Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town 1970

[5.9/10] The idea of a Santa Claus origin story is a good one. The Santa mythos is mostly centered in the present. Kris Kringle lives in the North Pole, partners with elves in his workshop, delivers toys via his flying reindeer, etc. etc. etc. But how all of this got started is much fuzzier in the popular consciousness. So using that blank space to craft a fun narrative to answer kids’ questions about how Old Saint Nick got started has plenty of potential.

There’s just not much to Santa Claus Is Coming to Town beyond that sort of mechanical gap-filling. Why does Santa wear a red suit? Because his adoptive family did. Why does he go down chimneys? Because his chatty penguin friend told him to? Why does he use flying reindeer? Because his winter warlock buddy gave him some magic feed.

Is any of this bad or implausible (at least by magical fable standards)? Absolutely not. But it’s all just sort of random, as though the Fred Astaire-voiced mailman who’s spinning this yarn is just making it all up as he goes along. Maybe I’m spoiled by having watched the transcendent film Klaus again this year, which traffics in the same idea but reaches infinitely higher heights. But none of the explanations for Santa’s origins here are meaningful. They’re just some miscellaneous stuff that happens to some dude.

There’s a couple of exceptions. For one, we learn that Kris Kringle delivers toys at night because Sombertown, the grim and gray berg where he tries to pass out his family’s wares, has outlawed playthings for generic bad guy reasons. So he has to hand out the spoils to the town’s kids under cover of darkness. That's fine enough, but his rivalry with Burgermeister Meisterburger, the grumpy, comically jerky head of the town, is flat and pretty dumb. Their standoff, ostensibly the impetus for so many of his choices on the road to becoming the legendary gift giver of Xmas eve, but Burgermeister just sort of fades away at the end, without much in the way of real challenge or anything but goofy slapstick between them.

For another, we discover that the first Xmas tree arose from the Winter Warlock using the last bit of his magic to brighten up the “forest as a cathedral” for the wedding between Mr. and Mrs. Claus. It’s a sweet explanation, and ties into the interesting naturalism bent of the piece. Kris Kringle is at home in the forest, having befriended the woodland critters and adopted their ways, giving him a leg up over Burgermeister. (I’ll admit, him learning his famous “Ho ho ho” from a seal’s grunt is a cheesy but winning choice.) The sense of him being of nature, with all its lush wintry splendor, in contrast to the brutal drabness of Burgemeister’s Sombertown, is something, however sleight it may be.

But Jessica, Santa’s love interest, is a dud. They fall in love because he...gives her a doll? Charitably, she recognizes some inherent goodness in him or whatever. But she is a one-note caricature whom we’re supposed to appreciate simply because one day she becomes Mrs. Claus. Whatever.

Then there’s the strange artifacts of a film made fifty years ago that play as head-scratchers to a modern day audience. First and foremost, there’s something really uncomfortable about Kris Kringle showing up as a stranger to a bunch of kids, telling them to sit in his lap and kiss them if they want a toy, and then asking them to keep their doors unlocked at night so that he can sneak in. I know America hadn't quite hit the “stranger danger” panic yet when this special was released, but it still seems downright bizarre to modern eyes.

Likewise, while the film is mostly a bunch of miscellaneous anachronisms, there’s also something somewhat uncomfortable about a German dictator using his goons to invade people’s homes, round-up outcasts, and burn their possessions for not fitting with his image of the town. Granted, the aesthetic is more World War I Germany than World War II Germany, but it’s still a strange sort of vibe for an all-ages stop motion special.

Then, of course, there’s the bizarre, quasi-psychedelic interlude where Jessica (the future Mrs. Claus) waxes rhapsodic about (I think?) her appreciation for Kris and his philosophy? The song is forgettable, but the images are surreal, which at least gives the moment a little flavor. That's a good thing, since the trademark Rankin Bass puppet designs seem worse for wear here, with janky movements, an uncanny narrator, hair that looks creepily real in contrast to the plastic doll look of the people who have it.

The only other mildly interesting element of this one is the Winter Warlock. He has the best song in the piece (“Put One Foot in Front of the Other”), a neat design (which, along with his communicative penguin friend, seems like a likely inspiration for Adventure Time’s Ice King), and a minor but endearing transformation from seasonal villain to friendly helper. It’s not much, and barely fits with the Santa mythos, but is one of the better original additions to the piece.

But at best, Santa Claus Is Coming to Town is a patchwork quilt of random bits and bobs cobbled together. There’s not really a point to the story beyond “Hey, ain’t Santa nice?” with a heap of pat explanations for how he ended up with the iconic parts of his persona that makes Solo: A Star Wars Story seem restrained by comparison. If you want a film that explores Santa’s history with more artistry, cleverness, and poignance, don’t bother with this empty yuletide mishmash, and just cue up Klaus instead.