Becoming Santa (2015)

Not to be confused with the documentary from 2011, this is a fun TV movie that covers familiar ground (don't they all?) but does so with a lot of fun to offset the usual overdose of sweetness.

Laura Bell Bundy stars as Holly Claus, a lovely woman with a surname that hasn't made her boyfriend/fiance (Connor, played by Jesse Hutch) wonder more about her parents. In fact, he remains comically oblivious when they finally go to meet Mr & Mrs Claus (Michael Gross and Meredith Baxter, respectively), despite them both looking pretty much exactly as you'd expect THE Mr & Mrs Claus to look. It eventually becomes clear that the man who marries Holly is expected to take over the family business, which looks set to be disastrous as Connor attempts to pass a number of tests without realising their significance. He also has to contend with a pesky ex-boyfriend on the scene (Jack Frost, played by Tony Cavalero).

Written by Barbara Kymlicka (who has a number of these things under her belt) and directed by Christie Will Wolf (who also has decent back catalogue in this field, including at least one other working from a script by Kymlicka), Becoming Santa is a very good dollop of Christmas cheer. Yes, it's worth reminding readers once again that I judge Christmas TV movies a lot more generously than I judge many other films, but that shouldn't detract from the fact that a few good Christmas TV movies manage to be genuinely good. Like this one.

It has everything you want from a Christmas film - Santa, elves, romance, toys, reindeer, magic, cookies - and it also has very enjoyable performances from all of the leads. Bundy and Hutch make an appealing couple, Gross is effective enough as Santa, Baxter is very good, and Cavalero is just the right mix of amusing and dastardly in the role of Jack Frost.

Highlights include the trials to become Santa, the sneaky undermining from Jack Frost, the naivete of Connor, and the pleasant sprinkling of magic throughout that keeps this firmly in the realm of easygoing Christmas fantasy family fare (not to be confused with the Christmas fantasy non-family fare that can be found just by searching for the likes of "Santa's sexy little helper", for example - so I have heard *ahem*).

I would certainly rewatch this one, even without being forced into it, and I will look forward to anything else that stars Bundy and Hutch (who seems to relish this kind of role more than bing stuck in some dire Steven Seagal vehicle), who both make for some of the most appealing leads I have seen in the holiday TV movie season this year.

Here is a large selection of Christmas movies to enjoy.
And American elves can pick the same set up here.

7/10

A Dangerous Man (2009)

Steven Seagal plays a guy who used to be in the Special Forces. He plays a guy wrongly accused of a crime, which leads to him losing all that he holds dear to him. He plays a guy willing to help others by kicking the ass of anyone who looks at him with a slight squint. Yes, this is another Steven Seagal movie in which he falls back on the same sketched out plot that he has been rehashing, with varying degrees of success, for the last 30 years or so. To give any more time or space over to describing the plot would just insult the intelligence of both you and me (and I don't claim to be that intelligent in the first place).

Despite the fact that it's just more of the same, A Dangerous Man is yet another of the more recent Seagal movies that ends up being a big surprise - mainly due to it not being a pile of steaming dung. Oh no, this time out we once again get plenty of action and a helping of bone-crunching violence to make everything more enjoyable. And it does the job. Seagal may never reclaim the physique he once had but he has at least gone back to a place that allows him to convincingly show off some decent martial arts moves without calling upon a stunt double every 5 seconds.

Writer-director Keoni Waxman (who also directed The Keeper) puts in plenty of risible nonsense but it's all par for the course for anyone who has watched at least one Seagal movie since the start of the 21st century. The mixed nationalities of all the cast members, the fact that Seagal always seems to get a younger girlfriend with each movie (to paraphrase from City Slickers . . . . pretty soon the guy will be dating sperm), the wise ways of our leading man, etc.

Seagal is as Seagal-like as usual in the lead role but Jesse Hutch, Vitaly Kravchenko and Jerry Wasserman don't do too badly alongside the other, varied, supporting cast members.

Easy to watch and mildly enjoyable, I was about to rate this film even higher than average and then realised that I was just overcome with relief after the many other Seagal movies I have endured over the years.

5/10.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/A-Dangerous-Man-DVD/dp/B002MGJSTY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1331334322&sr=8-1