The Christ­mas Chronicles

Not all movies about Christ­mas have to pull off the mov­ing mes­sage of love and for­give­ness from It’s a Won­der­ful Life, and they do not nec­es­sar­i­ly have to be about that neb­u­lous thing called the ​‘Christ­mas spir­it’ either. The mak­ers of The Christ­mas Chron­i­cles under­stand this per­fect­ly. The film ful­fils its more rea­son­able ambi­tions beau­ti­ful­ly, even with child­like grace at times, remind­ing us that mak­ing a fun, enjoy­able Christ­mas film real­ly does not need to be so hard.

The film fol­lows 10-year-old Kate (Dar­by Camp) and her old­er broth­er Ted­dy (Judah Lewis) as they try to catch San­ta Claus (Kurt Rus­sell) in the act. But The Christ­mas Chron­i­cles is less about Christ­mas than it is about grief and grow­ing up. In the film’s open­ing, as Kate brows­es through home videos from her family’s Christ­mas past, she is long­ing for her father who recent­ly passed away while work­ing as a fire­fight­er. This will be the family’s first Christ­mas with­out him. But while watch­ing the videos, some­thing else catch­es Kate’s eye: freez­ing the image, she can see Santa’s hand putting a present under­neath the tree.

This is how Ted­dy, a teenag­er whose rebel­lious behav­iour verges on self-destruc­tion since his father’s pass­ing, finds him­self stuck in a clos­et with his lit­tle sis­ter, look­ing out for a big beard­ed man he does not even believe exists. But even the most cyn­i­cal of old­er broth­ers can­not deny being curi­ous when a man dressed as San­ta does show up.

Kate and Ted­dy dis­crete­ly hop in the sleigh ​‘parked’ out­side, but upon dis­cov­ery, Santa’s shock sends his entire deliv­ery sched­ule spi­ralling into chaos: the presents are lost, as is Santa’s mag­i­cal hat, and the trio must nav­i­gate the streets of Chica­go to retrieve them in time.

Kurt Russell’s turn as a Father Christ­mas more wacky than pater­nal is the film’s strongest asset – slim and agile, this St Nick makes a point of nev­er say­ing ​“ho ho ho.” Crack­ing jokes, cheer­ing up the kids and even bring­ing the house down in one gob­s­mack­ing musi­cal num­ber, Russell’s San­ta is noth­ing short of irre­sistible. His mad spon­tane­ity dic­tates the ludi­crous tone of the film: when he tells ran­dom strangers about their secret Christ­mas wish­es, their reac­tion is more often one of fear than of won­der, and his reck­less behav­iour even lands him a brief stint in jail.

Sev­er­al moments in The Christ­mas Chron­i­cles are watched in fear and amaze­ment. Ear­ly on, Kate almost falls to her death from the sleigh; in anoth­er scene, two cops pull their guns on Santa’s stolen car; and lat­er, a gang of thugs is attacked by a swarm of fur­ry lit­tle helpers. But toy­ing with our expec­ta­tions of what is suit­ably Christ­massy is pre­cise­ly what keeps the film fresh and excit­ing. In lieu of the arti­fi­cial awe and cheese of sea­son­al TV spots, Rus­sell and the film itself use their charm and down-to-earth cool to turn us all into believers.

Not every­thing works amid the chaos, but the story’s steady momen­tum is enough to car­ry it through. Final­ly, the film sticks the land­ing with an earnest and heart­felt con­clu­sion about real grow­ing pains, an end­ing that might have felt a lit­tle phoned in had it not come after nine­ty min­utes of pure delir­i­um. There is a method to sexy Santa’s madness.