Santa Clause 2

This topic contains:

• details about Santa Clause 2’s classification and consumer advice lines
• a review of Santa Clause 2 completed by Young Media Australia (YMA) on 9 December 2002.

About the movie

This section contains details about the movie, including its classification by the Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC) and the associated consumer advice lines.

YMA review

This review of the movie Santa Clause 2 contains the following information:

• a synopsis of the story
• use of violence and material that may scare children
• sexual references, nudity, substance use and coarse language
• the movie’s message
• overall comments

A synopsis of the story

Santa’s son Charlie is getting into trouble at school which means Santa has to leave the North Pole to sort things out at home. Before he leaves however, Curtis (one of Santa’s elves) discovers a clause in his contract called the “Mrs Clause” which states that Santa must be married and he has until Christmas Eve to find a new wife or he will be ‘de-santified’. This creates a problem as it is nearly Christmas and Santa can’t be in two places at once. Curtis devises a duplicating machine with which he plans to make a duplicate Santa to hold the fort while the real Santa is away.

Santa returns home and meets with the Principal of Charlie’s school a Ms Newman who doesn’t believe in Christmas. Santa manages to change all that however and convinces her to become the new Mrs. Claus.

Meanwhile all is not well back at the North Pole. The fake Santa decides he has to follow the rules implicitly and turns into a nasty tyrant. He creates his own army of toy soldiers who force the elves to make coal for all the children this year instead of toys as the fake Santa has determined that all children should be on the naughty not the nice list. The real Santa manages to get back to the North Pole just in time to prevent coal being delivered to the children. With help from all the elves they destroy the toy army and reduce the fake Santa to toy size.

Use of violence and material that may scare children

There is a little violence in this film but mainly cartoon style such as:

• a ‘trainee’ reindeer nearly crashes into the elves
• the fake Santa plays a rough game of football with the elves crashing into them and jumping on one of them
• Santa falls down the stairs
• Santa tries to reclaim the sleigh from the fake Santa  and a fight ensues causing Santa to fall out. He hangs on by one hand.
• the sleigh crash lands into the toy soldiers.

There is not much scary content in this film but there are a few scenes that might scare very young children including:

• Santa being “de-santified” - his beard gradually grows shorter then disappears altogether and he loses all his weight so that he’s back to the normal Scott
• Santa going into the duplication machine; there are many sparks and flashes and children might be concerned that Santa is being hurt
• the fake Santa being mean and nasty
• the toy soldiers being threatening
• Santa fighting with the fake Santa and falling out of the sleigh.

There is no material in this film that would scare children over the age of five.

Sexual references, nudity, substance use and coarse language

The movie contains no sexual references, nudity or substance use. The worst word used is ‘butt’.

The movie’s message

The take home message from this movie is that Christmas should be a happy time when children get lots of toys.

Values that parents may wish to encourage include:

• kindness
• generosity.

Values that parents may wish to avoid include:

• the belief that the ‘spirit’ and the joy of Christmas come from material possessions

Overall comments

This is a fairly light hearted film made for children at Christmas time. There are a few unresolved issues however, the main one being that Santa’s son Charlie is going through a difficult time and expresses this by graffitiing the walls at school and getting into other trouble. This is blamed on his Father’s absence and not adjusting to his Mother’s new husband. This problem is not really addressed yet Charlie turns around and goes back to being a nice boy and brother to his younger sister. Ms Newman’s changing so quickly is of course very unrealistic but this is a simplistic movie aimed at children and as such is one that they will enjoy. It is quite enjoyable for adults who will get a laugh out of the ‘tooth fairy’ and is suitable for all age groups.