an ambitious but ultimately ineffective debut endeavor.

The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Blistering performances.

Another adaptation of the book, but is mostly a painful extension of the Rankin and Bass cartoon. This becomes no more apparent than when they decide to just throw in the Heat/Snow Miser songs. In the same sad way that Ron Howard's Grinch used the song from the 60's version. It's a highlight, but it just reminds us how unimaginative and tacky the remake is. We have a needless antagonist that wants to replace Santa with Extreme Santa, and Jangle is obsessed with urban culture and television. Towards the end it picks up, when I forgot the main plot of the film, and it focused on the son and his politician father. Goodman is fine as a cranky Santa, but he's just playing himself. McKean and Fierstein have some fun as the Miser brothers, even though I don't think Fierstein's voice suits the singing sections. The cartoon has more heart, more soul, and doesn't go for forced "humour"

I have always loved the Rankins/Bass *Year without a Santa Claus*. The scenes with Heat Miser and Cold Miser were hilarious, and Shirley Booth did a wonderful job as the voice of Mrs. Claus. So I was excited when I saw the Heat Miser/Cold Miser clip that NBC placed on youtube.It turns out that NBC placed the only decent moments of this demeaning remake on youtube. Almost everything else disappointed when it didn't outright offend. I was tricked.Many of the jokes seemed to be focused on telling the current generation how much better the previous generation was -- and even then, the jokes were outdated. With the complaints about life of the past twenty years and the rosy-glasses nostalgia, the focus of this version seems to be one long Baby Boomer whine.The people behind this version are so clueless they seem to consider "goth" jokes to be cutting edge fifteen or so years too late! The jokes about "Extreme Santa" might have been clever a decade ago, but now they only show the viewer how out-of-touch these people are if they still think such jokes are clever now. The "hep African-American elf" jokes may have been funny fifteen years ago but are an embarrassment to modern racial relations. The demeaned role of women in this version is nauseating.In the Rankins/Bass tale, Mrs. Claus is an active, intelligent woman determined both to help out the world in general and to bring her stubborn husband to his senses. In this remake, she is nothing more than a passive and obedient wife with an attractive figure. Who could have imagined wasting Delta Burke's talent playing a woman who does nothing except coo in worry? They completely disempower the character of Mrs. Claus: it isn't even her idea for the elves to go down to earth in this version! The disempowering extends to Mother Nature. In the Rankin/Bass special, Mother Nature is an awe-inspiring figure of dread, and Mrs. Claus is courteously cautious about speaking with her. In this tepid remake, Santa Claus is able to summon an obedient Mother Nature with three claps as though she were one of his harem dancing girls! The tale ends with a father guilt-tripped into destroying the hopes of hundreds if not thousands of jobs in a small town for the sake of sticking to old town values. Merry Christmas to his son who now gets a dad who will build snowmen with him, and Merry Christmas to all those workers who discover the day before Christmas they will be unemployed!

This was an absolutely awful remake of a holiday classic. There was a movie some years ago called Scrooged (with Bill Murray). In that movie that are producing a version of Charles Dickens "A Christmas Carol". The version that they create is absolutely over the top and insane. I think that this remake of "A Year Without a Santa Claus" is that to a "T".This production was so over the top it completely wrecked the movie. The casting was atrocious...John Goodman as Santa wasn't that bad, but Harvey Fierstein as the Heat Miser and Michael McKean as the Snow Miser...come on are you kidding! Fierstein killed the most memorable song from the original movie. What about the Miser Brother's assistants, any reason they were cast as hot female models (not that I don't appreciate eye-candy)? As for the storyline....why did they create this "new" story? Yeah, it follows the basic idea as the original, but the story was basically completely different.Please avoid this movie at all costs if you are a fan of the original. This one is too over the top, too long, and too crappy.

It's too bad that this couldn't have been a year without "The Year Without a Santa Claus" remake.I'll have a blue Christmas (since I've seen you.) This belongs on the Island of Misfit Remakes. Where's the Burgermeister when you need something burned? Rankin/Bass are probably spinning like the original Snow Miser after this. I let my six-year-old stay up for this...how do I justify letting him stay up past his bedtime for a waste of two hours of his young life. Whoever was approached with this idea should have told the instigator to put one foot in front of the other and walk right out the door.