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The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause is a 2006 American fantasy comedy by The Walt Disney Company, starring Tim Allen reprising his role as Scott Calvin (AKA Santa Claus) and starring Martin Short as Jack Frost. Filled with comedy, suspense, and plenty of magic, this family movie is sure to surprise!
SPOILER-FREE Summary & Review:
Thrown into a whirlwind, Scott Calvin is busier than ever being Santa Claus. Santa is behind on building enough toys for every kid in the world before Christmas, and his life keeps getting busier: Mrs. Claus is expecting their baby any moment, Jack Frost is helping around the North Pole as “community service” for some past misconduct, Santa’ ex-wife Laura and her husband Neil and their daughter Lucy are visiting the North Pole, Mrs. Claus’s parents (who aren’t supposed to know that the North Pole is real) are coming to visit too under the ruse that the North Pole is Canada, and now the toy workshop keeps malfunctioning! Too busy to spend adequate time with his wife and coming under fire by the in-laws while maintaining his secret of being Santa, Santa is under pressure, and Jack Frost wants to capitalize on it for his own gain… to become Santa in place of Scott!
This movie was surprising. Full of twists, suspense, and fantasy, it was a visual delight and a puzzling plot. Beautiful visuals combined with impressive makeup and wardrobe, as well as a pleasant return of most of the original cast plus the addition of Martin Short, made for a fun fantasy film. The plot was intricate in its own way, but not necessarily aggressively intricate nor difficult to keep up with. Tim Allen feels right at home in his role as Scott Calvin, and Martin Short makes for an equal-parts comical and scheming villain. The film’s rivalrous tone and characterizations is impressively expressed through its theatrical poster—a decent visual communication of some of the movie’s struggle, and a communication of the protagonist’s and antagonist’s personalities.
It was a decent movie. As an adult I enjoyed it enough, but as a family movie it is always up to a parent’s discretion whether a movie is suitable but especially with this film due to some jokes having adult tones in certain scenes or lines, and the villain being even more malicious than in previous Santa Clause movies.
Any Trigger Warnings? (SPOILERS AHEAD):
I have a trigger warnings section for sensitive viewers, from little kids to adults with PTSD and more. I try my best to share what I know could be upsetting for a variety of audiences so that people, parents, or caretakers can make informed decisions. That said, please keep in mind that I’m only human, so there may be times I miss the mark or forget something.
PLEASE NOTE I’m more specific or extensive in this trigger warning list than for The Santa Clause 2 because there is more to notify parents and caretakers in particular about, as I could see the events in this movie potentially being triggering for some children who’ve come from hard backgrounds since there’s themes of family tensions, brief family disfunction, and a malicious adult character behaving maliciously to kid and adult characters alike.
Some viewers may feel unsettled by the villain, Jack Frost. While his character has humor sprinkled throughout with goofiness and constantly complimenting others, he’s a textbook narcissist who’s always manipulating others and sneaking around to cause trouble. He has a shameless and merciless attitude, and he’s the culprit for most of the chaos that I mention in the next paragraph. As the movie goes on, he becomes more and more threatening. Eventually he freezes (but does not kill) two adults in front of their kid and he threatens that kid too and forces her to stay out of sight so she won’t interfere with his plans, which may feel scary or sad to some audiences. It’s all resolved at the end of the movie: nobody is ultimately hurt, the parents are unfrozen and they get to reunite with their kid, and Jack Frost turns good and gains a sense of empathy.
Chaos frequently erupts throughout the North Pole, including near-misses with objects as Mrs. Claus is whirled through the North Pole on a gurney to make it to the hospital to deliver her baby, fires erupting from machines and stoves indoors, sparking machines, endless lengths of paper swiftly rolling out of machines, toys popping off of conveyor belts, and people rushing around in fear or rushing around to fix problems like put out fires and stop malfunctioning machines.
There’s action, some comedically framed and some not. It includes brief duels with giant faux candy canes, a moment of very surprise/no-warning action where someone kicks someone else, and somebody falls a short distance through a roof, but nobody is seriously hurt by these events. There are also two replays of footage of the first movie where the Santa Claus before Scott falls off of a roof then deflates in the snow.
Beloved characters being forced into situations they don’t want to be in and family drama could be upsetting: poor work-life balance causing tension between Santa and his family, a familiar kid character Lucy is upset seeing her parents frozen then she’s forced to stay in a closet so that she doesn’t get in the way of Jack Frost’s plans, Jack Frost acting threatening, and Scott being tricked into giving up his title of Santa Claus and forcibly travelling back in time to a sad alternate reality where he’s not Santa Claus and his family is very broken/dysfunctional. By the end of the movie, everything is resolved and back to normal, and everyone is happy and content and the villain is no longer a bad guy.
Some scenes or jokes are more mature in this movie, with suggestions of infidel feelings, and a blatantly uncomfortable scene where Jack Frost flirts heavily with the married mother-in-law and it comes across as sensually toned sometimes in that scene.
My Unfiltered Thoughts (SPOILERS):
I had a lot of feelings about this movie! I don’t think it’s as good as the previous Santa Clause movies, but it didn’t feel like a total waste of time either. I was struck by Michael Dorn getting more screen time as the Sandman, Jack Frost, Neil (again), the physical comedy, and the way the plot was resolved.
In The Santa Clause 2, the Sandman is briefly featured in one or two scenes. I didn’t think about him much until I looked up the movie’s cast and saw the Sandman was played by Michael Dorn! Michael Dorn is a star of one of my favorite TV shows, Star Trek: The Next Generation, playing the stern Klingon security officer Lieutenant Commander Worf. In this third installment, Michael Dorn gets much more screen time than the previous movie, and it was very entertaining to see now that I knew who he was—Michael plays a happy, polite character very well!
Jack Frost is the character that I have the most thoughts about. The first thing I noticed about him was his looks. I was stunned by him, and frankly I think he’s pretty in an artistic way—his hair looked like glittery frost, his eyebrows were spiked and frosty to match, whoever designed him as a character either leaned into the elfish features of Martin Short by giving him pointed ears or cast Martin Short on the premise of him already looking elvish, and his suit looked frosted. Best of all, that suit is purely physical, meaning no CGI was used to achieve that frosty look. The makeup and costume department hit it out of the park with this character.
For Jack Frost’s actual characterization… Wow, there’s a lot to unpack. I clocked pretty quickly that Jack Frost was a textbook narcissist. I was shocked at how easily Santa’s right-hand elf, Curtis, played into Jack’s manipulation tactics. It frustrated me so badly because Jack was pulling classic narcissist moves with Curtis, and it was so obvious, but Curtis didn’t suspect a thing! At one point Jack asked Lucy if she wanted to be his elf, and I thought, “HUH?? DID HE JUST TRY TO ENSALVE A CHILD??” The one scene, though, that I’m really not over is when he flirted heavily with Santa’s married mother-in-law. Jack finds the mother-in-law during a quiet moment in the North Pole’s industrial kitchen, so he approaches to offer her hot cocoa. As they talk over the cocoa, he comments that she looks like she’d have a nice singing voice. The mother-in-law is easily flattered, and she sings a little bit of The Christmas Song by Mel Tormé at Jack’s request, and he seems quite… obsessed with her singing the line “Jack Frost nipping at your nose” and—just—AUGH! I still cringe thinking about the scene. And, like, isn’t he significantly older than her since he’s a legend? Okay, I need to stop talking about this scene now because even the memory is still making me cringe up too much.
Moving on, Neil’s character disappointed me. In my last review, I admitted that I was fond of Neil and it started because of how he grew as a character in The Santa Clause 2. But in The Santa Clause 3, the writers drove Neil’s character development straight into the ground. In this movie, Neil is kind of a hippie, underscored by sitar flares in the background when he says or does something comically holistic. There’s nothing wrong with being holistic, it was just the movie exaggerated his whole “I’m a therapist” thing and made it the butt of a joke, and that was disappointing and “cringey.” When he wasn’t having hippie moments, he was a man-child! He was somewhat immature throughout the movie, behaving with a cringe-worthy childlike attitude, except for a moment where he stepped up as a parent when Lucy approached him while she was scared.
A Neil moment that caught my eye was the Claus family decorating a Christmas tree. The Clauses and the in-laws were the scene’s focal point, but Neil was in the background quietly untangling stubbornly knotted Christmas lights. It made me chuckle because it was small but real: the quiet frustration but determination that many people feel when they sit down with tangled cords, picking at the cords but the knot refusing to budge.
Another surprise highlight for me was Scott Tarzan-kicking Jack Frost. It starts as Jack Frost on a stage relishing the attention of an audience then Scott—absolutely zero warning even to viewers—swinging in on a cord or something and absolutely K I C K I N G Jack Frost off his feet. I think it was the unexpected shock and the cinematography that made it hilarious to me.
Finally, the movie’s conclusion confused me. Once Scott regains his title of Santa after Jack Frost tricked him out of it, the elves find Neil, Laura, and Lucy—Neil and Laura are still frozen. Jack Frost refuses to unfreeze them and gloats over everyone’s inability to stop his magic, but LUCY steps up?? Santa said earlier in the movie that Lucy gives magical hugs, as a metaphorical compliment… But it’s not? She surprise-hugs Jack Frost and he UNFREEZES. His frost melts to reveal a normal-looking guy: he has well-kept brown hair, and his suit is a regular white. What?? I really thought Lucy’s “magical hugs” would unfreeze her parents, not Jack Frost. So I’m confused because it’s never clarified what happened with Jack’s transformation: is he still Jack Frost but with empathy, or is he just a normal guy now?! If he’s a normal guy, then who would bring winter? Is that Mother Nature’s responsibility now because she’s Mother Nature? If she can change the seasons, then why did Jack Frost have to run with the other legendary figures in the first place—in the beginning of the movie, it felt implied that Jack had a history of no-good behavior and the other legendary figures didn’t like him. I wish there were answers!
In Sum (SPOILER-FREE):
The Santa Clause 3: the Escape Clause is entertaining and awkward, sometimes confusing, but not too bad. As an adult I enjoyed it enough, but its family friendliness is debatable—it just depends on your family. I rate it a 5 out 10 stars.
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