The Year Without a Santa Claus (2006): Running commentary

So, NBC has remade the old animated Christmas special, The Year Without a Santa Claus, into a 2-hour live-action movie. Not sure this is a good idea, given that it was among the worst of the old Christmas specials. If you see that show again as an adult, you realize that the only good things about it were the Heat Miser and Snow Miser songs; the rest is crap. Rudolph and other Christmas specials still hold up much better than this one. So why remake this? And how are they gonna stretch an hourlong show into 2 hours?

So here goes my running commentary about the remake. Admittedly, I'm going in with a very skeptical attitude. On to the show:

8:04 pm: Oh boy. It's set in 2006. Santa's operation is all modern, high-tech, and commercialized. Looks like we're in for sledgehammer message movie about how much better the simpler, pre-video game world was. I can see the theme now, we've lost the true meaning of Christmas amid the modern commercialization of the holiday. Well, duh. Anyone not aware of that already? And look, already there's a cameo with one of those Queer Eye guys.

8:05 pm: Look, how clever. They worked in a brief clip of the original animated show.

8:09 pm: Pierced Goth leather chick elf? Sheesh.

8:15 pm: Dr. Laura has a cameo?!? Does she even still have a TV show, as they're claiming here?

8:21 pm: Chris Kattan's obnoxious and cliched PR/marketing-minded elf (Sparky) is proving, well, obnoxious.

8:25 pm: Well, at least they've kept the original Heat Miser and Snow Miser songs. Harvey Fierstein is Heat Miser; kinda hard to listen to his gravely voice sing. And he did Fiddler on the Roof on Broadway? Michael McKean as the Cold Miser has a better singing voice, at least. Also, in a nod to diversity, one of the two elves from the animated series is now black (Eddie Griffin). The other is played by the brother on My Name Is Earl.

8:28 pm: The Heat Miser's babes aren't bad. The bikini tops are a little surprising given that, I assume, this is aimed at a family audience. But I'm not complaining.

8:35 pm: Of course, when it comes to street clothes, Eddie Griffin's elf has to wear his baseball cap backwards and sport a stylish track suit, while the white elf dresses like a clueless white guy.

8:43 pm: They've referenced South Park. "Look how hip with the culture we filmmakers are!"

8:45 pm: Okay, so the Greek goddess Artemis is disguised as an overweight lesbian gym coach!?

8:48 pm: The amount of time between commercial breaks is plummeting.

8:52 pm: Both elves are playing Dance Dance Revolution in an arcade. At least they're not saying the white elf can't dance; both seem perfectly capable.

8:54 pm: Referencing Dr. Laura again?!

8:55 pm: Lots of bare midriffs among the Snow and Heat Misers' babes. Navels galore. Nice!

8:57 pm: Carol Kane as Mother Nature. Seems to work. They're even referencing the old commercials where it wasn't nice to lie to Mother Nature.

9:01 pm: Nice jiggly cheerleader Heat Miser babes.

9:12 pm: They just got Vixen out from animal control. Have to say, that sequence was actually okay. I'm not feeling so cynical about this remake anymore.

9:25 pm: I just realized, in the original show, Mrs. Claus is the one who went to South Town to look for the wayward elves. Yet here, Santa himself has gone after them. I guess they figured John Goodman (Santa) was the bigger star, and not Delta Burke (Mrs. Claus). No pun intended.

9:30 pm: This show is working a lot better now that they're focusing on the story and no longer trying to prove their hipness with modern pop culture references. And Chris Kattan's character hasn't shown up in a long time, another plus.

9:36 pm: Huh, I think the communication screen the Miser brothers are using looks the same as in the original animated show.

9:37 pm: Oh great, back to Chris Kattan's soulless capitalistic corporate takeover subplot.

9:41 pm: "Sparky was my slave name! I'm Extreme Santa now!" Yes, those were Chris Kattan's lines.

9:42 pm: Geez, again with Dr. Laura?? If they used Dr. Phil, that would still be annoying, but at least it'd be more relevant!

9:50 pm: Uh oh, I think someone's about to learn a lesson...

9:51 pm: ...and the lesson, unsurprisingly, is commercial development, bad; appreciate what you have, good. Didn't Charlie Brown already teach us something similar 40 years ago?

9:58 pm: Looks like someone used the Paint Daub filter in Photoshop to do the The End shot (as well as the opening credits).

Well, that ended better than it started. A little cheesy, but that's to be expected in a show like this. The cheese factor could have been far worse, so that was a relief. The whole modern corporation angle felt forced and cliched, though, like Sparky's attempt to remake Santa as a thin Tony Hawkesque figure. They were smart to limit the musical numbers to the classic Miser songs only. And yet the Miser scenes were a little flat, though the babes were a nice addition (and, I must add, not at all flat).

In conclusion, I think this broadcast proved two things:

1) Don't try to shoehorn in a bunch of pop culture references to help fill out your running time.

2) I need a date.