Word: pole
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...days before Christmas, and Fred, having exiled himself from the North Pole, is now in Chicago working as a repo man, a sort of sub-prime-rate enforcer. He enrages the people whose holiday he's ruining and exasperates his meter-maid inamorata with big ideas never fulfilled, dinner dates blown off. Plying a Salvation Army scam, Fred lands in jail and is forced to call his brother Nick, a.k.a. Santa, to go his bail. That brings him to the North Pole, the prodigal son carrying a grudge as big as Santa's sack of gifts...
...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...
...Every gift handmade by elves." That's the motto at the North Pole. Just about everyone but the Claus family security force is undersize. Midgets (mostly from Russia) man the assembly lines. The village's Security Force comprises three dwarfs who look like Munchkinland's Lollipop Guild, but tougher; they're the Blackwater of little people...
...love with a normal-size blond cutie and, after some romantic blind alleys, winds up with her. Parents are advised to ignore their more precocious kids' questions about how that little thing goes into that big thing. But they may have to tangle with workplace issues on the North Pole assembly line. Either the elves are making the generic toys (a bike, a sled, a dreidel) that few kids ask for these days, or Santa is deep into copyright infrinement...
...character. The undercoat of sadness in Giamatti's performance has a number of explanation. Maybe it's because he read the script; or because as Richardson uncharitably reveals, "He's a closet eater." Or maybe Santa has heard the news about global warming, and is anxiously anticipates the North Pole's first snowless Christmas...