The Year Without a Santa Claus (2006)

Every year as Halloween barely passes, the greed of humanity takes its place in the shopping malls of the world as fake joy to the world takes over society. The TV classics come to TV with their spirit covered up with on- screen advertising covering up 25 percent of the screen as the show airs. Ever since the enjoyable "Grinch" movie, there have been wretched attempts to update these classics. Broadway has done o.k., but movies and TV, not so much. I had high hopes for this, but with the magic and mystery stripped, ends up being a shameful ripoff. The idea of seeing Dan Conner meets Suzanne Sugarbaker sounded promising, and two of Broadway's Edna Turnblad as the Miser Brothers (Heat and Snow) even more so. They are not the issues; they are all theater trained actors who could phone in a performance and give more than the lousy direction to what ends up on screen.I like to give more than five minutes to a film before I make a judgment. I looked at this with very cynical eyes from the cheap looking production values in the beginning and the abundance of obnoxious characterizations that oozed like slime off of my TV screen. The TV specials of the 60's and 70's even at their tackiest were professional masterpieces compared to this.I bought this as part of a 3 film disc set with "A Christmas Story" and "Jack Frost" and found this one to be a holiday nightmare. It's excessively liberal to a point of breaking the eew factor out of the thermometer. The inclusion of the Miser Brothers song is the only example of any creativity, with Heat Miser still a Trump lookalike and Freeze Miser quite smooth. Harvey Fierstein and Michael McKean doing their best to rise above the below mediocrity quotient. John Goodman and Delta Burke try to hide their embarrassment, and that just made me feel sorry for them. The remainder of the cast is filled with mostly one hit wonders who are here today, forgotten a minute later, examples of the hideous new wave of celebrity that has no reason in rising to the bottom.

I was a mixture of skeptical and excited to find this movie in the $5 section at the store. AYWASC is my absolute FAVORITE Christmas classic movie. I didn't figure I would like it as much as the animated one, but I decided to give it a fair shot, because how bad could a John Goodman movie be? If you can get past the utter cheesiness of the movie, it's not terrible. You're not going to beat the classic, no matter how hard you try, however I can see this movie being able to stand on it's own. It's definitely not a children's movie, but for a work-night time-filler, it gets the job done. It's just as heartwarming as the animated version, and it definitely has it's funny parts. Will I watch it again? Maybe next year. I'm glad it was only five bucks, though, because I wouldn't spend another dime for it.

I was actually fortunate enough to watch part of the filming of this movie in Natchitoches, LA and never would have believed how bad it was when it hit the screen. I was sorely disappointed for many reasons including the fact that they filmed this during the hottest time of the year expecting the extra's to wear winter coats, sweaters & other items so hot that many were suffering from heat exhaustion...even Santa. The extra's were not even paid extra's. They wanted 1,000 and I think were lucky to get 100 if that but I know not near as many showed up in the 90-100 degree weather sporting their winter attire. I had TIVO'd the movie for my grand children to watch around the holidays and ended up deleting it before I even watched it all the way through.The grand kids weren't disappointed at Christmas because I had recorded many of the "good" Christmas specials for them and didn't make them suffer through this one.

didn't like it at all was not what i expected it ruined a classic and the story was way off as the Iggy's dad was not the mayor and it was in fact Mrs Claus who went to mother nature not Santa himself and the characters were all wrong it did not have one good point in the who thing they even managed to ruin the snow miser and heat miser songs it was a major disaster i changed the channel and never went back too see it may now Hollywood will leave well enough alone but I'm not holding my breath anyways it was a waste of air time some might find it amusing but i did not and it was awful hopefully it will never air again but I'm not holding my breath on that one either