The Christmas Chronicles (2018) – Review
3rd December 2018Netflix has released its own original festive film this year. Kurt Russell stars as the cookie eating, milk drinking, jolly Santa Claus.
It follows Kate (Darby Camp) trying to catch Santa in the once-a-year act of delivering presents, after viewing a promising piece of footage from her mother – Claire (Kimberly Williams-Paisley) and late father – Doug (Oliver Hudson) that reveals a tiny portion of St. Nicholas in action.
With the help from her older brother, Teddy (Judah Lewis), they find Father Christmas doing his yearly job. However, shortly after, Christmas goes into a meltdown as the actions of Teddy and Kate cause the sleigh to break away from the reindeer and Santa’s sack to go missing in the middle of Chicago – risking the entirety of the festive season.
Santa is unable to deliver presents throughout the ordeal and the race is on to save the Christmas Spirit from vanishing.
The film’s dialogue is full of puns throughout and Russell makes numerous pop-culture references to different subjects such as Star Wars and Christmas adverts – he doesn’t seem too happy with the way he is portrayed on billboards and soda cans. The story sees Kate and Teddy help Santa rescue Christmas, trying to fix their initial mistakes that brought them into this, while also dealing with internal demons.
Overall, this film is a great standalone Christmas film, although I feel it takes some inspiration from other festive films such as Elf (2003) and Tim Allen’s The Santa Clause (1994).
A must watch over the festive season – if you have a Netflix subscription.
