Pretty nice all things considered
Santa mooning the crowd right before a big slapstick sequence in the opening moments may scare purists but otherwise this John Hughes produced remake of “Miracle on 34th Street” has a lot to like. Sure, it’s competing against a better version of itself for holiday viewing every year but give it a try, it has pleasures all its own.
This new version stars Richard Attenborough as the older man, who says his name is Kris Kringle, hired to replace a drunk during the holiday parade. And Elizabeth Perkins is the events director for the sponsoring department store whose practical mindedness has infected her daughter Susan (Mara Wilson), who no longer believes in Santa.
But Kringle is loaded with good cheer and his beard and suit are on point. He’s even well-versed in all sorts of languages, which lead to endearing scenes as he takes over as department store Santa. People love him, partly because he knows where to get things cheap, and the store loves him cause the people do. Everyone is believing a little.
Except the villains; a rival megastore whose head honcho (“Lethal Weapon 2” villain Joss Ackland, again suitably grave) sits in dark rooms, yells at underlings and rules with an iron fist. Destroying the Santa myth is good for business and so he hires a sleazy prosecutor (J.T. Walsh, another pitch perfect casting choice) to drag Kringle into court for a competency hearing.
A movie like this hinges on having a believable Santa Claus and in this Attenborough is as great as Edmund Gwenn was in the 1947 version. A little bit eccentric and yet never less than sincere, he’s as funny when mentioning he golfs with the Easter Bunny as he is respectful and heartfelt when representing Santa as the ultimate ideal of universal faith.
Generally much of the movie plays like that. It’s a nice homage to the movie that came before that stays true to its spirit as well as the spirit of the holiday. It’s also a wonderful looking film- especially in a romantic montage around the city of New York at night (no better place to go during the holiday season) between Perkins and Dylan McDermott, here playing the handsome lawyer assigned to defend Kringle and the romantic suitor Perkins maybe likes and Susan really wants to be her dad.
The cast works well all around- Perkins, who has closed her heart to the holiday, love, and world’s wonders and then there’s little Mara Wilson, a young actress I never really realized was this good- wise beyond her years really.
The courtroom stuff goes exactly the same way, with director Les Mayfield doing a balancing act of convincing us of the fantastical while mocking the prosecution for putting a myth on trial. The film goes a little longer than it should and the endings after this maybe pile on the faith-based schmaltz a bit too thick but overall this is wonderful stuff; with the fact it’s merely recreating better wonderful stuff notwithstanding.