A Different Kind of Christmas (1996)
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Well, kind of. He identifies as Santa Claus, both professionally and in his personal life, however this isn't a Miracle on 34th Street situation. He knows what his legal name is, he realizes he isn't immortal, and he has a firm grasp on reality. At the same time, it's more than a professional gimmick: he wishes to appear "as Santa" at all times. In a sense, it's who he's decided to become. If you've seen enough documentaries about professional Santas this won't seem all that unusual: the role often elicits a degree of commitment you don't get from conventional parts. Hell, some have gone further and legally changed their name, a step the Santa in this movie hasn't taken.
Let's put a pin in all that and talk a little about the movie as an experience, because - surprisingly - I enjoyed it quite a bit. That's not to say it's good, at least not entirely, but rather that it's the sort of mix of good stuff and comically bad stuff that manages to maintain a level of entertainment whether you're laughing with or at it. This thing is right on the cusp of getting a recommendation from me, which isn't something I expected to be saying about a mid-90s movie that aired on Lifetime. It's not some kind of secret masterpiece - there's some astonishingly stupid stuff, and the made-for-TV production values are hard to miss - but I had fun with this both in spite of and because of its flaws.
I wasn't able to find much information about who made this, or really any other details about the production, online. There's no Wikipedia page, and the IMBD page is... actually, funny story there. The IMDB page with this title is for a 30-minute long movie with the same name, the same synopsis, but the cast and crew for what appears to be a 1999 short film about a war. You'll find the actual information about this movie listed under the title, Inheritance Up Christmas (though there's a note there saying the "original title" was A Different Kind of Christmas). It looks like it may have been released on DVD under the "Inheritance Up Christmas" title, but I can't begin to imagine why. Not that "A Different Kind of Christmas" is a perfect title, but at least it sounds like a real movie.
The IMDB page is important, because otherwise I wouldn't be able to credit Bruce Kirby's performance as Santa, as he's uncredited in the movie itself. I'm assuming this was done to avoid ruining the illusion that the movie's Santa was anything other than Santa, though I suppose "stupid mistake" is a possibility, as well. Regardless of how or why, it's unfortunate, as Kirby is fantastic here. He's easily the movie's strongest asset, and he deserves a spot on the list of great on-screen Kringles.
Long is good as Elizabeth, the movie's main character, though the role isn't remotely as much fun. She's playing a successful single-mother campaigning for mayor (with additional future political aspirations). Nathan Lawrence plays her son, Tommy, and... Look, for some reason it took an excruciatingly long time for movies and television to start encouraging kids to behave like human beings with complex inner lives, as opposed to alien robots with malfunctioning emotion chips. I'm not blaming Lawrence for any of this, but the character just doesn't read like a real character. The other significant character is Frank (played by Barry Bostwick), a newspaper reporter covering Elizabeth's campaign and also a love interest for her. We'll... uh... gloss over the obvious conflicts of interest here, just like the movie does.
The movie takes its time revealing Santa is Elizabeth's father. For the first half, she seems opposed to the appearance of Santa on the grounds he's a bad influence. She tells her son not to see him without offering much of a reason. She also assists a group of his neighbors in shutting down his operations. The movie portrays those neighbors in a pretty bad light, but... uh... they're right? He's functionally running an amusement park out of his home, shutting down traffic and upending a residential neighborhood. "The kids love him" isn't enough of a reason to ignore the law.
Naturally, showing up with a restraining order in the middle of the day to shut down Santa Claus doesn't do wonders for Elizabeth's campaign. Nor does it help with her relationship with her son, who's come to believe this is the real Santa, a normal conclusion for an eleven year-old kid to make under the circumstances. This also leaves her vulnerable to a businessman trying to pressure her into helping him get a permit to develop some property. This is a particularly weird subplot, because the movie is structured in ways that imply he's the bad guy (and Elizabeth certainly talks about him in those terms), despite the fact he's not really doing anything clearly all that bad. He's reluctant to pledge a large sum of money to a women's shelter Elizabeth wants built, but... I mean... it is a large sum of money, and while I'm sure the shelter would be good for the community, it'd also help her campaign, so it's not like her request is entirely altruistic.
Regardless, Santa eventually gets arrested for violating the court order when he allows a family with a kid with cancer into his house, which... what exactly are the terms of that court order? Whatever. It's when Elizabeth bails him out that we learn she's his daughter, a fact she's been hiding from the world. When the reporter pieces everything together and confronts her, we get some backstory.
Her father was already a celebrity Santa Claus when she was a kid (the movie previously revealed photos of him meeting various presidents, as well as Elvis). This meant he wasn't around much, and when he was he tended to become the focal point of everything around him, drawing attention away from her major accomplishments. The montage illustrating all this is really funny, by the way.
Things came to a head when her mother died of cancer - at the time, her father was in the children's wing, entertaining them as Santa. As far as Elizabeth knows, her mother died alone because the role was more important to him than his family.
To prove otherwise, he tries dropping the persona, though this doesn't work, either. Also, with the reporter's story set to drop (he delayed it a few days, because Elizabeth - the woman he's now sleeping with - asked him to), Elizabeth has to reveal the truth to her son, who's been raised believing his grandparents are all dead. He's furious with his mother for keeping this from him but is excited by the revelation that (in his mind) the literal Santa Claus is his grandfather.
Since Tommy believes his mother wants to arrest Santa again, he sneaks out of his room and leads a group of kids across town on bikes, planning to block the way into Santa's house. There's a montage of them riding across town reminiscent of every similar montage from the 80s and 90s. Though, to be fair, it culminates with Tommy getting hit by a truck.
This puts him in a coma. Elizabeth and Santa finally reconcile in the hospital, where she realizes she's also prioritized her dreams over her family, which... ugh. Look, Tommy had a bunch of lines expressing frustration that his mother was spending so much time running for office that made him sound like a whiny, entitled brat. Suffice to say, the moral is that parents should have lives and dreams of their own, but also they should spend all of their time with their kids or at least magically balance everything all the time. Whatever.
Tommy gets better, ambiguously because of Santa magic, and Santa decides to leave town rather than make life any harder for his daughter. But she abuses her power and convinces the town to grant the land the developer wanted to her father instead, so now he can have a Santa theme park somewhere more appropriate than his front lawn. The movie ends with the town gathered together, singing Christmas carols as it begins to snow.
To be clear, it's still June. That's not even a criticism. If anything, I like how aggressively ridiculous the decision is. I just want to make sure we're all on the same page here.
The shifts between effective comedy and absurdist melodrama at times feel like the latter might have been intended as parody. And, honestly, that could be the case - the jokes and drama are both funny, after all. At the same time, I hesitate to give this too much credit. The parallels between Elizabeth and Santa are a bit too structured to be a joke, and there are some bad lessons and morals embedded in there.
At the end of the movie, Elizabeth insists she's still running for mayor, just not as hard as before. This is, of course, the movie wanting to push for a balance between career and motherhood, rather than the more regressive option of having the successful single mom give up her aspirations and focus on family. But this is still regressive. Achieving the level of success Elizabeth managed as a single mother would be a Herculean achievement, and running for office isn't a part-time job. Her son isn't being neglected - there's a fulltime nanny (possibly a live-in nanny) who's helping to raise him, and she seems to genuinely care for him and to be very good at her job.
Yes, it's sad Elizabeth and Tommy aren't spending more time together during her run for office, but saying it's unacceptable for a woman with a kid to seriously compete for the kind of job men with kids are elected to all the time is sexist. Also sexist is using the love interest as the voice of reason. I've never been entirely comfortable with Miracle on 34th Street being built around a man teaching a successful businesswoman the importance of family, and it was an even bigger mistake to copy it here.
There are numerous flaws and issues with this thing - it is a cable TV movie from the 90s, after all - but to me that's the largest one. That said, I still mostly like it. Director Tom McLoughlin manages to deliver something funnier than many theatrically released Christmas comedies from the same decade. The movie also pulls off some great visual gags, including a machine that intermittently shoots snow across Santa's lawn that shouldn't be as funny as it is. And, again, most of the dramatic stuff is just as funny, whether or not it was supposed to be.
The Christmas elements are fun, as well. For a movie set in June, this is fairly direct about being a Christmas movie. It ties into Santa's ethos: that kids want Santa and Christmas all year. Because of this, the movie paces its story and "Christmas" miracle the same way as if it were set in December. Same goes for the snow, in fact: it wants you to forget it's not Christmas until it reminds you.
This is about as good as could reasonably be expected. Maybe more so. But let's not lose all perspective: it's still cable TV quality with moralizing of its time. This isn't something I'd unconditionally recommend to everyone out there. That said, if you have a reason for wanting to see it - say, you're a big fan of Shelley Long or 90s Lifetime movies or whatever - there's no reason to avoid it. It's surprisingly fun.
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