The Year Without a Santa Claus
The Year Without a Santa Claus
G | 11 December 2006 (USA)
The Year Without a Santa Claus Trailers

Thoroughly disgruntled, Santa (Goodman) opts to take a year off from delivering presents, until a young man helps him rediscover the meaning of the holidays.

Reviews
ChicRawIdol A brilliant film that helped define a genre
Micah Lloyd Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.
Bessie Smyth Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.
Cody One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.
richard.fuller1 I've learned the best way to enjoy my niche of movies and TV shows is to let go of my loyalties, or broaden my expectations.So the Spiderman movies don't have Peter Parker paired up with Gwen STacy first. So they retell the origin to include Mary Jane Watson right from the start.I liked the movies.So Victor Von Doom wasn't along with the Fantastic Four when they gained their powers in the comic book.Enjoy the movie.Smallville is yet another good example. So Lana isn't a redhead, so Pete Ross was African-American.Clark met Lois for the first time in Metropolis, not Smallville.The show is fun.Essentially, this is what we must do with Year Without St. Nick, '06.The same way we must contend with the endless remakes of Miracle on 34th Street, and likewise, the remake of It's A Wonderful Life, called It Happened One Christmas with Marlo Thomas, Wayne Rogers and Cloris Leachman as the angel (Thomas was Mary Bailey, Rogers was George Hatch).Apparently I did watch Year Without, '06, at least once, cuz I recorded it and took out the commercials, but for the life of me I don't recall much of what was changed.Santa now does much of what Mrs. Claus did in the original (deals with the miser bros, meets Mother Nature and journeys with the elves), but Mrs. Claus this time must contend with the strangely added Chris Kattan stuff.The added fluff isn't fun. Even stranger is reading over the posts and how much everyone seems to enjoy the miser dancers more than anything else.Watch the movie with a grain of salt. Tell yourself it is a Bizarro world version, and imagine the Bizarro families gathered around the Bizarro TV and chuckling at their family Christmas classic, saying how much they hate it, meaning they like it.Headache yet? Well, you'll get that anyway when you watch this thing, so might as well go bizarro.
lulen14 OK, I kind of was actually going to get this from the library because I love the 1974 version, but after reading these comments, I guess it sucked. I mean, it does sound like a good idea to make a remake with real people, but if it is done inappropriately, then you might as well not make it. I mean, if you made it the good way, like with the same stuff as the first one, it would probably rock and not of gotten so many bad votes! I have never seen any of the actors that are in this movie, so I don't know. I might still get it so that I can just watch my favorite part, Snow Miser do his little song, which was preformed marvelously by Dick Shawn(R.I.P.).
Nakita Brown Yes, I gave this a 2. I wasn't able to pay attention to the whole thing, so I wanted to be fair.1) Was the dubbing SUPPOSED to be off during the film? If you have ever watched a kung-fu movie, then you have some idea of what the dubbing was like. In the beginning of the movie, the dubbing was twice as bad. The voice over work was TERRIBLE. I think film students could have done better after they've partied all night.2) The special effects were TERRIBLE. I swear, I could see wrinkles in a few of the back drops. The effects seemed to be very outdated. The elves didn't really have pointy ears either.3) Skimpy costumes. This was supposed to be a movie for kids, right? Well, black leather and bikinis don't really fit in a Christmas movie, I'm sorry. I would say it had no magic at all.The TV guide review said that this movie didn't capture the magic of the original. I would say it had no magic. I could go on, but I keep twitching when I think of the movie. It was very slow, and unwatchable. Watch it if you must, but it's not really so bad it's funny. It's just plain bad.
ramonsen I can understand why people wouldn't like this movie. It's nowhere near as good as the original, and at times was just downright awful. However! It had some good points, too, and I want to highlight the good and the bad.PRO:Sparky, the head elf guy, was powered by the pure spirit of awesomeness. Every scene he was in just made me giggle. I also found his character interesting; it's clear that he loves Santa and Christmas, but he loves himself as well, and doesn't know how to balance the two.Santa Claus, in the original YWSC, annoyed the heck outta me. He was whiny and irritating and just go away already. However, in the remake he seemed more human, and I could relate to him. I enjoyed that.In fact, all the characters seemed more human (with the exception of Jangle). It was really nice... sort of gave me a new understanding of the story.Mother Nature came in a close second as my favorite character in the film. She should've had more screen time.Iggy's mom should've had more screen time as well. Whoever played her did an excellent job. I really liked her character, despite the little I saw of her.Mythopolis! We should've seen more of it.EXTREME SANTA. My God, I managed to spit out the lemonade I was drinking. And Sparky in the suit... pure comedy gold. There were some very good tidbits in this movie... why wasn't the rest of the movie like this?CON:We all know that the only reason anyone watches YWSC is because of the Miser Brothers... but the remake just didn't do them justice. It tried to explore the other characters, but the Misers practically got the exact same lines they did in the original. Also, a boxing match? What the heck?Jingle and Jangle were downright annoying. Yay, comedy relief duo! No, it wasn't comedic, as a matter of fact. Jangle watched TV and acted black, and Jingle was the voice of reason. Personality? Character development? Who needs those when we have our interracial comedy relief duo? Certainly not this movie.Iggy was also annoying, and when watching the movie for the second time, I just skipped over all the scenes with him and his dad. Yes, it was a cute sub-plot, but it just dragged on and I didn't care.Speaking of dragging on... the ending... just kept... going... and going... I mean, I understand that they needed to tie up all the loose ends in the story, but I was just sitting there rolling my eyes and glancing at the clock.Well, in conclusion, the movie, at any given point, was either a)really good or b)really bad. There was no in-between, and this remake certainly did not stand up to the original. However, it's a fun little movie, with some very good parts that merit watching (EXTREME SANTA), and I'm sure kids would enjoy it.