Professor Popinjay's Compendium of Perspicacity

A Non-Review by Professor Popinjay

(2024)

SPOILERS UNLESS YOU’RE WELL VERSED IN ICELANDIC FOLKLORE

I wanted to like this movie. I liked most of it. I liked maybe 73% of it. Incidentally I thought it was 27% too long. I guess that works out.

So here’s what I liked. J.K. Simmons as a badass weightlifting Santa Claus was awesome. Honestly, I’d rather see him as the main character fighting his own battles instead of Captain Antipode and Dwayne “The Stone” Johnson. Santa was cool in this and I wished he wasn’t reduced to being the mcguffin of the film.

Lots of neat visuals. Yeah, I said neat. This movie was pretty epic visually. The North Pole was stunning. The Reindeer were very cool. I was not expecting them to look like that. (I’d describe them but I’m trying not to spoil everything.)

The humor and timing was decent and fairly plentiful. I had many chuckles, about 4 and a half chortles, and one guffaw. The guffaw came at a joke that was included in the trailer. The comedic timing of it was much better in the movie.

This film did have heart. The characters learned important lessons as the story progressed; lessons about seeing the good in people, about being a better dad. These lessons were integral to the story and never felt preachy or tacked on even while they were presented through dialogue. It worked. I was particularly impressed with the serious scenes between JK Simmons and Dwayne. The rock has come a long way from being a crappy CGI scorpion.

And yet there’s some pickled beets mixed into this fruitcake.

Chris Evan’s character was almost too unscrupulous. It made him kind of unlikable right at the beginning. He grows on you though.

The fight scenes were great! I liked them better though the first time I saw them in the Ant-man movies. The thing where they turned little toy cars into real cars was neat too but I liked it better the first time I saw that in the Ant-man movies. Wait, was Red One an Ant-Man movie?

The Krampus scene just dragged on. They really could have tightened it up with better editing. I think Kristofer Hivju (Game of Thrones) as Krampus was a missed opportunity. I think they (gnomes) chose him because of his Norwegian accent but he just wasn’t very funny and he needed to be. I could see Will Ferrell in the part. Check out the SNL Garth Brooks and the Devil skit for proof.

I was thinking they were doing a scooby-do thing with the villain. The secret villain thing is kind of overdone but who cares. It’s fun. They didn’t really go this direction though. Instead we get Grýla. Ho hum.

I think if we got to know more about Grýla, who is an actual mythological character from Icelandic lore, she might have proved more interesting and consequential. But when she shows up, we don’t know who she is and are never really given any reason to care. It’s the Enchantress from Suicide Squad all over again. The villain has to be significant to the story as a whole right from the beginning or we don’t know why we should care that they are mad even if it’s an unjustified reason.

In short, the villainess was just a weak character.

As this was a PG-13 rating, it was a bit dark at times and a bit profane at other times. I thought this needed to be a little more accessible for kids. And yet it wasn’t serious enough to be just for adults. For what demographic was this movie made?

Ultimately, this had a decent amount of fun parts. I appreciated what they were trying to do in making an epic, action packed Christmas movie. It needed a little more polish though. I’d probably watch it again if someone wanted to watch it with me so long as we could bypass the Krampus scene cuz that was boring. The slap fight was fun but they just needed to get to it already.