
The core emotional hook is where things go really wrong. The strained relationship between Teddy and Kate is a rough foundation for the entire story, and the dead parent trope feels like an excuse to trot out easy holiday platitudes. The banter between Teddy and Kate is really strained, and I felt like I was drowning in a sea of familiarity for the first 20 minutes of the movie. It just feels so hamfisted, so perfectly orchestrated for everyone sitting at home to go, “Well, isn’t that just so nice!”
Plus, when a major part of your core formula involves lines of dialogue ripped from famous Christmas songs, I feel like that’s a knock against you right away.
Kurt Russell (Almost) Saves the Day
Anyways, thank the lord for Kurt Russell. When he finally shows up in his Santa get-up, every adult in the audience will breathe a sigh of relief. Judah Lewis and Darby Camp are perfectly solid as Teddy and Kate, respectively, but they’re often stuck working with the more serious aspects of the material. On the flip side, Russell gets to go all in as a charismatic, gruff Santa, who subverts your expectations of the world-famous figure but still keeps that twinkle in his eye. With his quick wit and full commitment to the very ridiculous material, Russell elevates a potential disaster to the minimum level of watchability just with his presence alone.
And then he goes further than that. The Christmas Chronicles is very earnest and dopey, but it also plays as a silly fish-out-of-water tale. Watching Russell‘s omniscient Santa gallop around Chicago is often quite fun, and the strangeness of the tale culminates with an insane musical number inside a prison that you just have to witness for yourself. Arrested for acting like a crazy person on Christmas night (the cop doesn’t believe he’s Santa), Kringle ends up playing with the E Street Band in a splashy, outrageous setpiece. It’s utterly preposterous and kind of surreal. It also might just be the only truly good scene in the movie.
The Christmas Chronicles: Conclusion
With its easy messaging and forced dialogue, The Christmas Chronicles is, without question, an exceptionally lame movie. It’s like if someone took a dozen Christmas dad jokes and Hallmark cards and swirled them together into a feature-length story. That being said, it is also completely inoffensive and harmless. I cringed and rolled my eyes, yes, but this is not an agonizing experience.
Can I recommend The Christmas Chronicles? Well, no. But if you’re forced to watch it with your family this holiday season, hold on for that Kurt Russell musical number and you’ll be just fine.
What did you think of The Christmas Chronicles? What’s your favorite Kurt Russell film? Let us know in the comments below!
The Christmas Chronicles was released globally on Netflix on November 22.
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