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Apparently either Vince Vaughn really loves the holidays or he’s bucking to take over Tim Allen’s dubious distinction as the actor who’s starred in the most Christmas- themed movies. As I write this review, Vaughn’s latest foray, Four Christmases, just made an impressive debut in theaters, perfectly timed with the video release of last year’s Fred Claus. Now I enjoy an entertaining and amusing Christmas movie as much as anyone, and I have several personal favorites that I like to curl up and watch with a big glass of eggnog this time of year; among them are: Christmas Vacation, Scrooged, The Ref, and A Christmas Story starring Vaughn’s longtime friend Peter Billingsley who, come to think of it, also appears in Four Christmases and previously in Jon Favreau’s Elf. But looking at Vaughn’s grinning mug on the BD cover art of Fred Claus, I also wonder if he might be trying a bit too hard to capture some of that Christmas movie magic.

I will readily admit that the premise is a grabber. Apparently our own mythical Santa Claus (Paul Giamatti) has a long unknown sibling named Fred (Vince Vaughn) who had to grow up in the shadow of his saintly and selfless little brother Nicholas. The movie opens with Nicholas’ birth and older brother Fred immediately taking to his new baby brother, promising to always be there for him. Of course, as “Saint Nick” begins to mature and grow up, he starts doing things that inadvertently upstage Fred and draws his parents’ attention away from the elder sibling. During a birthday party Nicholas takes all his presents and brings them to a less fortunate child… even the personalized book Fred has made for him. When Fred tries to show off the new clothes he has made, Nicholas comes bounding down the chimney announcing he’s found a new way to get into the house. The final straw comes as Fred is sitting in his favorite tree talking to his bird friend, Chirp Chirp, when Nicholas comes along and cuts down the tree, sending Fred crashing to the ground and Chirp Chirp flying away forever. It would be years before the two would even talk again.

Flash forward to present day. We are informed by the narrator that when Santa Claus officially became “Saint Nicholas,” his wife and immediate family were all permanently frozen in time and would never age. Of course, Santa has lorded over his ever-growing North Pole empire all these years and continues to make his annual trips around the world, delivering presents to all the good little girls and boys. Fred, meanwhile, has taken on a gig that is the polar opposite (pun intended); he works as a repo man, repossessing merchandise from people who don’t pay their bills. When we first meet the adult Fred, he’s reclaiming a flatscreen TV from a little girl’s bedroom. Fred seems to be living life on the edge, always looking out for another way to make some fast cash. A smooth talker looking out for his own self-interests, he struggles to maintain a relationship with his girlfriend Wanda (Rachel Weisz) while attempting to raise $50,000 to set up an off-track betting business in downtown Chicago. When a scheme to steal money from a group of sidewalk Salvation Army Santas goes horribly awry and he ends up in jail, Fred is forced to call the one person he knows won’t refuse to bail him out: his saintly brother Nick.

Noticeably happy to hear from Fred, Nick agrees to send the $5,000 to bail him out. But Fred also hits up his little brother for the $50,000 he needs to open his gambling establishment. Initially reluctant, Nick finally offers Fred the opportunity to earn the $50,000 by coming to the North Pole and helping him get ready for Christmas, to which Fred agrees. While packing for his trip to the North Pole, Fred gets a visit from a little boy named “Slam” (Bobb’e J. Thompson) who lives in his building. Slam said he asked Santa for a puppy for Christmas, to which Fred cynically tells him not to depend on others for the things he wants.

Soon after, head elf Willie (John Michael Higgins) arrives in Santa’s sleigh to take Fred to his brother in the North Pole. Fred is thrilled to see his brother and he enthusiastically shows him around his massive North Pole base of operations. Nick puts Fred on assignment reviewing children’s files and stamping them as either “naughty” or “nice” in preparation for December 25th. Santa is a bit nervous about meeting his deadline this year since last Christmas he barely completed his route in time. In addition, the powers that be are sending an efficiency expert to the North Pole to check up on his operations.

When efficiency expert Clyde Northcut (Kevin Spacey) arrives the next day, he informs Nick and his wife, Annette (Miranda Richardson), that they are thinking of automating the entire Christmas operation and cutting Santa out of the picture altogether. As such, it is imperative that they not get three strikes before this Christmas, otherwise Santa’s workshop will be shut down for good. Unable to divulge this information to anyone – including Fred and his elves – Santa struggles to keep things running as smoothly as possible. Of course, Fred is only interested in shaking things up within the confines of the monotonous work that needs to be done. First Fred distracts the elves by changing the endless loop of “Here Comes Santa Claus” playing in the workshop to Elvis’ “Rubberneckin,’” which immediately counts as strike one against Santa. Clyde later sabotages some of the naughty/nice records Fred has been working and blames it on him, resulting in strike two. Frustrated with the situation, Fred notices his neighbor Slam has now topped Santa’s naughty list, having been sent to an orphanage where he acts out against everyone. Feeling responsible for what he said to him, Fred begins stamping all the children’s files as “nice,” which angers Nick since he’ll never be able to deliver toys to every child and meet his deadline. The brothers end up in a vicious snowball fight that results in Nick putting his back out. Disappointed with Clyde’s underhanded ways and his mother’s relentless pleas for him to be more like his brother, Fred selfishly leaves with his $50,000 paycheck and a special gift from Nick.

Returning home, Fred opens Nick’s gift and finds a birdhouse along with a note apologizing to him for cutting down his tree and scaring off Chirp, Chirp. Confused by this gesture, Fred attends a Siblings Anonymous meeting with such famous brothers as Stephen Baldwin, Frank Stallone, and Roger Clinton. He learns that they all had their own crosses to bear. Will Fred respond? Will he and his brother discover the reason for Clyde’s animosity? Will Christmas be saved? Is this a holiday movie?

While the movie is a bit hokey at times, many of the A-list actors tend to bring a little more class and panache to the proceedings. Casting Giamatti as Saint Nick/Santa Claus was a brilliant move; he brings just the right amount of frustration and paranoia to the scenes where his life’s work seems threatened. Kevin Spacey is appropriately cold and humorless in his obvious bad guy role, attempting to rid the world of Santa Claus. There’s also some great supporting work from the likes of John Michael Higgins as Willie (although the digital effects to reduce him to “elf” size were more than a bit distracting). And Kathy Bates is in a glorified cameo role as Mother Claus who keeps fawning over her little Nicholas while constantly criticizing Fred. Ironically enough, the one underwhelming performance is from Vince Vaughn, who seems once again to be playing a variation of himself. Granted, no one does his manic, rapid-fire delivery better, but he seems of late to have settled into a groove of doing these endless riffs on his Trent Walker character from Swingers. I’d just like to see him stretch a bit more as he did in Into the Wild and Return to Paradise.

The Video: How Does The Disc Look?

The film’s original 2.40:1 aspect ratio is presented in a very pleasing high definition transfer compressed with the AVC video CODEC. This BD offers a vibrant and colorful image, appropriate to the subject matter, without any noticeable blemishes or compression artifacts. Color balance is particularly impressive, especially the abundance of red, which remains consistent with nary a sign of bleed or smearing. Although some scenes do take on a three- dimensional quality, others fall a bit short and appear flat, mostly due to a lack of contrast between colors. (This isn’t a technical flaw; it’s just that many scenes are either shot outdoors against a snow-white background or at night against a star- studded sky.) But close-up shots reveal an incredible amount of sharpness and detail, such as the individual whiskers in Santa’s beard. Even in the long overhead shots of the North Pole, each and every twinkling Christmas light is visible as the elves scurry about on the street below. Black levels also remained deep and dark, while flesh tones all looked natural and nicely-rendered. Overall, a very consistent and detailed video presentation.

The Audio: How Does The Disc Sound?

Although Warner presents Fred Claus with a very good compressed Dolby Digital 5.1 track, I just had to dock a full point off the score for not including a lossless track, like Dolby TrueHD. This being a relatively new title, there’s no reason why it shouldn’t come with a lossless track. That being said, the Dolby Digital 5.1 audio is good and serves the film well. The movie doesn’t have much in the way of ambient effects or big musical pieces to fill out the surround channels, so it remains essentially a dialogue-driven, center-channel experience. When directional effects are needed, they do chime in nicely among the front channels and in the rear channels. The subwoofer gets a little exercise during Fred’s big around-the- world trip at the climax, when the sounds of Santa’s sleigh provide some nice bottom end and surround content. Christophe Beck’s original score is also given a nice soundstage through all six channels, along with the aforementioned use of Elvis’ “Rubberneckin’,” which reverberates through the rear channels within the confines of Santa’s workshop. Overall, a good audio presentation.

There are optional Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks in French, Spanish, Japanese, and Portuguese. The optional subtitles are in English, French, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Portuguese.

The Supplements: What Goodies Are There?

It will be like Christmas morning for fans of Fred Claus with all the bonus material provided on this disc. The ample collection of supplementary material begins with a feature-length running audio commentary track by director David Dobkin, who flies solo for his session. Dobkin strikes me as a likeable guy who has helmed a couple of respectable feature film projects (Wedding Crashers, Shanghai Knights), but he doesn’t provide a lot of technical film information on this track. Personally, I’d have to rank Fred Claus as one of his lesser efforts and his approach to this material didn’t do anything to change my mind. He spends a lot of time talking about working with the various actors and actresses and where certain sequences were shot, but he avoids talking about the character’s motivations and/or what things were funny. Having worked with Vince Vaughn twice before, he obviously has a lot of respect for him as an actor, but I think Dobkin should have offered him a little more guidance in this particular performance.

The first of several featurettes is titled Pause for Claus: Elves Tell All (8:58, 1080p) and it provides an “inside look” at North Pole life with head elf Willie and other members of Santa’s workforce. Obviously everyone remains in character for this segment and it’s cute if a bit self-serving.

Next is Sibling Rivalry (9:26, 1080p) which focuses specifically on the issue of brotherly love, or lack thereof, both in the movie and between real-life siblings who appear in the movie: Stephen Baldwin, Roger Clinton and Frank Stallone. I have to admit the Siblings Anonymous group therapy session is one of the funniest scenes in the movie and I wish they had done more with this idea. Just seeing Baldwin, Clinton and Stallone vent about being the “lesser known” brothers to their famous siblings is worth the price of admission. Here it’s explained how most of that sequence was ad- libbed.

Meet the Other Claus (13:04, 1080p) is the closest thing to a standard EPK on this disc and it provides a lot of the usual behind-the-scenes footage and interviews with the key cast and crew members.

Last is Vince and Paul Fireside Chats (4:10 aggregate), a series of brief but amusing one-on-one interviews between Vince Vaughn and Paul Giamatti taped to promote the film. The two discuss everything from how their families celebrated Christmas when they were children to their favorite Christmas carols.

Next is an ample collection of 13 deleted scenes (25:29 aggregate) which includes: Nick Goes Caroling, Fred Fishes Alone; Extended Santa Chase; Elf Fight #1; Fred and Willie in Bed; Candy Cane Montage; Guess Who’s Not Coming to Dinner; Willie Brushes His Teeth; Elf Fight #2; Siblings Anonymous; DJ Donnie Alt. 1; DJ Donnie Alt. 2; DJ Donnie Alt. 3; and, Ninja Snowballs Alt. Given that the final film seems a bit overlong at 115 minutes, I don’t think any of this material will be missed and none of it serves to improve the pacing or plot.

Rounding out the bonus material on the BD is a music video by Ludacris titled Ludacrismas (1:35, 1080p).

You’ll find a video game DVD titled Fred Claus: Race to Save Christmas. I tried playing it but got frustrated after a few minutes with trying to navigate the delivery of boy and girl presents via my remote.

And there is a Digital Copy DVD that allows you to transfer the movie onto portable media devices via Windows but it’s oddly not compatible with Apple’s iTunes (so Mac users end up with a collectible Fred Claus drink coaster).

The 115- minute film is divided into twenty-eight chapters.

Final Thoughts

Well-meaning and well- made, Fred Claus still seems a bit forced and isn’t likely to rise to the level of mainstay holiday classics like Christmas Vacation or A Christmas Story. Although the initial premise is enticing and the casting of Paul Giamatti as Santa Claus seems perfect, the material lacks the punch and pizzazz of those holiday films that we’ve come to know and love so well. With very good video and audio presentations and a plethora of bonus material, this BD at least earns an easy rental recommendation.