Word: claus
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...Santa on Christmas Eve, moviegoers had hopes for this one. Vince Vaughn and David Dobkin, the star and director of Wedding Crashers, reunite for a holiday comedy scripted by Dan Fogelman (one of the screenwriters of the Pixar movie Cars). Supporting Vaughn as the black sheep of the Claus clan and Paul Giamatti as Santa, the picture's got three Academy Award winners: Kathy Bates as their mother, Rachel Weisz as Fred's ill-used girlfriend and Kevin Spacey as a corporate type threatening to close down Santa's workshop. Giamatti and Miranda Richardson, who plays his wife, have been...
...Which would make Fred Claus the third comedy-star vehicle to tank this fall, after Ben Stiller's The Heartbreak Kid and Owen Wilson's The Darjeeling Limited. In this movie, the usual shaggy energy that makes Vaughn so appealing - he's a louche cannon - is hardly evident. The actor has to be surly, then sanctified, and neither plays to his strengths. Will Ferrell could play it cute-innocent in Elf; here, Vaughn just looks snowed under...
...pillow only after the first tooth.) Conversion is the fate of every marplot in a movie like this. So Spacey, who played Lex Luthor in last year's Superman Returns, gets a Superman cape for Christmas. In-jokes and cross-marketing (the same company, Warner Bros., released both Fred Claus and Superman Returns) are about as sophisticated as this movie gets...
...must have seemed like a good idea: take a familiar tale—the Santa Claus story—and breathe some life into it by means of talented actors. Cast box office king Vince Vaughn as the protagonist, throw in a little Paul Giamatti, Kathy Bates, and Rachel Weisz to add some Oscar cred, and get Kevin Spacey to play the villain. You’ve gotta get Spacey to play the villain. The man put Gwyneth Paltrow’s head in a box in “Se7en,” so he’s sure...
Paul Giamatti as Santa Claus and Vince Vaughn as his loser brother Fred, in a holiday jape from the director of Wedding Crashers and one of the writers of Cars: that should be funny. Except, no. The laughs come too rarely, the sentiment is tricked up, and this attempt at a Christmas perennial wilts faster than a cheap balsam choked with tinsel...