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Word: fred (lookup in dictionary) (lookup stats)
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...child could predict what happens: Fred will learn the spirit of Christmas from his bro, and he'll use his street smarts to help Santa survive in the modern age. And if I were to tell you that, before going to the North Pole, Fred befriends a young black kid from an orphanage... But no, it's all too painfully predictable. Halfway through the movie, I gave up hoping it would display a modicum of logic, a sentence of sense, a subordinate clause of sanity. Besides, as Chico Marx so acutely observed, "There ain't so sanity clause...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: The Claus That Won't Fly | 11/11/2007 | See Source »

...have a scenario for the never-to-be-made Fred Claus II: the elves unionize, realizing that they get paid even less than the 12-year-old Chinese girls who paint lead onto American kids' toys. If Willie and his pals were to call a work stoppage this Dec. 23, the labor movement could score its first quick victory in decades...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: The Claus That Won't Fly | 11/11/2007 | See Source »

...kids' 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...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: The Claus That Won't Fly | 11/11/2007 | See Source »

...Young Fred had been his parents' joy until little Nick came along. They immediately found constant fault with Fred, even as they cheered everything the baby did: giving away his presents to needier kids, jumping down a chimney, chopping down a fir tree that his big brother happened to be perched in. Momma Claus (Kathy Bates) is the same kind of ego-destroyer as Steve Carell's mother is in Dan in Real Life. Her ragging on Fred, while Nick becomes a hero to children every December, leads Fred to spectacular resentment.? In a scene that's way too "ouch...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: The Claus That Won't Fly | 11/11/2007 | See Source »

...Fred is one of at least four movies this year - the others being Mr. Brooks, You Kill Me and Things We Lost in the Fire - that send the main character to an AA-type addiction meeting. This group here is Siblings Anonymous, and gets a few laughs from the appearance of underachieving brothers Frank Stallone, Stephen Baldwin and Roger Clinton. (I think I know where the members of the striking Writers Guild will be heading after their time on the picket line. They'll be attending a Siblings Anonymous meeting, when they're not at Children's Anonymous...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: The Claus That Won't Fly | 11/11/2007 | See Source »

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