THE CHRISTMAS CHRONICLES: PART TWO
US, 2020, 112 minutes, Colour.
Kurt Russell, Goldie Hawn, Darby Camp, Julian Dennison, Jahzir Bruno, Darlene Love, Tyrese Gibson, Sonny Suljic, Judah Lewis.
Directed by Chris Columbus.
The Christmas Chronicles was a successful 2018 Christmas entertainment. While it focused on Santa Claus, the work at the North Pole, introducing Mrs Clause, it was set in the contemporary 21st-century technical and social media world, including prison spell for Santa Claus.
The focus was a family, especially the two youngsters who had lost their father, played by Judah Lewis Darby Camp.
Part Two is in the same vein except that most of the action takes place at the North Pole. We are introduced to the family who are on holidays in Cancun, Mexico, the children’s mother planning to marry a widower with a young son (and, for the American audience, interesting because the marriage will be mixed race). Kate, the daughter, resents the impending marriage, still remembering her father. Her older brother is more content. And the prospective husband has a young son.
In the meantime, there is a background of a rebellious elf, Besnickel at the South Pole,played by Julian Dennison (Plains, Hunt for the Wilderpeople, sometimes with his New Zealand iccint). He has plans to disrupt Santa’s mission by finding a true believer in Santa Claus and turning her against him. He chooses Kate and abducts her and Jack, the little boy, but they find themselves Actually in the North Pole, rescued from the snow by Santa Claus.
Once again, Kurt Russell play Santa Claus with boisterous and humorous enthusiasm. And a lot of the time is given this time to Mrs Claus, played by Goldie Hawn who, in real life, has been with Kurt Russell for decades. She looks and sounds much the same as she did all those decades ago!
The children and the audience get a tour of the North Pole (where the film Elf is screening!), Seeing all the elves, listening to the Elvish language, seeing them making the toys, especially with Lego.
However, Belsnickel infiltrates, releases a powder which turns all the elves vicious, steals the star of Christmas (which, in flashbacks, is explained as getting its light from the Star of Bethlehem, and a dramatisation of St Nicholas and his gifts, going to the North Pole and becoming Santa Claus).
Belsnickel is more malicious, getting a savage animal to wound one of the reindeer, Santa and Kate going along as an expedition to Turkey so that the elves there can make a new star, bring it back home, pursued byBelsnickel with all kinds of devices for fights in the sky. In the meantime, Jack is sent on a mission to a mountaintop to get a plant which will be able to revert the malice of the elves. (In the meantime, Bad Santa is screening at the cinema!)
The film devises a technique so that Kate, mourning her father, is able to meet him in a time lapse in the Logan airport in Boston when he was still young and they have a conversation and a farewell. Kate learns a lesson: the Christmas spirit is not where one is but with the people one is with. Needless to say, happy ending all round, the singing of.Oh Christmas Tree in the North Pole as well as on the Mexican beach.
This is obviously not a film for adults exercising critical analysis – it is a film for children who have had much less experience of movies and are discovering the variety of Christmas movies.
