So, what am I to do last night when a live action remake comes on the TV? Especially with it starring John Goodman as Santa and Ethan Suplee (Randy from "My Name is Earl") as Jangle! Well, of course it was terrible. They managed to drain every last bit of charming out of the story and replace it with bland, annoying Chris Kattan sketches that even SNL would have turned down. The story had no focus. Mrs. Claus, who was crucial to the original story, is practically written out of it. And most bizarre of all was that it tried to blame (at least in part) goths and punk rockers for ruining Christmas for Santa Claus. Hoooooo kay...
The closest it came to being interesting was the casting of Michael McKean and Harvey Fierstein (both of whom recently played the Divine role in the Broadway revival of "Hairspray") as the Miser Brothers and Carol Kane as their mother. But it was not within their power to saving this travesty.
